In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker

Keeping up with my sci-fi reading trend. Baker has a series of books about "The Company." The setup of the story is promising. In the future immortality is invented and time travel is invented to test it out. The owners of the technology (the Company) make some people from olden times immortal and use them to amass wealth and save extinct species, working within the various times as operatives.

Promising. The story is told by a recruit from the time of the Spanish Inquisition, a young girl who is made immortal and trained as a botanist to save several medically-valuable species. A "Spanish" team of operatives goes to rural England in about 1554, just before England is reconnected to Roman Catholicism. The estate where they stay is divided as far as religion, with factions in each camp. It's an interesting setup, as the "Spanish" as suspected to be agents of the Inquisition (though they are irreligious altogether, but pretend to Catholicism in order to fit expectations.)

I was unhappy with what becomes a main thrust of the story--the young woman becomes entangled with a Protestant "true believer" who had previously been a libertine. He essentially becomes one again, however, taking the girl as his sexual partner for the duration, all the while endeavoring to "save her soul" by urging her to convert to the true religion. The inconsistency between belief and behavior is obvious, but never even commented upon by the girl, oddly, or the others who seem to be aware of it. It all leads to tears, of course, when the Roman Catholic church is reestablished and Protestants are now under the thumb of the throne.

Baker was recommended by the Plano Library based on other books I enjoyed, mainly because of Connie Willis and her books on time travel. I enjoy Willis's a lot more than I enjoyed this first book of Baker's series. I may try another of Baker's to see how the series continues as far as narration and content.