The Life of the World to Come

Kage Baker's "The Life of the World to Come" unfurls the epic, millennia-spanning saga of Mendoza, an immortal, indestructible cyborg Preserver dispatched by Dr. Zeus, Incorporated from the 24th century. Tasked with salvaging historical treasures, Mendoza, a botanist, finds herself repeatedly drawn to and devastated by mortal men who share an uncanny resemblance: renegades, tall, dark, and intensely charismatic. Her first love, Alec Checkerfield, meets a martyr's death in 16th-century England. Centuries later, in 19th-century America, she loses an identical soul, leading to a violent reprisal that earns her banishment to the 'Back Way Back'—150,000 years in the past. Meanwhile, in the future, brilliant minds at Oxford, working for Dr. Zeus, craft 'heroes' from myth and DNA to protect humanity from an impending cosmic 'Silence.' They engineer Alec Checkerfield, a hero destined to intersect with Mendoza once more. Stranded for three millennia, Mendoza tends her ancient garden, pining for her lost love, until a time-traveling pirate, undeniably Alec, emerges from the sky, heralding a new, momentous chapter in their intertwined, immortal destiny.