Teenagers can still be bratty, even when they’re immortal

This sounded like an interesting take on time travel, and there was a kernel of a cool idea in there. Sometime in the future, time travel is invented, but it only works in very limited ways: you can’t go to the future, you can’t change recorded history, etc. So the super-rich company that invented it also invents immortality, which also comes with rules: it only works when you catch a human very young and adaptable. So, they start sending operatives into the past to ‘recruit’ toddlers who would have otherwise died (therefore not affecting recorded history) and building major bases and running complicated operations completely hidden from everyone from the past.

So Mendoza is rescued from the dungeons of the Inquisition when she’s young enough that she doesn’t remember her own name. She gets immortalized: drugs and surgery, super speed and intelligence, voila. She’s trained as a botanist, and terrified of what she’s learned of humanity (Think Leeloo, learning about humans and war and being horrified.)

Mendoza gets her first assignment, going to a farm in Kent in the 1500s where an eccentric old man sells tickets to his unusual garden. She’s supposed to get cuttings and samples from all the soon-to-be-extinct plants, along with a team of more seasoned immortals.

So she’s super smart and well trained and knows about all of history and everything that’s to come, but she’s still like 18. She immediately falls head over heels for the eccentric gardener’s right-hand man, and things get stupid FAST.

From there it’s basically a teen drama, with lots of “You’re basically different species; it’ll never work,” and “BUT I LUF HIM YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW,” and on and on. It ends predictably badly, but surprisingly abruptly.

I would not have bothered with the second book, but I was stuck on a plane and the book I got at the used bookstore had the first two of the series in one, so I started it. CBR has encouraged me to give up books I’m not actively enjoying, so I’m not going to finish it! Gasp! It’s about the older immortal from the original group, and Mendoza is only a side character. It’s…weird. He’s pretending to be Sky Coyote and chatting with the Chumash Tribe in California.