Immediately

There was a discussion recently on girliejones blog about how you choose which book to read next. In general I pick whatever fits my mood at the time. However there are some authors which, as soon as I receive the book, move to a status of "next". That is to say, I will read that book just as soon as I have finished whatever I am currently reading. There are not many authors in this category - I can only think of four plus a few more in a category of "real soon"*. Kage Baker is one of those four "next" authors, and the book this time is Dark Mondays, a collection of short stories which lobelet was kind enough to give to me as a gift.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think Baker is as good in the shorter form as she is in novel length work. The stories are good, and a couple of them are superb, but overall they do fall short of the stunning nature of the novels. It isn't easy to pin down quite why this is, especially when the stories are still very good. There is certainly no lack of wonderful ideas and imagery, but perhaps the stories are not quite constructed as well. But that is a relative comment. In fact it may just be a reflection of the quality of some of the short story collections that I have read in recent times rather than an absolute comparison of Baker's competence in the two forms. Just to be confusing, one of the stories in this collection is novella length and it is one of the most engaging in the collection although lacking the really sparkling ideas in some of the others.

What the heck. This is Kage Baker. You will not be disappointed by reading this collection in a stand-alone fashion.

* In theory, there is a "drop everything" category where I don't even finish the current reading before starting on the book in question. It has been a while since an author managed that category.