Monday, May 30, 2011

The Good and Evil of Anthologies

Dark and Stormy Knights 




Sometimes, I'll be deeply involved in reading a series and then notice I'm missing something.  The characters will refer to something that happened, sometimes repeatedly, that seems significant enough that it should have had a story of its own to tell it.  Sometimes it is just an interesting tale, but sometimes it is something like an important shift in a relationship or something that completely molds and changes a character, a change that just doesn't make sense without reading the story that goes with it.  I've noticed that when I get a feeling like that, it is because I missed a short story or novella in an anthology.

I hate that.

Magic Slays (Kate Daniels, Book 5)Other times, I miss a character or a world enough that I really wish there was a little sumthin'-sumthin' to hold me over until the next novel comes out.  I'm hoping that is more the case with what I'm currently reading, Dark and Stormy Knights.  I have only gotten a couple pages into it, so I don't know yet how good it is, but I'm definitely excited to be reading a Kate Daniels story to hold me over until Magic Slays comes out (okay, so it comes out tomorrow, but it will probably be a while before I can get it from the library!).  Plus, there is a Kitty Norville story that hopefully will keep me happy until Kitty's Big Trouble is released in July.
Kitty's Big Trouble (Kitty Norville, Book 9)
As for the rest of the stories in Dark and Stormy Knights, I don't know yet if I will read them.  Sometimes I do read the other stories in anthologies besides the one I get it for, sometimes I don't.  This time, I'm leaning toward not, since Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 11) is next on the reading queue and I'm pretty excited to see what Sookie is up to now. 
Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 11) 
What I usually do with anthologies is, starting at the beginning, glance at each story, maybe read a couple sentences and see if it looks interesting or if it is part of a series I haven't read.  If I haven't read the series that it is a part of, I won't read the story.  If it looks like an interesting story, I'll hunt down the first book in the series and start there, coming back to the story in the anthology if I still like the series enough to bother by the time I get there.  If it is a stand alone story, I'm likely to read it and, if I like it, I'll probably seek out full length books by the author.  I even sometimes will give the author a bit of a break if I only kind of like it and go ahead and look into their other work anyway, since short stories are almost never as good as full length books in my opinion.

So that's my opinion on anthologies.  What do you think of them?

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