In the Company of Thieves Book Review

In the Company of Thieves

Kage Baker

Tachyon Publications

Pub Date: Nov 15 2013

3/5 Stars

 

        First, I would like to mention that this book is a compilation of short stories.  It was compiled by Kage Baker’s sister after the author’s passing.  This is probably the reason why this collection seems to be a little hit and miss as far as quality and coherence of theme are concerned.  In my personal opinion there are perhaps one or two really good works in this book.  Everything else is just alright.  The synopsis refers to the two stories that are at the end of the book which deal with Kage Baker’s series of stories about the Immortals and such.  But the majority of the book is not about them at all and rather just seems to hang together and deal with various other fantasy stories and one or two that border on Steampunk.   I would definitely say that “Mother Aegypt” and “The Unfortuante Gytt” are the best of these stories.  Both having been printed elsewhere previously.  But I’m certainly not saying as a whole the book is bad.  Certainly not, just not that great.  I enjoyed some of my time with this collection but as a whole I found myself hoping the next story would be better than the last.  Which was usually not the case.

        I haven’t had the opportunity to read anything else Kage Baker has written and certainly her historical science fiction series seems interesting while the two stories here seemed a bit meandering for my taste.  Perhaps a full length novel would be better as I did like the idea of a world that she presents and the mechanics there in.

        I would certainly suggest this to anyone who is a fan of Kage Baker or perhaps trying this out as an introduction to her work as it was mine.  There is certainly a wide variety of story types to choose from in this five story short fiction compilation.