This is the very first of the Other Tales of Valdemar series, where Mercedes Lackey opened up the world to other authors, and once I started it, I remembered I had in fact read it before, so it is a reread, though I had no memory of some of the stories, while remembering others.
Like pretty much any of these anthologies, I did end up skipping one story that just didn’t feel like it fit (at least it was written well – there are a couple of stories in the old Darkover anthologies that were just terrible…)
I confess that my favorite stories generally had Lackey as a co-author – she just gets the flavor right better than anyone else. I think my favorite non-Lackey story was ‘Vkandis’ Own’ which presented an early in the career story about Solaris, the Son of the Sun that brought Karse back into the true religion, and made them allies with Valdemar. I’ve always loved her as a character, and this story fit well with the rest of her cannon.