This is a collection of short stories, including one from the Old Kingdom. They claim it’s a novella on the front cover, but it’s definitely shorter than the Lirael story that was included in his other short story collection. Still, it’s worth getting – “To Hold the Bridge” is an interesting addition to the Old Kingdom stories – it doesn’t involve any of the special families, just a regular Charter mage, trying to keep his coworkers safe. A nice twist on things.
There’s also a Hellboy story – I don’t know why I got such a big kick out of that, but I did. There’s a small sci fi section, which includes a story set in the Shade’s Children world.
I’d only run into one of these stories elsewhere, which I’ll admit was nice, but is also probably a sad commentary on how little I read anthologies these days.