Is it bad that my overwhelming thought about this anthology is that I’m glad that there was no one story that was just so amateurish it completely threw me out of the world of the book? Most of the older anthologies had at least one of those stories, and I don’t know if the quality in this one is a reflection of the fact that they’re screening more heavily, or that because this series has been in place for while, you’re only getting seasoned veterans that are really looking for it. I suspect the latter is a big part of it, which is actually a shame, because the inclusion in that original fan world was a wonderful thing.
These stories span pretty much the whole history of Darkover – I particularly enjoyed the origin stories- there were two stories about the origins of some of the family gifts – in this case, the Alton and Ardais gifts. I know MZM has passed on, and who knows if this in any way fit her original vision, but it’s so nice to read things that fill in those blanks.