I want to give this 4 stars out of being a general fan of Aaron Mahnke's work, but I consider this a lesser work than his Lore books. The stories are meant to be shorter and snappier than Lore, and they are, but in succession, even artfully arranged they can get repetitive in sections. The interview intermissions are also more distracting than interesting.

Yet, for all the stories that I knew, some fantastic new stories took me by surprise too, so overall I enjoyed this book, but not as much as his previous ones.

In truth, I wish he would do books based on the seasons of Unobscured; I loved those deep dives.