Lois McMaster Bujold at her very best! This novella is the newest in the World of Five Gods series, and a direct sequel to a previous novella - Penric's Demon. The story is something of a theological mystery, which is very different than it's predecessor. It's a good story all by itself, and since it is a novella, a pretty quick read. For me, it was hard to put down once I started to read it.

It is sometimes hard to give an overall rating to a book that contains shorter works by several authors. This particular book was just plain fun from beginning to end. It is true that the novels do leave things out. They have to, in order to tell the story that is intended. Still, the novels have let us know that there is a whole world affected by the Ring of Fire, It is in these shorter works, and those in the Grantville Gazette where we find the rest of that world. All together, it makes the United States of Europe seem more and more like a real place, even though we can't visit there.

A pretty good novella, with a couple of the most interesting characters in the Martins' steampunk series Mitch Storm and Jacob Drangosavich of the Department of Supernatural Investigations. This time, they are up against werewolves and a dark witch. As usual, their boss appears just long enough to give them a little grief. That makes me wonder whether the rest of the work of the department is easy stuff, because these guys get all the hard ones.

I always find it hard to review anthologies. As usual, this one was a mixed bag, although I liked more stories than I disliked. Disliked is probably the wrong word. There was no story I didn't want to finish, but there were a couple that just did not grab me. Still, it was a good batch of stories overall. Now, these stories all had a female character as the protagonist, but that does not mean that all the men were bad guys. Not by a long shot. The women who the stories are based on are not the standard for women in their societies.