Daughter of Regals and Other Tales [Mass Market Paperback]

"Gilden-Fire" - This tale of Korik of the Bloodguard and the mission to the Giants of Seareach was cut from _The Illearth War_, not because the sequence isn't good, but because 1) Donaldson needed to cut about 150 pages, and 2) using Korik as the viewpoint character caused problems when set beside Covenant's Unbelief. Enjoy; Korik fills in some of the background of the Bloodguard as lagniappe.

"Mythological Beast" - Norman lives a perfectly sane, perfectly safe life as a librarian, in an age when violence has been eliminated by eliminating the causes of fear. Not that many people can read, or that anyone uses the library. He can't understand why the new nub of horn on his forehead doesn't register as anything odd on his biomitter, or why nobody seems surprised by his other gradual changes.

"The Lady in White" - The narrator, Mardik the blacksmith, tells the tale of how his 'mad' dreamer of a younger brother came to be blinded, in rescuing him from the mysterious Lady in White, who had lured many men to their deaths in the Deep Forest.

"Animal Lover" - The narrator is a cyborg government agent, for whom serious injury just means a few more experiments with new equipment. In this age of overpopulation, genetic engineering is outlawed, and the government subsidizes anything that'll act as a pressure valve: slamming cars around a racetrack, game preserves. But the exclusive game preserve the agent's asked to investigate has a *far* higher death rate than normal, and seems to advertise only by word of mouth. The narrator's the best pick, since he'll be inclined to root for the animals rather than slant his report the other way, if no criminal activity is going on.

"Unworthy of the Angel" - The title comes from the saying, Let no man be unworthy of the Angel who stands over him. The narrator, a guardian angel (literally) whose memory of each assignment is wiped away by the next, has the unsavory task of coping with a charge who's selling his soul to become a better sculptor. This isn't a blatant diabolical contract in brimstone, nothing so crude; the sculptor just has to be willfully blind to the consequences of his actions. But an angel can't help you unless you give him permission...

"The Conqueror Worm" - Welcome to the not-quite-right home of Creel and Vi Sump. He's got a good job, but maybe a dead end; the place has some expensive electronics, but a water-damaged ceiling; and so on. Tonight, a centipede is loose in the apartment after they've both been drinking at a party, and they're trying to kill it. (More of a character study than anything; the only story in the collection that's not to my taste.)

"Ser Visal's Tale" - Some of the wild young men of the town regularly buy Ser Visal's drinks at the tavern with the deaf bartender, to hear tales that, while not quite openly heretical or seditious, wouldn't help him any with the Judica or the King. Now they want to know the *real* story of Dom Perralt's excommunication, in this land that's become a theocracy in 1 generation.

But all in all, I would recomend this to anyone who enjoys all Stephen Donaldson's books. He is a marvel.