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The last story in this book repeats a lot of the same themes as some of the other stories: an intimat-but-nonsexual bond between two magical people, one a dominant and the other a subordinate/submissive, war, politics, the stress on the body and mind from conjuring magic, a younger person learning from an older person about their power. This story compared to the others just leaves no emotional or mental impression.

I have to say that the 22nd story is really not a story. It reads like the first few pages of a story. A court jester with magical abilities encounters a new court mage appointed by a callous king. Some dangerous secrets get revealed. The End. This is the first work in this book of which I'm seriously critical. :-(

21st story is a fantasy that takes place in the real historical world of medival Magyars (Hungarians) traveling from their homeland through the land of the Croats (Croatia) to the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, which are part of the maritime empire ruled by the city-state of Venice. A táltos--a Magyar shaman--and her guardian go on a spiritual quest with an unforseen outcome.

20th story is another one with an intimate, but not necessarily sexual, relationship between a dominant and a subordinate, in this case a "master" of a spacecraft and a first mate whose magic powers the ship to make light-year jumps. Content advisory for a scene of consensual bondage with body blows and flogging.

19th story is another short-short, about a future beyond the fall of 21st century civilization where a humble watermill owner works with a mage to realize his dreams/visions of a vehicle that moves on the roads faster than horses.

18th story makes me think of the Blue Oyster Cult song "Veteran of the Psychic Wars." It truly is a sad story of a soldier who's mind is used to control and direct weapons and war machines and the toll it takes upon them mentally and physically.

A lot of people will not get the 17th story without looking up the nouns in the title, "The Oracle of DARPA." I know what an oracle is because I've been reading mythology tales since I was a kid. As for DARPA, I had to turn to Wikipedia again--and so can any reader, so I won't spoil it here. This short-short story may still be hard to get even after a little research.

There's not much "story" in the 16th story, a flash fiction about the meeting of minds--and dreams--of a visual artist who's a refugee from a near-future, war-torn Hungary and a tech company employee who uses hardware that taps into her REM sleep to create visible digital concepts that can be turned into game apps.

No need for Wikipedia to read 15th story. It's a fantasy about the symbiotic relationship between some kind of noble person and a servant, both of whom share magical energy and a non-binary gender. Content advisory for some unpleasant descriptions of illness, parasites used for medical purposes, bleeding/oozing wounds and feeding from these wounds.

Had to give Wikipedia a workout to get any kind of understanding of the 14th story, which uses the Hebrew names for Biblical figures Solomon and Moses along with quotes from the Torah and the Talmud. The story is an allegory that takes a tale from these scriptures and writings and links them to the modern and now-eternal dangers of buried nuclear waste.

13th story is a quiet one about spirits, the occult, and so-called progress trying to bury the sites and signs of the Holocaust in a European town. This is the first story that's not sci-fi in any way, though it is another one in which a protagonist reaches into her Jewish faith to address a problem.

12th story is another steeped in Jewish culture and faith maintained in a place far from Earth, in this case what look like a Hasidic community on a planet with a sentinent consciousness. A life form connected with this "planetmind" has a human form and lives among the human colonists but struggles to fit into the gender-divided society because they are a shape-shifter who doesn't have a gender.

Eleventh story is great. Two young Jewish women from different national cultures save themselves from a deadly alien invasion of the space station they live on through technology and their shared deep studies of their faith writings and traditions.

Tenth story is much better than the ninth, about a society that apparently has no universal writing system that's dependent on living archivists who psychically reach into a collective memory bank to verbally recall everything from old court cases to property records. Content warning for a scene of self-harm and consensual use of a torture device to deliberately induce pain.

Ninth story is ai'ight; it's short and only mildly engaging in its focus on symbiosis technology/magic.

Now the eighth story is a short one that packs a punch. One quote from it: "We can't just stop the program. It increases police visibility in the community." The tale goes back & forth between those who create & sustain systems of oppression at the top, and the folks on the bottom who enforce and suffer from them, the subjects. Definitely my fave so far.

There's not much to the seventh story, just a moment in time for a human using an airborne suspension form of travel across an abandoned, forested world that seems to be a nature preserve.