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So far every story in this collection has been science fiction. I'm hoping maybe at least one of the last three stories will be fantasy. There is a dragon and a shield on the cover of this edition, after all.

A few great ideas, but terrible character work and the complete absence of followup with Rolf's sister.

There's an extremely significant omission in this book. At the end of the last book, there was a resolution to the plot of Rolf's missing sister, but it ended on a line of dialogue indicating that there was still something to resolve with her in the next book. But there is not a single mention of her name or even the word "sister" in the entire third book, even where it should logically have come up.

Catherine’s arm had a lifeless submissiveness in Rolf’s grip; it was a feeling that he had met before, on touching slaves, slaves who had had reason to take him for an Eastern master. It came to Rolf that in a sense this girl had now become his slave, his property, and there was a twinge of forbidden pleasure in the thought.

Our young hero Rolf is surprisingly excited at this prospect.

Almost a cosy fantasy.

So far pretty much what I expected.

"Alice's Last Adventure" was more sad than scary.

Very lighthearted and funny. Very different from the other Poul Anderson stories I've read.

This is from 1952, and has the kind of sexism you might expect from a SF story of that time, except that Anderson has turned it around! The woman from Alpha Centauri is a member of a species where the woman are bigger and stronger, and she treats the male main character like 50s heroes treat women: as something to be protected and a trophy to be won, and she expects him to be ready for sex when she feels like it!

Semi-honourable bad guy Chup is pretty much the real star of this book, and so far his parts are more interesting when dealing with the even-worse-guys than the exploits of the nominal heroes (with the exception of the early genie-tech scenes).

I like how they're summoning a maliciously literal genie to build them technology beyond their current tech level. This is a very interesting blend of magic and technology.