Having read Vijayan’s Legends of Khasak (on the recommendation of Jayan) and been enormously impressed, I sought out other works by him and found this collection of stories. Subjects and treatments vary enormously from the near-science fiction to the “warm and fuzzy” and while I wasn’t a fan of all of these stories, every single one of them was expertly done and impressive. There is a fantasy element about some, what might even be called magical realism in another context. But some are quite down-to-earth. My personal favorites were the stories about nostalgia and a sense of time and place (“The Sacred Eagle,” “Going Back,” and The Little Ones”). Highly recommended. ( )