I've only read hard science fiction from Niven until this book (The Integral Trees and sequel I think were the last I read) so this was quite a change. This is actually a compilation of 3 books originally published separately which also includes some stories by other authors set in Niven's world.

It was an interesting premise, that magic is a limited resource which was used up in the ancient times of our own world. Some of the stories were better than others, but all were interesting. On the whole I liked Niven's way of looking at magic (seemed a very science fiction approach to the whole topic) but the writing didn't always totally grab me. I'd give this a 3.5 star rating if I could; it's better than a 3 but I'm not quite convinced it's a full 4.