Hexarchate Stories is maybe four decent stories, and a bunch of filler sketches, that's good reading for fans of the Machinery of Empire. The best stories concern an art thief stealing a true weapon of mass destruction, Jedao's greatest victory, a Shous candidate being tested, and Jedao and Cheris reconnecting a decade after the last book for one more job.

To fill out the other half of the book, Lee has included his development sketches on the series, little scenes from the childhoods of the major characters. I'm torn about this, because Lee is a master of tone and style, and these sketches demonstrate that in spades, but they're also entirely gratuitous from a larger perspective. I'm reminded of Peter F. Hamilton's A Second Chance at Eden, except that each of the stories in Hamilton's book was a fully formed and plotted story, not just a workshop sketch.

And there might also be a fundamental disagreement between Lee and myself about what is cool in his writing. I'm here for the descriptions of horrific impossible weapons and horrific impossible people as trained by the six branches of the Hexarchate. Lee thinks it's cool that these war criminals also enjoy pastries and dote on their families, love cats, and have other humanizing qualities. And then there's the revelation that the Hexarchate relies on the secret enslavement of servitors and mothships, who are sentient. Yeah, that's a crime, but the Hexarchate also runs on torturing heretics to death and making suicide a duty in the name of immortal ghost-sorcerers, so it's a bit like issuing speeding tickets on the way to the concentration camp.