First of all, it is worth noting that I will read anything Anne Bishop writes, despite the fact that nothing has achieved the awesomeness that was the original trilogy.
And I read her books for three reasons. 1) Daemon Sadi 2) Lucivar Yaslana 3) Saeten SaDiablio.
Right, now that that's out of the way, you can understand my rating. I enjoyed the mere fact that this another opportunity to read about characters I like. No, not much new has happened in terms of character development (with the exception of Surreal - boy, did she develop, though I'm not sure whether it's in a good way or bad), but the stories were good, especially the middle two.
I'll refrain from talking about the fourth story because it's just one long spoiler alert. Suffice to say that I liked reading it, even if I did suspect there was some character derailment going on and I thought that, had Bishop wanted to, this could easily have had a villain in it and become a longer book.
So, yes, "Shades of Honor" was the best of the four stories, but they're all fine and as far as I can tell, the importance for me was "Yay, more pretty dark-jeweled warlord princes" rather than, you know, meaty content.