As you might expect in a book of bardic tales, there are stories of dragonslayers, pirates, and fantasy peoples, but there also contemporary tales about police officers, an unusual birthday present, a glass eye, and even super heroes contemplating a job change. A few of the stories are standard short story length, but most of them are three or four pages and a few are a couple of paragraphs, flash-fiction style.

What is most unusual about this collection, though, is the inclusion of poetry. It is in keeping with the bardic concept since bards of yore were often poets and singers. There are four poems that vary in their accessibility to the reader, since poetry often is enigmatic with layers of meaning. One that is quite clear is "Reflexions," an epic story of horror in the fashion of "Beowulf."

An appendix in the back of the book gives biographies of all of the authors to flesh out the reader’s experience with these stories. Unfortunately, the table of contents only lists the titles, not the authors. Therefore, when you look for a specific author’s work, you have to thumb through the book to find it.

Still, Bardic Tales and Sage Advice has something here for every fan of speculative fiction.