If I have done my math approximately correctly, it's been about 30 years since the publication of the very first Kzin story, “The Warriors.” And it has been five years since the most recent volume of “The Man-Kzin War” was published. This 13th volume came out six years ago. The occasion for my review is that I recently discovered that after this INTERMINABLE wait, we are going to get volume 15 sometime in February! Scream and leap, kzin fans, scream and leap!

Some familiar names in this volume, and some new. The challenge is always to find something new to contribute to a body of work this comprehensive, WITHOUT utterly breaking faith with established story-lines.

MISUNDERSTANDING, by Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox. This story is a HOOT! It takes a line from Niven's original story, and expands on it. It's about those bizarre aliens who thought they could travel in time! Don't be ridiculous; NO ONE can travel in time!

TWO TYPES OF TEETH, by Jane Lindskold. Carnivore teeth tear and cut; herbivore teeth clip and grind. But humans have two kinds of teeth. What does it mean, to have a sentient species not limited to just one thing? A Kzin prisoner of war must grapple with that difficult concept.

PICK OF THE LITTER , by Charles E. Gannon. A very lengthy selection, this could easily have been three separate stories. (But you get them all, for one low price!) At the beginning of the wars, you had the administrators of the Golden Age on Earth, who wished to exclude violence from human existence. You also had the ARM, who were a bit more cynical, but also far more ruthless. Then, you had the humans at Alpha Centauri, who were too involved in making a place to live to be tied up in ethical conundrums. Everybody has an agenda, and the one place those coincide is that there is a need to capture a viable Kzinti kit. After THAT point, however, the interests diverge wildly. Gannon looks closely at the effect this will have on the infant Kzin, growing to adulthood.

TOMCAT TACTICS , also by Charles E. Gannon. Long-term thinking, paranoia, and a few other human factors result in some very long-term plans being made. But that takes time that the humans don't have, when the cats invade Wunderland. Prep NOW; plan ….later? Is that even possible?

AT THE GATES , by Alex Hernandez. I believe this is THE deepest-digging story of the collection, in that references go back to the Angel's Pencil, yet the action is from much later in the Wars. A community of Kzin and Humans live in hiding near Kzin-controlled space. They believe they are safe, until their warning systems tell them of a Kzin warship entering their system.

ZENO’S ROULETTE, David Bartell. Yes, it's a Kzin story, but it's also a math story. And maybe not every game has a winner, although there must always be a loser when the stakes are this high.

BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND, Alex Hernandez. A Kzin Telepath, worn out from years of service, discovers multiple atrocities being perpetrated by humans on Kzin. And the ONLY place he can go for help? It's the humans, naturally.

I'm a huge fan of hard science fiction in general and Man-Kzin Wars in particular, so that probably colors my review. That said, I had a blast reading these stories, especially the ones that fleshed out Kzin telepaths. I frequently found I was unable to tear myself away from the book until I'd finished a chapter or a story.