/lit/ - Literature

Just finished Demon in white earlier, love seeing an author get better with each book, much better pacing which was always my biggest issue with Ruocchio, and has a little bit of everything I like in stories like this (action, bit of court politics, lore reveals etc)
Happy to give it a 5/5 this time around with how close The Howling Dark was to getting one. Anyone read the short stories set in between the main novels? I'd like to read them all eventually but I'm curious how "essential" others would consider them to be.