Stonefather is a very short story, maybe 112 pages or something.
Sandmagic is one of my favourite short stories of all time, up there with The Cold Equations or Scanners Live in Vain. "...the desert loved hate, and Ker lived on hate." Chilling.
This story has nothing to do with Sandmagic except it takes place in the same fantasy world, where mages get power by serving some element, like trees or the desert, or in this story, stone or water.
Ker was a completely untrained sandmage; here we get a glimpse of the hierarchy of trained mages.
I enjoyed this story very much, however it could have been longer, more fleshed out. In particular the first 2/3 of the book build a progression when then comes to a climax a little too quickly.
However, a good read. I look forward to more stories set in this world. Perhaps someday we'll find out what Manmagic was.
Mine is signed even though I got it at Amazon because I didn't want to pay extra on hatrack.com for a signed copy. I don't mind that it's signed, but I can't say I value it either. Resale value doesn't matter since I have no plans to sell it, and knowing OSC held this particular copy is of very minor interest. But there's no one's signature I would care about anyway, just not the way I roll, except maybe Barbara Eden's.