The daughter's lover then gains possession of her magical talisman, a jewel known as a "blue star", which enables him to read the mind of anyone he looks in the eye.

The government bans witchcraft, which merely serves to drive its practitioners underground, where they can fall prey to the use and abuse of unscrupulous powerful or ambitious individuals.

The protagonists are Lalette Asterhax, a hereditary witch, and Rodvard Bergelin, an ordinary government clerk who has been recruited into the radical conspiracy of the Sons of the New Day.

Rodvard, though attracted to the daughter of a baron, is commanded by his superiors to seduce Lalette instead to gain the use of her blue star in the furtherance of their revolutionary aims.

Davenport singled out The Blue Star as "[t]he most ambitious and most stimulating of the stories" and called it "a romance with a scope far beyond that of the common science-fiction novel.

"[2] The Post reviewer did not address the merits of the individual pieces, but noted that "[t]he authors are old hands at conjuring up suspense and fear" and that "[a]n idle hour or two in this company can be quite diverting.