On a desert world a village struggles to survive. Pell's passion is deciphering the odd bits and pieces that the Ancients left behind. Her neighbors consider it a waste of time and would rather melt the artifacts down for the metal they so desperately need. Everything changes when a stranger, the first Pell has ever met, asks her to help repair Ancient machines in what the villagers thought was an impenetrable Tower. Driven by curiosity to see inside the Tower, and Moseus' promise of payment in the form of scrap metal, she agrees. In the Tower she finds three Ancient machines, all larger and far more complex than anything she has seen before. She also meets the other inhabitant of the Tower, Heartwood, and she wants to decipher his mercurial moods as much as she wants to know what the machines actually do. Almost immediately she begins to have visions, or maybe memories, of the Tower and its inhabitants, which draw her ever deeper into the mysteries of the Ancients, a tale of warring gods, and the history of the village of Emgarden.

Once again the galaxy's strangest inhabitants are staying at Getrude Hunt Inn but at least Dinah now has Sean to help her control the chaos. Sweep With Me is somewhere between a novella and a full length book and takes place at the same time as book four. Dinah is still recovering from the traumatic events and dealing with the consequences of what happened in One Fell Sweep. First she has to get through the three days of the Treaty Stay, the annual celebration where the Inns honor the galactic treaty that protects Earth. During those three days the Inn must accept any guest including a flock of Koo-Ko (space chickens) trying to settle a religious debate, an infamous Medamoth warlord claiming he's on a pilgrimage, and one of the mysterious Drifan from another dimension. Its a mix of the serious and ridiculous that culminates in an epic display of power that Dinah and Sean have to keep hidden from the rest of Earth.

This series continues to develop both in seriousness and entertainment with Blade being the snarkiest yet. At the end of book three Arland, who swears he's nothing but a simple warrior, eloquently asked Maude to marry him. She said, maybe? Arland is the epitome of a young male vampire and the pride of his House and Maude has experience with being the human bride among vampires. She wants to make sure that his House, and especially his mother Lady Ilemina, accept her and her half vampire daughter Helen. They both arrive on his home planet in the midst of a treaty wedding between two rival Houses being hosted by House Krahr as a neutral third party. They are of course up to something and have set their sights on House Krahr's shiny new mobile battle station. In a culture where the wrong words require a duel to the death Maude finds herself playing the clueless human to draw them out.