A review by caedocyon
Lightspeed Magazine, August 2012 by John Joseph Adams

4.0

When I saw the title, I was hoping for something silly about how sentient life is united by a need to gamble. This is more serious, about writing and reading, the different ways to pass knowledge and when it might be wiser to let it go---and sometimes, when it's a good thing that your species is being slowly ossified by the pursuit of knowledge. The ending was a little gooey, I didn't think it was really necessary that the {insert name generator here, idr} ~mystically understood~ the meaning of the lost books, just that they made something beautiful and useful out of them.

Heard on the Lightspeed podcast, 7 August 2012 episode.