Fountain of Youth is an anomaly, because it's a weird story to position as the second one on in the anthology. If you look at the second story of a series/era, anywhere from Doctor Who and the Silurians to The End of the World to the Beast Below, it tends to solidly project what you're getting as you're going forward in the series. You'd imagine thus, based at the end of A Bright White Crack, that this story would be primarily focused on characterizing Larles and Kwol. Fountain of Youth doesn't do that. It's not a typical episode two, so to speak.

None of that matters though, because Fountain of Youth is immediately exceedingly well written, with an excellent character analysis of Cwej as a person, a fun mystery, and an astonishing atmosphere. This story is great, targeted to me personally, probably, but it has that delightful adventurous and slightly romantic feeling of being at sea. The characters that Cwej meets are charming and the conclusion is surprising and clever. This is stylishly written and atmospheric prose and I gladly ate it up. Even if this isn't what you were expecting, it's still a great time and should be applauded.