At the Edge of Waking

by Holly Phillips

With In the Palace of Repose, her debut collection of mostly unpublished work, Holly Phillips accomplished the improbable. The unknown Canadian author received critical acclaim and numerous honors including the 2006 Sunburst Award and nominations for the World Fantasy and Crawford Awards. Her accomplished prose sang with a unique voice, seamlessly blending emotion, insight, and craft. Now, At the Edge of Waking presents her latest tales written with even more depth and range-including a new, never-published story. Portraying human reaction to dire change or extreme circumstance, combining the real intruded upon by the fantastic or the fantastic grounded in reality, Phillips describes the world as it is, as it may be, as something impossible yet entirely acceptable, enthralling the reader with her words.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy

331 pages, Paperback

First published August 21, 2012

Reviews

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy, it was hard to know what rating to give this. It is a very, very well-written collection of short stories, but viscerally this author's taste is not mine. She revels in pain and misery, in describing the horror of cold, the death of despair, the hopeless absurdity of any meaningful affection. My favorite of these stories was Proving the Rule, about a woman in a world much like ours, who discovers that a person is magically destroying all magic to keep our world untainted and perhaps even extant. She must decide whether or not to maintain the tradition. It raises interesting questions of what a world with magic would be....not Piers Anthony's happy-go-lucky Xanth but a world of horror (of course) and despair. All of the stories are well-written, but just not my cup of tea.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Endeavour read, short story collection. It was beautifully written but at least half the stories were irritatingly pointless and therefore overly long. But Virgin of the Sands was creepy but awesome, and Gin was horribly good and I couldn't look away and Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom captured that creepy feel I like from De Lint's Newford stories. But the collection was just too uneven. 3.5 of 5.

[Norman Lee Madsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his introduction to the collection Fantasy author Peter S. Beagle states that Holly Phillips is "spooky good", and compares these stories to those of Ursula K. Le Guin. I have to say I agree with both assessments - Ms. Phillips' prose is fluid and eminantly readable, and many of the stories in this collection reminded me of Ms. Le Guin's 1976 collection Orsinian Tales.

Three Days of Rain (2007) - 4/5
Cold Water Survival (2009) - 4/5
Brother of the Moon (2007) - 5/5
The Rescue (2010) - 3/5
Country Mother's Sons (2010) - 5/5
Proving the Rule (2008) - 5/5
Virgin of the Sands (2006) -5/5
Gin (2006) - 3/5
Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom (2007) - 4/5
The Long, Cold Goodbye (2009) - 3/5
Castle Rock (2012) - 3/5

[E.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't love every story (and outright sped-read/skimmed one of them), and every now and then I felt as though either I was trying too hard to read it or Phillips was trying too hard to write it. But her tales are uncanny (in the Freudian sense) and irresistible. I am fascinated by the way she marries her ideas, the blending of unexpected settings and themes and characters into contemporary fantasy that is, as Peter Beagle says, spooky good.

[Patricia Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of eleven short stories that seamlessly blend craft, insight and emotion...the fantastic grounded in reality. So beautifully written and imagined, each story is different, each with a unique voice, full of interesting characters. I really loved this book.

[Elle]

I have no idea what I'm reading so I'm quitting. The story begins fine but loses me. The cover is misleading, the characters two-dimensional...