Customer Reviews

In the Palace of Repose

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With this masterful collection, Holly Phillips has given us a genre-defying set of stories about magic, family, and finding your place in the world. She writes about places that are only slightly removed from our own, places we recognize but find are subtly different.

The title story, about an ancient king whose release may (or may not) cause great chaos in the world, is told matter-of-factly by one of his last remaining guardians. The ending is as sensible as it is surprising. The rest of the stories unfold similarly with delicacy, but never aimlessness. Take your time with this collection -- there is such a richness of characterization and, yes, magic, that you'll want to slow down and enjoy it.

As a rule, short fiction doesn't interest me much. I prefer novels - there's more time for the detailed development of plot, character, theme, etc. I also enjoy genre-bending fiction. So when I read the fly leaf of this book, I wasn't too thrilled about it being a collection of short stories, but I was willing to give it a try. And I'm very glad that I did.
The writing is concise and lyrical. The stories are gems that still resonate. And the author is a master at setting the mood for each of her stories. I look forward to this author's first novel.

Nine stories of the magic that hovers at the edges of the known word, In the Palace of Repose ranges from a girl found in a fairy's palace to a homeless woman invited to magical masked balls, united by quiet storytelling and unique magic. Many of the stories are unremarkable, but the best--"One of the Hungry Ones" was my favorite--are beautiful, striking a balance between magic and meaning and redeeming the collection. Moderately recommended.

I fell in love with Phillips's The Burning Girl, and came to In the Palace of Repose in search of more of her work. What I found did not quite live up to my expectations, but nonetheless offers some beautiful moments. The stories are united by their quiet, concise narrative voice which creates slow, reflective pacing in some stories and distances the reader from the characters in others. It takes a a bit to adjust to this style, so it's just as well the first few stories have attention-grabbing premises but are largely unremarkable: they're enough to make the reader stick around, but not so nuanced that he'll miss anything while he adjusts.

The reader slows and the story quality improves, and the second half of the collection (with a turning point midway through "Pen & Ink") is much better. Detailed descriptions and dreamlike sequences augment the slow pacing, and the magical aspects are subtle and haunting. Some of the stories still falter under the weight of foreshortened plots, but there are moments in the second half which are simply beautiful: unexpected hauntings, fetęs like fairy-rounds, unusual magic and realistic emotions all come together to create stories which balance magic against meaning and wrap both in subtle, quiet storytelling. The slow start and a few duds in the lineup make this collection a bit of a disappointment, but the few good stories redeem it--though none of them are must-reads. In the Palace of Repose is good on the whole, but deserves only a mild recommendation: pick it up if you're curious, but don't go out of your way to read it.

I thoroughly enjoyed these stories, and they've stayed with me long after I finished the book. It's undoubtedly worth reading. Phillips explores interesting ideas with well-written fiction. The title story and "Summer Ice" were especially enjoyable. They're a bit fairy tale (which I guess is why Amazon kept telling me to try her because I like Cathrynne Valente), but with a strong injection of Thinking About Stuff and (I would argue) a hint of steampunk. It's not the best book ever, maybe because the Thinking About Stuff isn't sufficiently masked in the fiction for my taste, but again, well worth reading.