This book is an extraordinary set of short stories. Holly Phillips proves that there is such a thing as literary speculative fiction - or should I say, that genre doesn't matter when the writer is so talented.

Each story recounts a slice of a woman's life, and although some of them are victims on the surface, they are each presented with choices and the power to enact them. The title story is imaginative and clever and embarks us on a voyage of discovery and fascination that lasts throughout the book. Each story is distinctly different from the other and show a breadth of imagination that is the mark of a true storyteller.

Holly Phillips is a writer of immense talent and, hopefully, great writing future.

Synopsis
In the Palace of Repose is a collection of nine such stories, ranging from the delightfully fantastic "In the Palace of Repose", to the delicately horrific "One of the Hungry Ones", to the hauntingly literary "The Other Grace". Here indeed are young women, and young men, who have seen too much, and who have been abandoned to wrestle alone with the strange, the wonderful, the terrifying. Some triumph, some tragically fail. Most struggle on beyond the boundaries of their stories, carrying their wonders and horrors into their lives, into their worlds -- worlds, and lives, startlingly like our own.