SOURCE: "Second Rate Vinge," in Fantasy Review, Vol. 7, No. 11, December, 1984, pp. 29-30.

Here, Wendell offers a mixed review of Phoenix in the Ashes.

Joan Vinge provides some of the better science fiction reading available today. Her interest in human emotion and motivation usually results in recognizable people and some of the most intriguing aliens around [I particularly recall those in her first collection, Eyes of Amber, 1979].

The six stories in this volume [Phoenix in the Ashes ]are good reads, but not quite up to the standards set by that earlier volume. For example, the title story is a gripping and compelling tale of two isolated individuals who meet despite the odds and come to love and need each other. Hoffman, a metals prospector in a post-nuclear war world, crashes in a backwards village. Amanda, disinherited by her father for not marrying the man selected for her, nurses Hoffman...