SOURCE: A review of Phoenix in the Ashes, in Voice of Youth Advocates, Vol. 7, No. 6, February, 1985, p. 340.

In the following negative review, Eaglen deems Phoenix in the Ashes a disappointing collection.

Vinge fans who expect to find any of the qualities that made her The Snow Queen a Hugo winner will be sorely disappointed in this collection of six previously unpublished short stories [Phoenix in the Ashes.] The first, the title story, is about a plain Jane living in post-nuclear holocaust California and disowned by her feudal, traditionally rigid father in the agricultural society which that part of the world has become. Then a helicopter (which no one in the village has ever seen) crashes in her father's wheat fields. Surely it's a curse! No one will help the pilot, but Amanda does and nurses him back to health. As might be expected he falls in love with...