Before I knew who Patricia McKillip was, before I had enough awareness of the sci-fi and fantasy greats, I was a kid with a volume of FIREBIRDS RISING, a short story anthology. And in this collection was a story called “Jack O’Lantern.” I was OBSESSED with this story. It was my favorite from the collection and inspired/shaped a number of short stories I wrote in college.

Sophomore year I would go home at Thanksgiving with a friend and find a book on their shelf—Harrowing the Dragon and other stories. I would read it and realize the author’s name sounded familiar. BING! She wrote that short story I loved. And here were more! I hunted up another short fiction collection of hers, Wonders of the Invisible World, and took it with me in ebook form to my senior spring break trip to the beach.

Later, I would stumble across The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, read it, and love it. I would fall into absolutely confounded love with the Riddle Master books and Winter Rose and many of her other novels. But I knew McKillip’s short fiction first. In this collection are some of my favorites— Jack O’Lantern, of course, The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath, and Lady of the Skulls, to name a few bangers, but even here there were a few I either had forgotten but hadn’t read before and ended up loving—Knight of the Well and The Lion and the Lark and others. Even the short stories that strike me as off the wall or “weird” are fascinating in conversation with the rest of her work.

If you want an intro to Patricia McKillip’s short fiction, I definitely recommend this collection. Her worlds are numinous, full of light and color and words, drawing you into enchantment and mystery, entirely spellbound. These stories ring with deep magic like a struck bell, and the echoes will stick with you for a long, long time.

The Essential Patricia A. McKillip is a very fine collection of shorter works by a master of fantasy. It is always a pleasure to read and reread Mckillip for her intricate world building, her versatile storytelling with unexpected plot twists, her characters who are appealing, and her prose which flows in lovely ways. This collection contained works that span her career. Some of the stories I had read previously and some were new to me. It was satisfying to read both. Strongly recommended for readers of fantasy. For those unfamiliar with McKillip, this is a good place to start.

Patricia A. McKillip's voice, as distilled in this career-spanning collection, represents one of fantasy literature's most distinctive and enduring achievements—a prose style that transforms the genre's conventional machinery into something approaching pure enchantment. Her language operates with what can only be described as crystalline lyricism, creating sentences that seem to emerge from dream-logic rather than narrative necessity. This collection serves as both introduction and farewell, offering newcomers entry into McKillip's distinctive magic while providing longtime readers a final opportunity to dwell within prose that has consistently reminded us that literature's highest calling may be the preservation of the world's capacity for transformation—both literary and spiritual.