A shadow of falsehood twists around truths concealed in the night and irresistible yearnings are cloaked by the darkness of dreams.

Phyllis Eisenstein deftly exposes both of these themes in this collection of dark fantasy, pitting protagonist after protagonist up against their darkest desires and deepest fears. Sometimes they find the answers they need, but not always do they find the ones they have sought after. It is within the pages of this book that she shows a “darker side to the personal spectrum.�

Being her first collection, some of these stories have not been seen since their initial publications in Weird Tales and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Eisenstein’s career has spanned decades and seen nominations for numerous awards, including the two crown jewels of the Science Fiction empire: the Hugo and Nebula. Three of the nominees appear in this very collection.

The Island in the Lake, is a detective story enshrouded in high fantasy. Much like Sherlock Holmes, Alaric the minstrel “whose stock in trade was legend and wonder� travels afar to an ailing fortress surrounded by the Lake of Death. He has come to discover if the legend of the lake is true, and while asking some locals he discovers that “anyone…who so much as dips his hand in it, hardly has time to regret the act.� Alaric is soon drawn into a web of deceit, surrounding a deathly sick child and a political power struggle. Forced to become a Medieval sleuth, Alaric must crawl from the web of illusion and into the light of reality. The payoff is true Conan Doyle with the lack of Holmes’ saying, “Elementary.�

In Subworld, young Donnie is distraught over his parent’s divorce. Waiting on a train in the subway, the boy enjoys watching the mice and talking to a blind man who sells peanuts. One day, he wishes that he were a mouse. “Do you really wish it?� the blind man asks. When Donnie agrees, the blind man leads him to a place where the wish will supposedly come true. Their journey leads to a secret world of mice and men: where people give up their human existence to live as rodents. Yet, with every wish there is a price that must be paid. The question remains whether the price outweighs the reward.

Of the six novels and three dozen short stories Eisenstein has published, Sleeping Beauty relies upon an age old classic--the folk tale. But this is not the Disney-ed version; she stays true to the focus of the original unsanitized story. It is the darkened twists and undertones of the original that she uses to stake Walt Disney through his heart. The subtle feeling of pervading doom encompasses the entire story. One can only sit there and wait while Eisenstein uses her craft to bring about a frightening end. Being the oldest work of the lot, it may be the strongest and the darkest told.

Night Lives represents a broad swath of dark fantasy, spanning more than twenty-five years. In it we can see Eisenstein’s initial weaknesses outgrown, and her writing strengths amplified.

In this collection, it is at the moment where the reader asks what is next that the frailty of love, the supposed strength of vengeance and the urge for sex sends the reader careening through “the zone of twilight� and into the beyond. In the night, nothing is as it seems, and that can be said of this collection as well. This is a true boon to the connoisseur of dark speculative literature.