Partial Eclipse is Graham Joyce's first collection of shorter fiction. The stories and novellas gathered here range from wartime England to Leningrad under the siege, from the coal mines of Coventry to the beauty of the Greek islands. Some of the stories ('Gap Sickness,' 'The Careperson') utilize science fictional premises. Some ('Under the Pylon,' 'Black Dust') recall the overall ambience of The Tooth Fairy. Others, such as 'Candia' and 'Xenos Beach,' are accounts of magical, erotic, and dangerous encounters in exotic ports of call. One of these is the novella, 'Leningrad Nights,' a story of suffering and survival in a frozen, surreal city ruled by 'the blind justice of the Whistling Shell.' Partial Eclipse is a book of dark, disturbing, sometimes beautiful dreams. It is also, as the title story tells us, a book about the primal importance of dreaming.