As with its predecessors in the series, the seventh installment of this annual anthology showcases bestselling authors and rising stars of fantasy fiction. This volume is a compendium of the essential fantasy stories of 2006, a year of particularly outstanding and original offerings. Representing the breadth of talent in the fantasy genre, this year’s contributors include breakthrough talent Charles Stross, revered authors Peter S. Beagle and Gene Wolfe, and exciting newcomers Laird Barron and Martha Wells.
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From Publishers Weekly
The seventh annual fantasy anthology from the renowned husband and wife editing team of Hartwell and Cramer is arguably the strongest and most thematically diverse. Complementing works from genre luminaries like Michael Moorcock, L.E. Modesitt Jr. and Lucius Shepard are notable selections from newer authors, such as Laird Barron's powerfully atmospheric Hallucigenia a dark fantasy masterwork that blends Lovecraftian horror with particle physics. This volume is essential reading for any fantasy aficionado.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The second larger-format edition of Hartwell and Cramer's annual showcases work by three repeaters from last year, Greg van Eekhout, Laird Barron, Gavin J. Grant, and with two stories—one a lubricious farce, the other a heartbreaker—by Gene Wolfe. The other 15 honorees constitute a who's-who-and-cool in contemporary fantasy. Dianna Wynne Jones, prolific children's fantasy hand, couldn't be more all-ages appropriate and dazzlingly charming than in the kids-quell-coven yarn "I'll Give You My Word." Nina Kiriki Hoffman's "Sea Air" is a perfect though more somber companion to her exuberant novel Catalyst (2006). "The Potter's Daughter" offers powerful incentive to plunge into Martha Wells' Ile-Rien novels; it's the prequel to the lot of them. Virtual grand masters of fantasy Michael Moorcock, Peter S. Beagle, and L. E. Modesitt Jr.; hot up-and-comer Charles Stross; master of local color Lucius Shepard; beloved genre wildman Howard Waldrop; religion-inspired fantasists Sharon Shinn and Ian R. MacLeod; and exciting newcomer M. Rickert are some of the others represented. Olson, Ray
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More About the Author
Kathryn Cramer is a writer, anthologist, & Internet consultant who lives in Pleasantville, New York. She won a World Fantasy Award for best anthology for The Architecture of Fear, co-edited with Peter Pautz; she was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her anthology Walls of Fear. She co-edited several anthologies of Christmas and fantasy stories with David G. Hartwell and now does the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF with him. She is on the editorial board of The New York Review of Science Fiction, (for which she has been nominated for the Hugo Award many times). She is a consultant with the Scientific Information Group for Wolfram Research.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to read,
By
This review is from: Year's Best Fantasy 7 (Paperback)
Whilst the stories in this volume are for the most part well written. The problem that I had with it is that the font is way to small. I do most of my reading at night and even with my reading glasses I struggled with this book.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not Free SF Reader,
By Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Year's Best Fantasy 7 (Paperback)
The editor says in the introduction they changed format possibly to present more work, and says he'd really like to publish half a million words. He doesn't say how large the wordcount was in the last book, or in this one, but presumably this is bigger.
Changing format of course will piss off collectors who like to have consistent looks, and the electronic collectors too, who as far as I can see now don't have one to buy. He says they have deliberately chosen a wide range of stories (which certainly apperas to be true), and stayed away from novella type work for length reasons. Fantasy collections that have a lot of mundane stuff are never going to rate amazingly highly for me, but there are some pleasant surprises - Pimpf I had read before, and that is a cool story, and another Eternal Champion milieu tale from Moorcock. The standout is Laird Barron's Hallucigenia, and he is singled out as possibly being a major talent. Given the three stories of his I have read so far (5,4,3) for a 4 average, sounds pretty reasonable to me. His story here is what I would call something like a cross between Lucius Shepard and Brian Lumley, and definitely great. Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Build-a-Bear - Gene Wolfe Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Pimpf - Charles Stross Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Four Fables - Peter S. Beagle Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Potter's Daughter - Martha Wells Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Thin On the Ground - Howard Waldrop Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter - Geoff Ryman Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Osteomancer's Son - Greg van Eekhout Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Yours Etc - Gavin Grant Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Sea Air - Nina Kiriki Hoffman Year's Best Fantasy 7 : I'll Give You My Word - Diana Wynne Jones Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Bea and her Bird Brother - Gene Wolfe Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Bonny Boy - Ian R. Macleod Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Ghost Mission - L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Christmas Witch - M. Rickert Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Roaming Forest - Michael Moorcock Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Show Me Yours - Robert Reed Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Lepidopterist - Lucius Shepard Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Double-Edged Sword - Sharon Shinn Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Hallucigenia - Laird Barron Year's Best Fantasy 7 : An Episode of Stardust - Michael Swanwick Competitive teddies. 3 out of 5 Bob Howard manages to get told off for not playing MMORPG's enough at work, given that is his current assignment, to stop real monsters gaining a foothold there. He even gets an intern, asthe Laundry finds a kid who gets in deeper than he should while playing and hacking, and hands him to Bob. They go on a bit of a dungeon bash to save the day. 4 out of 5 Bad jokes two many. 3 out of 5 Fairy girl's hands like clay. 2 out of 5 Mexican trip brain sucker cutoff escape. 3.5 out of 5 Surfeit of spirits. 3 out of 5 Hierarch restructuring. 4 out of 5 Dead girl ghost correspondence. 3 out of 5 Garden monster penchant for swimming is infectious. 3 out of 5 Coven trap fraternal dictionary defense. 4 out of 5 Hereditary problems. 2.5 out of 5 Orphan changes. 3.5 out of 5 Poetic sp00k sp00ks. 3.5 out of 5 Bad bone girl. 3.5 out of 5 Rackhir the Red Archer travelling meets a princess of Immryr, luckily for him with what they get involved in. 4 out of 5 Time for drug revenge. 3.5 out of 5 Cocoon people's master conquest plan cropped at the top. 4 out of 5 Paralysis no longer in the cards. 3.5 out of 5 Things that are definitely not better than a kick in the head by an equine? Being taken over by entities from the Outer Dark. 5 out of 5 Just a vixen for a con. 4 out of 5 3.5 out of 5
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