As in every year since 1988, the editors tirelessly scoured story collections, magazines, and anthologies worldwide to compile a delightful, diverse feast of tales and poems.
On this anniversary, the editors have increased the size of the collection to 300,000 words of fiction and poetry, including works by Billy Collins, Ted Chiang, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Hand, Glen Hirshberg, Joyce Carol Oates, and new World Fantasy Award winner M. Rickert. With impeccably researched summations of the field by the editors, Honorable Mentions, and articles by Edward Bryant, Charles de Lint and Jeff VanderMeer on media, music and graphic novels, this is a heady brew topped off by an unparalleled list of sources of fabulous works both light and dark.
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Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The 40 selections in this exemplary anthology from Link and Grant (the fantasy half) and Datlow (the horror half) reflect virtually every hue of the fantasy/horror palette: urban fantasy in Jeffrey Ford's The Drowned Life and Karen Joy Fowler's The Last Worders; traditional supernatural horror in Paul Walther's Splitfoot and Terry Dowling's Toother; modern folk fantasy in Elizabeth Hand's Winter's Wife and Eileen Gunn's Up the Fire Road; and cosmic terror fiction in Laird Barron's The Forest and Don Tumasonis's The Swing. A handful of stories involve child abuse and abduction, of which Lisa Tuttle's Closet Dreams is the most horrifying. The front matter's snapshot summaries of the past year's yield in fantasy, horror, comics, mixed media and music are a small and invaluable book unto themselves. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"There is no more essential a guide to the glorious fecundity of our imaginative literature in the last two decades." --Clive Barker
“These books define the absolute best contemporary fantasy and horror for me and for a whole generation.” --Holly Black, bestselling author of the Spiderwick Chronicles
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is one of several horror anthologies I have read over the years and this one fulfills its mission of providing reviews of fiction/film/media in this genre as well as including a broad array of short stories. The update was sufficient and the stories were of variable quality. There were some outstanding ones that will stay with me a long time...The Swing, England and Nowhere, Sir Hereward, Closet Dreams, but the majority would appeal to those who are really into fantasy. The bone-chilling, sweaty palms stuff is not here. Overall, a solid B read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a huge omnibus of 36 stories and 7 poems as chosen by Ellen Datlow for works premiering in 2008. With so much to choose from, there are some wonderful standouts and some that just made me go, "Huh?" (luckily, only 3 of them made me do that). I read this throughout February (a story or sometimes two each night before bed), and now I just want all of the collections I don't have yet.
Here are some of my notes:
The Forest by Laird Barron - feels like you have to be high to appreciate it
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang - an Egyptian fable about a Gate of Years which transports you 20 years into a fixed future - I really liked this one
Rats - by Veronica Schanoes - a familiar, darkly modernized fairy tale .. with rats - I liked this one too
The Swing by Don Tumasonis - where a swing appears to swallow up young girls - I liked this one, but it was one of those reads where you really need to pay attention to catch all of the nuances
My two favorites:
The Fiddler of Bayou Teche by Delia Sherman - about a girl named Cadence with white skin, hair, and pink eyes who was found in the swamp by loup-garous (werewolves) and raised by Tante Eulalie, a woman with many gifts, including healing, in her self-imposed swamp exile. Cadence eventually finds herself in a battle with a fiddler who can "fiddle the Devil out of Hell."
Winter's Wife by Elizabeth Hand - In Shaker Harbor, ME, Roderick Gale Winter, much beloved by his neighbors, including 15-year-old Justin, takes a wife from Iceland (Vaia). In Roderick's house, huldu folk reside as carvings in the beams of the house. When the King's Pines, three majestic pines near the water, are threatened by a wealthy and selfish area developer, strange happenings abound.
I love collections like these, and as I said before, reading this one made me put the others on my to-buy list. If you like fantastically dark tales, this is probably a collection you'll want too.
BOOK RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Here are some of my notes:
The Forest by Laird Barron - feels like you have to be high to appreciate it
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang - an Egyptian fable about a Gate of Years which transports you 20 years into a fixed future - I really liked this one
Rats - by Veronica Schanoes - a familiar, darkly modernized fairy tale .. with rats - I liked this one too
The Swing by Don Tumasonis - where a swing appears to swallow up young girls - I liked this one, but it was one of those reads where you really need to pay attention to catch all of the nuances
My two favorites:
The Fiddler of Bayou Teche by Delia Sherman - about a girl named Cadence with white skin, hair, and pink eyes who was found in the swamp by loup-garous (werewolves) and raised by Tante Eulalie, a woman with many gifts, including healing, in her self-imposed swamp exile. Cadence eventually finds herself in a battle with a fiddler who can "fiddle the Devil out of Hell."
Winter's Wife by Elizabeth Hand - In Shaker Harbor, ME, Roderick Gale Winter, much beloved by his neighbors, including 15-year-old Justin, takes a wife from Iceland (Vaia). In Roderick's house, huldu folk reside as carvings in the beams of the house. When the King's Pines, three majestic pines near the water, are threatened by a wealthy and selfish area developer, strange happenings abound.
I love collections like these, and as I said before, reading this one made me put the others on my to-buy list. If you like fantastically dark tales, this is probably a collection you'll want too.
BOOK RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars
By doublenerds
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have been enjoying this anthology for the past 16 years, and it breaks my heart a little to know that Ms. Datlow will no longer be assembling this particular collection of wonderful, creepy, and sometimes downright scary tales. I sincerely hope that this anthology will be revived in the not-too-distant future. It is a great loss for those of us who love these genres of short fiction but do not have the time to go fishing through hundreds of journals and short story collections each year to locate the gems.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Last of the Best
Some I like. Some I don't. Some I love. But all well written. Still the definitive collection of the two genres. Read more
Published on January 31, 2010 by R. G. Heckathorn
3.0 out of 5 stars
a compendum of short stories
I did't finish the book but I did read most of it and it did live up to expations many of the stories where abslotey gut clenching outhrs where mudane and peacful offen enough the... Read more
Published on December 5, 2009 by David Beale
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