Customer Reviews

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eleventh Annual Collection (Vol 11)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the best collection of stories of fantasy and horror I've ever found. I've bought and read a few of these Year's Bests before, but this one was stunning. Great stories by Nancy Pickard, Michael Cadnum, Michael Chabon (who turns in a Lovecraftian tale of all things! Go Michael!), Norman Partridge, Douglas Clegg, Jack Womack, and Gary Braunbeck--this is an amazing collection, and I'm even more enthralled by the editorial eye that found these gems.

If anyone wants to find out what's going on in the fiction of the fantastic and of terror, they need look no further than Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 11th Annual Collection. Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling should get some kind of exalted place in fictiondom for their method of selecting an eclectic group, not based on some bestselling names that no longer produce interesting prose or dazzling stories, but based purely on the stories and poems at hand.

The Charles de Lint and Stephen Laws stories stood out for me, too. Where else can you get this variety of great short fiction? I miss Karl Edward Wagner's Best Of collections also, but Datlow and Windling, as an editorial team, are number one in my book.

Don't hesitate. Grab this one while it's available. If you're a devoted reader of these genres, then you can do no better; if you're a writer, see what's getting noticed these days. There are a lot of talents here I'd never read before that really shine.

Having read several of Windling and Datlow's collections from previous years, I bought this book with total confidence that I would love it. I was not disappointed. Some of the stories delighted me, others made my spine squirm, or made me laugh, or just say "Yick!" but each and every one was worth reading. This series is not only the first I would recommend to any fantasy or horror fan, but also the first I would recommend to non-fans. You want this book!

Compared to its outstanding forerunners, the 11th annual edition of this normally indispensable series is a serious disappointment, especially for horror readers. (The fantasy selections are better than the horror choices, yet even they are hardly stellar.)

If this were just another run-of-the-mill anthology series, the disappointment would not be severe, but the combination of this series' wonderful past, its hefty price tag, and the relative difficulty of finding it in your local bookstore, result in an experience that woefully fails to meet the reader's expectations.

Gone are several of the names that have appeared in past issues, and that readers have come to expect: Michael Marshall Smith, Tanith Lee, etc. Certainly the editors are to be commended for attempting to introduce newer or lesser-known authors, but many of these are, judging from the works represented here and to put it as kindly as possible, better left unknown. And certain redoubtable (but assuredly over-exposed) names continue to appear: Jane Yolen, Ray Bradbury and Joyce Carol Oates, for instance. I was thrilled to see Kim Newman here, however, even in a co-authored piece, and that piece is, not surprisingly, the one standout in the collection.

Unlike past editions, this one does not contain any stories that absolutely grip your imagination and won't let go. Past editions had at least one such story, and often several!

This year, the editors seem to have favored oblique stories whose point is deliberately elusive or vague -- hey, I'm all for challenging your readers, but I sense the smell of ripoff here. The writers seem less subtle than lazy, and the stories, while sometimes well-written and charming in style, are vague, shallow exercises in fluff.

And what are the editors doing culling from the New Yorker, for heaven's sake? Not once but several times! I thought this was supposed to represent the best of non-mainstream fiction. On the other hand, some of the small-press and 'zine collections are so poor that perhaps you can hardly blame them -- except that they certainly have the resources to do better.

The good news: as usual, the opening "summations" are useful and enjoyable, always worth at least a fraction of the price of admission.

Spend your money on the previous editions and keep away from this one. Or, support a much-needed horror fanchise by buying ANY anthology edited by Stephen Jones. Datlow and Windling have lost their right to your hard-earned dough. END

I give this book five stars for the quality of the short stories, one star for the quality of Datlow's overview. Notoriously partisan, she again praises her friends and ignores her enemies, delivering her pronouncements as if from on high. She does pick good fiction, though, and if you skip her essay and go straight to the stories, you can't lose.

The reader from Baltimore -- whose review appears on this page -- seems to have read a different book than the rest of us. I consider this volume the best one yet in this terrific series. But then -- since the Baltimore reader is complaining about inclusion of fiction originally published in the New Yorker -- I suppose he/she prefers fantasy and horror with a less literary bent. This is definitely not an anthology for those who aren't interested in savouring fine prose or exploring the unusual places where "genre" and "mainstream" fiction meet. If you want unchallenging, predictable horror and fantasy then give this volume a miss -- but if you love dazzling writing of all different sorts -- defying the very notion of what is "genre" and what is "mainstream" -- then this is the collection for you. There are brilliant stories and poems here -- in an incredibly ecclectic mix. I hope someone is paying Datlow and Windling very very well so that they continue to provide this amazing annual volume for years to come.