Customer Reviews

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror)

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I am delighted to announce that YBFH #17 just won the Stoker Award for Best Anthology of 2003.

The strength of the Datlow/Windling collections was always--aside from the editors' shrewd instincts--the wide net they cast over the field. Grant and Link help continue that tradition, and this edition includes stories from Esquire, The New Yorker, and the Paris Review as well as the breadth of genre magazines and anthologies. The big names are here (King, LeGuin, Gaiman) as well as folks you may not have heard of. There are too many standout stories to mention, but the most exciting thing about the Year's Best for me has always been the discoveries, so I'll list a few people I hadn't read before who blew me away with their stories: Laird Barron, Dean Francis Alfar, Philip Raines and Harvey Welles, Megan Whalen Turner, and Paolo Bacigalupi. This is still the one annual collection you must read if you are a fantasy and horror afficionado.

I am a long-time reader of this anthology, and #17 marks a fascinating shift in the fantasy selections. Link & Grant have tastes quite distinct from Windling's, though I can also see some overlap. But the works they've chosen are no less well-written and wonderful. Datlow's horror selections are as strong as always, so there's an interesting new balance in the two genres here. It's a smart and interesting new spin on this always notable series.

I miss you, Terri Windling! Come back!

That having been said, I have read over ten volumes over the years from this series. I have found among them some of the best stories I have ever encountered. Do yourself a favor and read some of those. Numbers 4, 10, 13, 14, and 16, especially. Kelly Link established herself as a good author years ago, but she makes a crap editor. None of the stories she or her husband chose made me do anything but yawn! The problem is, there's no magic in any of them. I understand magical realism. Hell, I write it! Most of the stories they chose I could have sampled in a college writing course. I have a piece of advice for Miss Link: There is a reason that older more experienced authors count for something in anthologies of these types. It is because they have refined the art of story and know how to pursue achieving what they set out to do. Most of the stories you have chosen are either redundant, boring, ordinary, devoid of interesting characters or good characterization, lack subtlety or flair, or are just plain irritating. The newer authors you chose you most likely did so to get noticed, because it is a responsibility and joy to discover new authors and introduce them to the public at large, but I fear that you have done this too rushed and avoided finding the seriously moving or intricately touching stories I and others are used to from this series.

Too many of the stories are too similar a vein as well. Daily slice of life in America types of stories with a little "fantasy" thrown in on the side that doesn't impress as such. I feel like it's just a gimmick thrown my way, like you would give a dog a rag to chew on. It just doesn't sustain. I can recommend the LeGuin and Gaiman stories and the rest? Not worth the money.

The Seventeenth Annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror wasn't a bad collection. I always find several stories in these collections that I enjoy. There are also stories that I just don't care for. This seems true of all The Year's Best. It is worth it though when you consider the number and range of stories and authors in this collection. I feel it has something for everyone who enjoys horror and fantasy.

The bulk of this great book (500+ pages) reprints about 40 fantasy and horror stories culled from both niche and mainstream literary magazines (the Stephen King story included in the book was originally published in The New Yorker).

With the thousands of fantasy books being published every year (more than ever, probably due to the mainstream success of Mr. Potter), you really need a guidebook to find your way through the maze. And the comprehensive 150 page section at the beginning of the book will show you the way.

There are "Summary 2003" sections for the best of the past year's fantasy and horror books, recommending a full range of titles, from mainsteam mega-publishers like Warner and HarperCollins, to well-known smaller presses like fantasy-favorite Small Beer Press, all the way tiny one-book publishers like Centerpunch Press. There's also summary coverage on movies, anime, manga, and comics, if those are of interest.

This is many, many hours of great reading, and it will point you to more great books than you'll ever have time to read!

I enjoy reading The Years Best Fantasy & Horror but this is the first time I have ever been bored to death and pleased by my decision to borrow it from my public library. Generally the stories consist of great writing and really encourage you to seek out additional work by many of the authors featured. This collection consists of very weak and quite appallingly bad stories the worst being "Old Virginia". Many of the stories appeared in other anthology collections and it seems that the editors have chosen some of the worst works from them. "The Dark" had some great and generally creepy stories but instead of choosing any number of those they selected the story by Kelly Link which was god-awful, too long and quite confusing. I'm not sure if the departure of Ms. Windling has contributed to the general laziness of this volume but if so, please bring her back!

I read (or tried to read) the first six or seven stories in this book and wondered - these are the best horror and fantasy stories?? I was bored to tears by each of them, by authors who seem to have no idea how to inspire wonder in the mind of the reader. As a writer of such genre fiction myself, I am offended and appalled that these stories were published anywhere, let alone selected for a best of anthology. Ellen Datlow shows me time and time again that she knows nothing about editing fiction. Bring back Robert Silverberg, Jack Vance, Sam Delany, Roger Zelasny, Fritz Leiber .....