Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Edition (Paperback)

by Terri Windling (Editor), Ellen Datlow (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A highlight of any year's fantastic fiction yield is Datlow and Windling's picks of the previous year's top tales. This 16th incarnation of their award-winning anthology series shows fantasy and horror fiction alive, well and accessible in an impressively broad array of venues ranging from literary journals to genre publications, on-line markets and even a rock music tour book. The 49 selections (which also include poetry and an essay) are as refreshingly impossible to pigeonhole as their sources. Melissa Hardy's "Aquer," a wry behind-the-scenes look at a saint's canonization, is a perfect balance of supernatural mystery and dubious demystification. Conrad Williams's "The Machine," whose characters are caught up in the inexorable natural processes of its seaside setting, is one of several stories whose surreal symbolism blurs the boundaries between horror and fantasy. "The Least Trumps" by Elizabeth Hand, centered on a female tattoo artist's shaky grip on reality, translates the iconography of tarot cards and the reader's relationship to the written word into a luminous fantasy on the interpenetration of life and art. Don Tumasonis's "The Prospect Cards" is a brilliant narrative puzzle, related as a fragmented travel diary written on the backs of old postcards, in which the missing passages cleverly suggest a horror that defies description. Five writers are represented by two selections apiece; that might have given the impression of a dwindling talent pool were the contents not so delectably varied in theme and approach, and divided judiciously between well-known writers and new names.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
The latest in this annual series is a diverse collection of fiction and poetry. The usual suspects are here--Neil Gaiman, Bentley Little, Ramsey Campbell--and so are nongenre authors, such as Haruki Murakami, Karen Joy Fowler, and Kevin Brockmeier. The stories constitute an entertaining, eerie mixture of creepiness and suspense. In Gaiman's "Feeders and Eaters," a man runs into an old colleague, who tells him about his housemate, an old woman with odd dietary needs. Melissa Hardy's "Aquero" is the tale of a young woman's beatification; the narrative alternates between several different examinations of her buried body and the testimony of a nun who objects to the canonization. In Eric Schaller's creepy "The Assistant to Dr. Jacob," a policeman asks a man to recollect his childhood mentor, whose interest in rosebushes was not the innocent hobby the narrator recalls. Several of the poems included cleverly retell fairy tales, and, of course, the volume also reviews the year in horror and fantasy in all media. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (August 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312314256
• ISBN-13: 978-0312314255
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,164,779 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, February 11, 2005

By	N. Batz "Book Junkie" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've enjoyed the majority of the stories in this compilation. Granted, there have been a few that really didn't inspire much interest but others have stirred my interest in searching down that specific author's work to read more because I like the flow of words.

This is the first one I had gotten and as it interested me so much, I've gotten the most current edition to read.

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars strong anthology, August 11, 2003

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

As usual, this annual anthology serves up some of the best work, although this time around, the emphasi is more on orror than fantasy this year. The tales represent a wide panorama of the genres. Most of which are quite strong and a few are tremndous with one particular tale, "The Hunter's Wife," an incredible five star plus treat. Editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling also include their usual insightful analysis of the year. Especially interesting besides the obvious trend analysis that make for fascinating reading notably when compared to earlier editions of this tome is the recognition of comic books as a legitimate form of fantasy.

Overall this edition is a strong anthology that holds up against its illustrious history. Readers will enjoy savoring this collection over several weeks (this reviewer read 2-3 stories a night).

Harriet Klausner