Publishers Weekly September 3, 2007
[Starred] The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: Twentieth Annual Edition
Edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant. St. Martin's Griffin, $35
(608p) ISBN 978-0-312-36943-9; $21.95 paper ISBN 978-0-312-36942-2
In the two decades since this venerable series was inaugurated, so many venues have begun to welcome horror and fantasy stories that these dedicated editors play a crucial role in bringing the best new works to fans who don't always read far afield. Trend spotters will note numerous ghost stories in Datlow's horror picks, including Christopher Harman's "The Last to Be Found" and Stephen Volk's "31/10," supremely eerie exercises in the ghost-hunt-gone-bad vein, and Stephen Gallagher's "The Box" and Glen Hirshberg's "The Muldoon," whose spooks are equal parts psychological and supernatural. Link and Grant's eclectic fantasy picks range from the haunting magical realism of Geoff Ryman's Hugo- and WFA-nominated "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" to the light urban fantasy of Ellen Klages's "In the House of Seven Librarians" and Jeffrey Ford's blend of whimsy and the macabre in "The Night Whiskey." As the line between fantasy and horror blurs, this combined presentation of their exemplars will give readers of both genres much to enjoy, and may even broaden a few horizons. (Oct.)
Kirkus, September 1, 2006 2007
[Starred} The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: Twentieth Annual Edition
Edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant. St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 608 Price (hardback): $35 Price (paperback): $25.95
ISBN (hardback): 978-0-312-36943-9
ISBN (paperback): 978-0-312-36942-2
Bring out the bone china a critically acclaimed fantasy/horror annual celebrates its 20th anniversary in grand style.
At this point, readers of this annual anthology pretty much know what to expect from each fresh entry in the series. There's a comprehensive summing-up of the cream of the previous year's fantasy and horror in various types of media, followed by an enjoyable and occasionally surprising selection of stories and poems from both rising stars (Margo Lanagan, Ysabeau S. Wilce, Sarah Monette, M. Rickert) and established names (Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffrey Ford, Gene Wolfe, Delia Sherman). Highlights include Wilce's delightful "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire" (How can you not love a story starring a four-year-old kidnapped princess nicknamed "Tiny Doom"?); Christopher Rowe's chilling view of a fundamentalist future in "Another Word for Map Is Faith"; Nik Houser's "First Kisses from Beyond the Grave," a howlingly funny high-school-is-purgatory tale; Ellen Klages's cozy love letter to devourers of the printed page, "In the House of the Seven Librarians"; and "The Night Whiskey," Ford's creepy, elegiac meditation on the suffocating nature and bizarre rituals of small-town life.
Worth a space on any bookshelf.
Publishers Weekly Aug 2, 2004
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection
Edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant.
St. Martin's
Griffin, $35 (672p)
ISBN 0-312-32927-X; $19.95 paper ISBN 0-312-32928-8
[Starred Review]
The proliferation of specialty fantasy publications with short runs and
low profiles, combined with the growing pervasiveness of fantasy and
horror in mainstream markets that elude genre enthusiasts, has made this
annual culling increasingly vital for readers who seek the best in
fantastic fiction. Datlow (the horror half) teams with new co-editors
(who assume fantasy detail once handled by Terri Windling) and the
series doesn't skip a beat in quality, delivering 43 stories and poems
published in 2003 that illustrate modern fantasy's breadth and variety.
Stephen King is represented by "Harvey's Dream," an eerie tale of a
precognitive dream's disruption of an ordinary suburban household. Karen
Joy Fowler, in "King Rat," and Ursula K. Le Guin, in "Woeful Tales from
the Mahigul," make suffering the grist of powerful folk tales. Stories
by Michael Swanwick, Neil Gaiman and Dan Chaon stretch traditional genre
themes in intriguing new directions. Likewise, the one dominant theme
that shapes the contents of this year's volume -- the zeitgeist of a
post-9/11 world -- gets memorably varied treatments from several
contributors. Lucius Shepard conjures ghosts from the ruins of the World
Trade Center for a consoling tale of redemption in "Only Partly Here,"
while Brian Hodge evokes an all-consuming evil in the battlefields of
Afghanistan in "With Acknowledgments to Sun Tzu." Wartime paranoia is
implicit in two subtly crafted fables, M. Rickert's "Bread and Bombs"
and George Saunders's "The Red Bow." Like the other selections, these
stories are proof that the best fantastic fiction is modern mythmaking
at its finest. (Aug.)
Cinemafantastique Oct/Nov 2004
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection
Edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
St. Martins. ISBN: 0312329288 (softcover)/ 031232927X (hardcover)
**** (4 stars)
"The seventeenth volume of this now-venerable but always-new series is
-- incredibly -- even better
than those that came before....The annual summations (fantasy, horror,
media, comics, music,
obits, and, for the first time, anime and manga) are reason enough for
genre enthusiasts to
buy this tome year after year, but if you love short fiction of any kind
-- or want to develop a
new appreciation for it -- YBF&H17 is must-read material."
Kirkus, May 15, 2004
The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds.
Viking (544 pp.) $19.99 Jun. 2004 ISBN: 0-670-05914-5
[Starred Review]
"This is a treasure chest. Open it and revel in its riches.
The editors asked their authors to re-imagine Faerie in the present
time, or search
its more dimly lit pathways, and they have responded with bountiful
imagination..."
Booklist, April 15, 2004
The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm
"A rewarding choice for those who like the traditional with a twist."
Booklist, Nov 1, 2003
The Dark: New Ghost Stories
Ed. by Ellen Datlow. Nov. 2003. 384p. Tor, $25.95 (0-765-30444-9).
"The ghost story is making a comeback, editor Datlow says. To prove the
point,
she presents 16 brand-new examples, agreeably varied in locale, period,
and style...
If a few entries flop, Lucius Shepard's novella-length "Limbo" more than
compensates.
About a "retired" thief who, on the run from his former boss, repairs to
a cabin in the woods,
this stunner reads like a collaboration between Elmore Leonard and
British horror icon
Arthur Machen; hard as the former, lush as the latter, it's a
masterpiece."
Publishers Weekly, Oct 20, 2003
The Dark: New Ghost Stories
[Starred Review]
"Ghosts with surprising substance flit through this
sterling anthology of new weird tales, and most have purposes more
sophisticated
than the chain rattling and caterwauling of their old-fashioned
forebears....
Datlow has cast her net beyond the horror genre's usual names and pulled
in contributors whose stories are the equal of their best work, as well
as mystery,
fantasy and SF writers whose tales seem to be the ghost story they've
always wanted to tell.
Just as her anthology Blood Is Not Enough (1989) helped redefine
the vampire for
modern readers, this book is sure to provide a yardstick by which future
ghost fiction
will be measured."
Publishers Weekly, July 28, 2003
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection
[Starred review]
"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-fine
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...."
