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Book Review: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 12, edited by Ellen Datlow

cover art for Best Horror of the Year, Volume 12 edited by Ellen Datlow   (   Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 12, edited by Ellen Datlow

Night Shade Books, 2020

ISBN: 9781597809733

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Best Horror of the Year anthologizes short stories by a variety of writers, previously published during 2019, chosen by well-known editor Ellen Datlow. It is an almost even mix of excellent, decent, and forgettable stories: out of the 22 stories, seven are outstanding, seven are skippable, and the other eight are satisfactory, middle-of-the-road stories.

The majority of the stories are written from a first person point of view.  Of the stories written in the third person, many of them are written in the present tense.  This book is best suited for those who like variety, both in story ideas and writing style.  Readers who prefer third person narratives in the past tense may not find what they’re looking for, but everyone else will probably find something here to enjoy.  Let’s take a look at some of the best ones:

Scariest: “The Hope Chest” by Sarah Read and “The Puppet Motel” by Gemma Files are both winners that get genuinely creepy right towards the end.  The first one is a bizarre story of a dead grandmother returning (sort of) through a dress form.  The second is a wonderfully chilling story of a rental room that may have access to another dimension.  Like “The Hope Chest”, it piles on the scare factor at the end.  The best in the book for true fear is “My Name is Ellie” by Sam Rebelein.  It has the classic cabin in the woods, but this is beyond any other one you have read.  Little people, human sacrifices, body parts… they all contribute to the terror. This is the one to keep you awake at night when you hear the house creak.

Most Unusual: “I Say (I Say I Say)”  by Robert Shearman. Remember all the jokes you heard growing up concerning an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman?  This turns those joke personalities into actual people who live on a different plane of existence, and get summoned from time to time to perform the jokes we all know.   It’s not scary, but it’s very original, and very good.

Best Thrill Rides: “The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team” by Joe R. Lansdale and “The Butcher’s Table” by Nathan Ballingrud.  The first one makes a story out of the girls’ team’s bus ride to their next match, where the object is to kill the opposing team members with bayonets.  This is a nice portrayal of psychology where each game played may be the last, and puts a twist on the craziness of high school sports.  “The Butcher’s Table” is the longest story, and possibly the most overall fun.  Set in the 1800s, it concerns pirates escorting Satan worshippers across the Caribbean to the shores of Hell, where they plan to dine with Satan.  So silly that it’s great fun, and it’s nice to finally have a horror story with pirates, as they are a character type that is rarely used anymore.

Best Thriller and Chiller:  “Below” by Simon Bestwick.  This story about two young English lads who fall into a pseudo-town below the Earth’s crust brings out the claustrophobic feelings that films like The Descent tapped into so well.  The scare factor is there, but it’s also just flat-out exciting as the two boys race through the underground trying desperately to find an escape. This is possibly the most well-rounded story out of the collection.

The stories above probably make the book worth the price of admission, and there are still the eight perfectly reasonable stories not covered here to go with it.  It’s enough to overlook the seven stories that simply don’t cut it.  Editor Ellen Datlow also provides a detailed summary of the horror fiction genre and awards winners of 2019. The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 12 will be a good addition for most horror readers to add to their collection, and a good purchase for libraries wanting to keep current on the trends and authors at the top or rising to the top of the horror genre.

 

Contains:  violence, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on January 9, 2021 by , Reply

Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles edited by Ellen Datlow

Final Cuts anthology cover art edited by Ellen Datlow ( Bookshop.org)

 Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles edited by Ellen Datlow

Blumhouse Books, 2020

ISBN: 9780525565758

Available: paperback, audiobook, Kindle

 

Final Cuts is a themed collection of horror short stories. In this case, the common thread is the relationship to cinema, and occasionally reality TV.  The stories have original ideas, professionally written, but with ambiguous endings that might not be appealing to readers who prefer closure in a story. The writing quality is strong enough to make it work with these types of stories, though.

These are horror stories, but they are the more cerebral type.  There’s very little hack and slash, the stories usually involve extremely weird things happening to the characters and how they perceive  reality.  Of course, there are exceptions to this, “Snuff in Six Scenes” being a good and very entertaining example.  One can tell that most of these stories were written by skilled veterans of the craft, as the prose flows perfectly, and there is rarely a wasted word.  It strikes a good balance between action and inner thoughts, tending towards the latter.

One potential pitfall to themed anthologies is they can limit the creativity, since a common theme must be followed.  That doesn’t happen here, due to the excellent story ideas.  Some examples of what the reader will encounter:

  1. A bunch of little tiny mouths that run around eating people.
  2. The filming of an occult ceremony where acting becomes reality for nefarious purposes.
  3. A hearing aid used to listen to a theatre movie broadcasts verbiage very different from the film, and it relates to a murder.
  4. A select screening of a rare film causes some people to want to get killed.

The stories that are somewhat standard ghostly tales have some new settings that add to the flavor.  For example, one features an online reality show, where an unexplained apparition sometimes appears.  The real fun is the reality show itself, which stars two drunk college girls talking about science, hence the story title, “Drunk Physics.”  Some of the writing formats are unusual as well.  “Cut Frame” is written in interview transcript format, complete with its own invented Wikipedia entries.   “Altered Beast, Altered Me” is written mainly in email form.

Final Cuts features excellent writing and is creatively very strong. While most readers will enjoy this, it might not work for readers who like all story threads to be resolved by the end.  Many stories are open ended, and a few have endings that don’t seem to relate that much to the main story thread. Overall, though, it scores high in the most important areas, originality and quality of writing.

Contains:  violence, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on December 16, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: Volume 1 edited by Paula Guran

A note from the editor:

We are getting near the end of November and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $45 we still need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 1 edited by Paula Guran.

 

cover art for The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Volume 1 edited by Paula Guran  ( Amazon.com )

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 1, edited by Paula Guran, cover design by Jennifer Do

Pyr Books, 2020

ISBN: 9781645060253

Available: Trade paperback, Kindle edition

 

After ten volumes of the series with Prime Books, acclaimed editor Paula Guran has moved to Pyr to continue her relentless search for the best dark fiction published during the previous year (in this case 2019). The present “debut” volume with the new publisher includes 25 short stories that were previously published in various genre anthologies and magazines.

As a confirmed horror fan, it seems to me that this time the balance is a bit too much in favor of fantasy tales, although, admittedly, the boundary between the two genres is often very thin.

Commenting upon such a huge anthology, featuring such a high number of stories, is a difficult task, so I will take advantage of my privilege as a reviewer to pinpoint just my favorite stories.

“The Promise of Saints” by Angela Slatter is a little gem of religious horror featuring a naive girl and  a powerful saint, while “Burrowing Machines” by Sara Saab is an intriguing tale set in the claustrophobic bowels of London, between the Tube and the elusive River Fleet.

In the short but effective “Haunt” by Carmen Maria Machado we meet a ghost who’s not a ghost, and in the disturbing “The Coven of Dead Girls” a group of murdered girls is haunting the house of their serial killer.

To me, the best story is Pat Cadigan’s “About the O’Dells”, a superbly written piece in which a murder from the past casts shadows on the neighborhood and affects the mind of a young girl.

As with any anthology, this one is a mixed bag, but well worth reading. Recommended for adult readers.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

 

 

Posted on November 24, 2020 by , Reply
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