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Year's Best Fantasy And Horror edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Winding check out website: www.stmartins.com
This is Terri Windling's last year as editor of the Fantasy side of the
volume. Next year, the husband and wife team of Kelly Link and Gavin Grant takes
over. Whether they keep the tradition going as well as Terry Windling is a question
reserved for next year's reviews but for now it is just enjoyable to sit back
and enjoy this year's pick.
Appropriately, the anthology kicks off with
a story by next year's editor, Kelly Link, an intriguing story within a story
dark fantasy piece called 'Lull'. This story sets the book up at a high level
of quality and the volume continues from there. Almost every story has a veneer
of quality to it and most are enchanting, haunting or both. In a fifty
story anthology (or almost fifty, a few poems and an essay are also present),
it would be impossible to name all the good stories but here are some of the highlights:- As is Brian Hodge's bizarre 'Nesting Instincts', a
mix of family strife and a weird ending to beat all endings. M. Shayne Bell's
'The Pagodas of Cibourne' wins you over in an enchanting and uplifting story of
a boy healed by magical 'pagodas', creatures made of shards of pottery. Neil Gaiman has two stories in the volume and his second, 'Feeders And Eaters', is one of the most haunting of the horror stories on offer. The horror selection is probably stronger than the fantasy, with most of the borderline dark fantasy stories more horror than fantasy. China Mieville and Conrad William's pieces being most evident of this. The best horror story present is 'Standard Gauge'
by Nicholas Royle, set in London's Sinclair Road, and a railway line alongside
it from which the train can be heard, despite the line being closed for years.
An unmissable dark masterpiece. On the Fantasy side of things, Christopher
Fowler's 'The Green Man', all the more disturbing for its near-reality plausibility
and the frankly bizarre Carlton Mellick III story 'Porno In August' are highlights.
Graham Joyce's slightly surreal take on the bombing of Coventry during WWII provides
another absorbing and meaningful experience. I found a few of the fantasy stories to be a bit tame, much more so than the horror but, by the same token, by far the best story in this volume is a fantasy and also happens to be the last. Elizabeth Hand has an interesting essay on artist Henry Darger earlier in the book, but it's her novella 'The Least Trumps' that really grabs the attention. I have to agree with Terry Windling's assessment of the story: it's the
best of the year. The story is of a tattoo artist fearful of the world outside
her Maine island home and her discovery of a pack of tarot cards, blank but for
two ornate beauties, leads naturally forward and ends in a most satisfying way,
as the tarot's magical influence, unlocked by the tattoo she makes of them, changes
life and the world for the heroine. It's a treat to read such a well-crafted and
inviting novella. As you'd expect from a Year's Best anthology, there are some great stories in here but what is most impressive is the range and breadth of the selection. A lot of stories are picked out from mainstream markets which genre readers might not otherwise get to see. Very few of them are not
worth enjoyment and admiration and a large portion are simply excellent. Combined
with the essays on the field, the stories here mean you are not a learned fantasy
fan until you have read the whole thing. A perfect guide to the past year. Tomas
L. Martin
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OTHER REVIEWS - November 2003
Told By The Dead by Ramsay Campbell The Sandman: Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman Robota by Doug Chaing and Orson Scott Card Grass For His Pillow by Lian Hearn Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion by Larry Nemecek The Year's Best Fantasy And Horror The Binder's Road by Terry McGarry Project Orion - The Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson The Word And The Void by Terry Brooks Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine April/May 2003 Time Out Of Joint by Philip K. Dick Buffy the Vampire Slayer Soundtrack Smallville Soundtrack (The Talon Mix) Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days by Alastair Reynolds Crossroads Of Twilight by Robert Jordan Mediations On Middle-Earth by Karen Haber and John Howe
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Ellen
Datlow and Terri Windling have been producing 'The Year's Best Fantasy And Horror'
anthology for sixteen years. It's always been the book where the best new fantastical
short fiction can be found, including a lot of the mainstream published stories
with magical or supernatural elements that may have passed genre writers by.
As
with the compendium's sister anthology, Gardner Dozois' 'Best New SF', one of
the most important parts to the book is the preface which takes up a large chunk
of the opening pages. Terri Dowling's Guide to the year's fantasy novels, short
stories and events, Ellen Datlow's corresponding Horror essay and articles on
Fantastic Media, Comics and Anime by Edward Bryant, Charles Vess and Joan D. Vinge
respectively ensure that you have all there is to know about Fantasy and Horror
in 2002-2003 under your fingertips. This injection of knowledge is almost as essential
as the stories themselves.
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