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Book Review: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror volume 4 edited by Paula Guran

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, vol. 4 edited by Paula Guran

PYR 2023

ISBN:  978-1645060673

Available : Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

 

Editor Paula Guran is one of the two American women (the other one being Ellen Datlow) who keep providing every year the best short fiction that appeared in print the year before in the area of horror and dark fantasy.

 

The present, hefty volume includes twenty-one “best” tales. Frankly. to me 2022 doesn’t appear to have been such a great year for horror and dark fantasy, at least in the short form, because only a few among the selected stories were able to impress me and entertain me.

 

“Red Wet Grin” by Gemma Files, is a very dark, unsettling story where a nurse working in a care home witnesses a series of weird events.

 

Stephen Graham Jones contributes “Men, Women and Chainsaws” an engrossing, although a bit puzzling story, revolving around an old Camaro endowed with dangerous properties.

 

“The Voice of a Thousand Years” by Fawaz Al-Matrouk is a dark fable about an old man endeavoring to give life to an  automaton, while “ How Selkies are Made” by Cassandra Khaw is a splendid fairy tale featuring a beautiful, unhappy bride.

 

“Challawa” by Usman T. Malik  is a powerful, outstanding piece with a distinctive exotic taste, in which ancient gods take possession of an American tourist.

 

“The Long Way Up” by Alix E. Harrow is a disturbing allegory where a woman retrieves her dead husband in a deep chamber, and convinces him to return to the world of the living.

 

AC Wise provides “Sharp Things, Killing Things”, an obscure but intriguing story in which a group of youngsters have to deal with some unexpected deaths.

 

These are my favorite stories. Other readers could make a different selection, but these are the rules of the game and such a huge volume has plenty of material to offer.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on November 16, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Vol. 3, edited by Paula Guran

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Volume 3 edited by Paula Guran

 

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Vol. 3, edited by Paula Guran

Pyr, 2022

ISBN: 978-1645060345 

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition  (pre-order) ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

 

Now that British editor Stephen Jones has discontinued his long-running annual series Best New Horror, the burden of choosing and collecting the previous year’s supposedly best short stories in the genre remains exclusively in the capable hands of two American ladies, Ellen Datlow and Paula Guran.

 

Guran’s  latest anthology includes twenty-three stories published in books and magazines during 2021. I haven’t seen Datlow’s forthcoming anthology yet, but, according to the provisional table of contents, this time there are no repeated titles featured in both volumes.

 

Among the authors collected in Guran’s book are some of today’s most celebrated and popular horror writers, but if these stories represent the best of their recent production, I must admit that 2021 was not a great year for horror, at least according to the editor’s choices.

 

But never fear, amidst various run-of-the-mill tales, there are some pieces standing out and providing engrossing reading and actual shivers.

 

“The God Bag”, by Christopher Golden, is an insightful, gentle story featuring a woman trying to get her wishes fulfilled by means of an unusual system. In  “Refinery Road”,  penned by Stephen Graham Jones, past family tragedies return to haunt the present.

 

Alison Littlewood contributes the subtly horrific “Jenny Greenteeth”, where an evil creature hunts its victims by a pool, and  Alix E. Harrow provides “Mr. Death”, a perceptive piece about a recalcitrant professional reaper trying to save a little boy from his lethal destiny.

 

My favorite pieces are the outstanding, atmospheric “For Sale by Owner” by Elizabeth Hand, taking place in a mysterious, abandoned house where three women decide to spend the night, and the superior post-apocalyptic novella “Across the Dark Water” by Richard Kadrey, where a guide and a thief take a long and perilous journey to get to a target which is actually not what they expect.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on October 12, 2022 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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