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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: Attack From the ’80s edited by Eugene Johnson

cover art for Attack from the '80s edited by Eugene Johnson

Attack From the ’80s edited by Eugene Johnson

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2021

ISBN-13: 978-1735664446

Available: Hardcover  ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

Eugene Johnson brings together 22 incredible short stories and poems as a fitting tribute to the horror of the 1980s. There is something for everyone in this collection. “Top Guns of the Frontier” by Weston Ochse, a strong open to this anthology, tells the story of friends coming face to face with an ancient evil. In “Snapshot” by Joe R. Lansdale and Kasey Lansdale, Gracie and Trevor, the famous Snapshot Burglars, rob the wrong house. Jess Landry’s “Catastrophe Queens” takes place on the movie set of an ’80s SS werewolf horror film. Pink fake blood starts to take over people…and anything it touches. In “Your Picture Here” by John Skipp, a couple decides to take in a double feature of horror movies only to discover one of the films is closer to the truth. Lee Murray’s “Permanent Damage” invites us to a bridal party at a salon that turns into a bloodbath. “Munchies” by Lucy A. Snyder is a great story about a group of drag queens and the terror that was Nancy Reagan who has come to deliver a check to the local high school’s antidrug drive.

 

No ’80s horror anthology would be complete without the topic of D&D. In “Demonic Denizens” by Cullen Bunn, friends at summer camp discover a new game to play after the counselors forbid them to play any more of that “satanic” Dungeons & Dragons. “Ghetto Blaster”, by Jeff Strand, presents Clyde, who is cursed to carry a rather heavy ghetto blaster until he learns his lesson about loud music in public spaces. Everyone, check your candy before reading “Stranger Danger” by Grady Hendrix. A group of boys, hell-bent on taking revenge on the Judge, discover an army of Yoda-costumed children who have their own havoc to create, with apples containing razor blades the treat of the night. In Lisa Morton’s “The Garden of Dr. Moreau”, a biology experiment on corn plants is a success, but it could be at a deadly cost for life on Earth.

 

Other authors in the anthology include Ben Monroe, Linda Addison, Thomas F. Monteleone, Tim Waggoner, Stephen Graham Jones, Vince A. Liaguno, Rena Mason, Cindy O’Quinn, F. Paul Wilson, Christina Sng, Mort Castle, and Stephanie M. Wytovich. Pick this up if you need a good dose of 80s horror reading. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on November 28, 2021 by , Reply
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