The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twentieth Annual Collection

A very impressive volume, this year. Well ahead of the last couple, and has multiple excellent to outstanding pieces - Houser, Savory, Fountain, Rosenbaum and Pratt. I didn't except to come across a book in this series I would rate this highly (3.76 story average). So very well done for avoiding too many lame or dull stories this year. The introduction again cracks the ton in pagecount, perhaps the only annoying bit there is the huge run on list of horror novels by Datlow that is rather hard to read. If you dump the useless music roundup, probably have space to put that into columns. Or eliminate the publishers, not many people are going to go and look up the publisher first, book second, and then perhaps it could be more readable. Or replicate it readably on the internet. Whichever. A minor quibble though for such a huge pile of useful info on the books that have come out over the year. The state of horror focused webzines must be pretty bad, too, as I think Datlow only mentions ChiZine as far as I can see for electronic publications that specialise. Lastshortstory I think mentioned this as well, though. Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter - Geoff Ryman Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : First Kisses From Beyond the Grave - Nik Houser Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : The Last to be Found - Christopher Harman Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery - John Schoffstall Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : The Night Whiskey - Jeffrey Ford Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : In the House of the Seven Librarians - Ellen Klages Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Drowning Palmer - Sarah Monette Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Landfill - Joyce Carol Oates Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Another Word for Map is Faith - Christopher Rowe Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Lionflower Hedge - Ira Sher Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : A Fearful Symmetry - Minsoo Kang Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Messages - Brett Alexander Savory Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : The Box - Stephen Gallagher Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Halfway House - Frances Hardinge Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : La Fee Verte - Delia Sherman Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Father Muerte and the Flesh - Lee Battersby Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Winkie - Margo Lanagan Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Dog Person - Scott Nicholson Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : The Extraordinary Limits of Darkness - Simon Clark Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Cup and Table - Tim Pratt Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : The Churring - Nicholas Royle Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Dead Sea Fruit - Kaaron Warren Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Directions - Caleb Wilson Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : La Profonde - Terry Dowling Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : Journey into the Kingdom - M. Rickert Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 20 : The Good Ones Are Alr

The short stories compiled here range from the hilarious "Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery" to the melancholy "Dog Person." While I picked up the "Year's Best" for the horror, I found the fantasy stories to be among the most interesting. The "fantasy" stories included are of the speculative variety and not the sword-and-sorcery variety--that's a plus for me, but it won't be everyone's cup of tea. One of my personal favorites here is Geoff Ryman's magical "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," a story that reads like a Garcia Marquez/J-horror mash-up. And the supremely bizarro "Night Whiskey" by Jeffrey Ford is just too good to define. Is every story going to please every reader? With such varied tastes, that's not a realistic assumption. There were a couple of stories I skimmed, but overall I found a lot of sparkling gems here. And even if there were no stories included, I would recommend this annual based on the year-in-fantasy and year-in-horror reviews that begin every volume.

I have a yearly ritual of reading the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. This year's collection is just as delightful and spooky as those past. I especially enjoyed M. Rickert's disquieting "Journey into the Kingdom", Tim Pratt's fun "Cup and Table" and the first story Geoff Ryman's dreamy "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter". Of course, everyone will probably have different favorites and there are one or two stories I could have done without, but its a great survey of genre short fiction of 2006.

This is the 20th edition of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and I can recommend this one along with the other nineteen. Most anthologies feature a couple great stories, a few good stories, and several mediocre tales. This anthology consistently provides high quality stories chosen from a wide variety of publications. Most of the stories and poems are designated horror or fantasy, but the distinction can be a very thin line and that's a good thing. If you love horror, but don't think you like fantasy (or vice versa), this anthology may change (and broaden) your mind. I'd be hard pressed to pick an absolute favorite story, but "La Profonde", "The Night Whiskey" and "Father Muerte & the Flesh" were standouts for me. Aside from the stories and poems, each edition includes articles on horror, fantasy, media, comics, music, and obituaries for each year that are themselves worth the price of the book. This edition is no exception. The authors cover nearly everything published or released in horror and fantasy in 2006, leaving you with a long reading, listening, and watching list. Hopefully, twenty years is just a start for the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series.

As has been the case (at least since this reviewer began reading this annual collection several years ago), this anthology provides some of the best horror and fantasy short stories, poems and other media from 2006. The forty entries are always fun even for those who may have read most of them in other collections. The tales range the gamut from wishfully whimsical to fundamentally frightening to awesomely amusing. However, once again it is the deep articles that provide "Summation 2006: Fantasy", "Summation 2006: Horror", "The Year in Media of the Fantastic: 2006", "Fantasy in Comics and Graphic Novels 2006", "Music of the Fantastic: 2006", and "Obituaries: 2006" that bring an extra edge to this always strong collection; even the obits enhance the book with its short homage to the famous like the Jims Baen and Williamson and the not so famous (to me) such as "Retro Hugo" winner Wilson Tucker. This reviewer especially enjoys comparing this year's trends as described in the Summations to the last few years. Readers will enjoy meeting new authors (at least to me) like Ira Sher and Margo Lanagan and long time favorites like Gene Wolfe and Terry Dowling. Besides the articles, perhaps the best entry is the realistic futuristic "Another Word for Map Is Faith" by Christopher Rowe (right surname for the author of this tale), who extrapolates the religious right teaming with the Neocons into a scary vision of a Taliban-like control of America. The Twentieth Annual Collection is a terrific compilation. Harriet Klausner