Year's Best Fantasy 6

A reasonable collection of fantasy, with a 3.55 average. The best stories being Garth Nix's very funny and clever giant monster short, and Laird Barron's horror piece. There is a quite brief piece by the editors about the state and source of stories in general, and each individual tale is prefaced with further info. A solid 4, this book Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Eating Hearts - Yoon Ha Lee Year's Best Fantasy 6 : The Denial - Bruce Sterling Year's Best Fantasy 6 : The Fraud - Esther Friesner Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Sunbird - Neil Gaiman Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Shard of Glass - Alaya Dawn Johnson Year's Best Fantasy 6 : The Farmer's Cat - Jeff Vandermeer Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Crab Apple - Patrick Samphire Year's Best Fantasy 6 : The Comber - Gene Wolfe Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Walpurgis Afternoon - Deliah Sherman Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Monster - Kelly Link Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Robots and Falling Hearts - Tim Pratt and Greg van Eekhout Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Still Life with B00bs - Ann Harris Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Heads Up Thumbs Down - Gavin J. Grant Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Newbie Wrangler - Timothy J. Anderson Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Being Here - Claude Lalumière Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Mom and Mother Theresa - Candas Jane Dorsey Year's Best Fantasy 6 : The Imago Sequence - Laird Barron Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Magic in a Certain Slant of Light - Deborah Coates Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Single White Farmhouse - Heather Shaw Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Read It in the Headlines! - Garth Nix Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane - Jonathon Sullivan Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Mortegarde - Liz Williams Year's Best Fantasy 6 : Inside Job - Connie Willis Perfect magician, belt up and bonk. 3 out of 5 We're dead, stupid. 3.5 out of 5 Pregnant unicorn variation end. 4 out of 5 "I have a presentiment of doom upon me," ..."And I fear it shall come to us with barbecue sauce." 4 out of 5 Racist memory power runaway. 4 out of 5 Moggie ursa major makes troll mob minor. 3.5 out of 5 Dryad heart dump. 3 out of 5 Swiftly tilting city. 4 out of 5 Witchiness good for gardens. 3.5 out of 5 Hey, Bungalow Jim I Might Eat Him 3.5 out of 5 Reality altering with replicating rodent robots. With a bit of mechanical criticism of the critical literary abilities of people. 3.5 out of 5 Mendicant mammaries. 4 out of 5 Sound of music is Matchless. 3 out of 5 Gud is bloody lazy, Zep Boy. 3.5 out of 5 Can't see this one, maybe that's us. 2.5 out of 5 No Aunt, just gimme shelter. 3 out of 5 Awful art lust trephination escape cave meld. 4 out of 5 Predicting dirigible desperation. 4 out of 5 Architectural pr0n, same? 3.5 out of 5 Very large Daikaiju font. 4.5 out of 5 Statue sword-slinger saves scientist. 4 out of 5 World Tree gatespeaking wyvern blood lecture dissection decision. 3.5 out of 5 Making monkeys of mediums. 4 out of 5 4 out of 5

YEAR'S BEST FANTASY 6, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, is an engaging anthology of the absurd, the fantastic, the beautiful, and the horrifying, comprising twenty-three stories written by some of the best in the industry. The tales range from light and whimsical, as in "Still Life with Boobs" by Anne Harris, to dark and chilling, as in Laird Barron's much-acclaimed novella, "The Imago Sequence," which has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award in the long fiction category for 2005. The book comes in with a tiger in Yoon Ha Lee's elegant parable "Eating Hearts," and goes out with a tiger, in Connie Willis's smartly crafted homage to H. L. Mencken entitled "Inside Job." Kelly Link's outstanding "Monster" is a tongue-in-cheek modern-day version of Beowulf in a boys' summer camp; and Bruce Sterling's satirical "The Denial" brings to mind the genius of Isaac B. Singer. Authors include Esther M. Friesner, Neil Gaiman, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Jeff VanderMeer, Patrick Samphire, Gene Wolfe, Delia Sherman, Tim Pratt and Greg van Eekhout, Gavin J. Grant (husband to Kelly Link), Candas Jane Dorsey, Timothy J. Anderson, Claude Lalumière, Deborah Coates, Heather Shaw, Garth Nix, Jonathon Sullivan, and Liz Williams. Award recipient David G. Hartwell is the senior editor at Tor/Forge Books, the publisher of THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION, and the author of AGE OF WONDERS. World Fantasy Award winner Kathryn Cramer is an editor at THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION. She has also co-edited the outstanding anthologies, THE ASCENT OF WONDER, THE HARD SF RENAISSANCE, and the YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION series. YEAR'S BEST FANTASY 6 is highly recommended reading for anyone who enjoys variety in the fantastic.