3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 16 Sep 2005
By Vicki L. Plant - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighteenth Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (Hardcover)
continues to provide an avenue to wonderful short stories in the fantasy and horror genre, along with excellent essays on what is going on in the field. I wish I had the time and resources to track down and read all of their recommendations. The series has not diminished with the departure of Terri Windling.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Eighteenth, 14 Sep 2005
By K. Freeman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (Paperback)
A modified editorial team created this eighteenth edition of the classic yearly anthology.
The recaps of the year's fiction and other media are still present, though a bit less inclusive than in the past. The stories that I thought were the strongest were by Gregory Maguire, Margo Lanagan, Stepan Chapman, Tanith Lee, Catherynne M. Valente, Conrad Williams and Elizabeth A. Lynn, with a particular mention for Laird Barron's creepy, poetic western "Bulldozer". The mix of new and established writers, visible in that list, adds interest. As in the past, the stories tend toward urban/modern-day settings, but a few do represent the historical and otherworld facets of the genre.
If any story in the anthology is controversial, it'll be the Chuck Palahniuk. I didn't like it -- I thought it read sort of like a grade schooler's gross-out combined with a careful reading of the Anatomy and Physiology Coloring Book -- but on the other hand, it does take something really gross to gross me out these days. And gross me out it did. Recommended for strong stomachs (heh) only.
On page 466 my story "The Elf Knight and Lady Isabelle" from the anthology CLOAKED IN SHADOW got an honorable mention.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding Quality and Variety of Stories! Not to be Missed!, 23 Sep 2005
By Simisola "Julie" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (Paperback)
I look forward to this collection every year, but I must admit this 18th annual collection was one of the best ever. I am a huge horror fan and usually just skip over the scifi stories, but began to read the scifi stories as well this time and to my great pleasure, really enjoyed these as well. For anyone who enjoys a good short story or good literature of any type I highly recommend this collection. Standout stories by Alice Hoffman, Joyce Carol Oates and the best short story by Peter Straub I've ever read will greatly please. Be warned though, some of these stories are not for the squeamish ("Guts" was very grotesque, but I've also never laughed so hard in my life, what a great story!) As always, I greatly enjoyed the summations at the beginning of the book - they always give me the names of new books and authors I haven't discovered yet to look into. The overall quality of the stories is far superior from any of the other "horror" collections out there today and this particular collection is not to be missed.