Book 45: The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: 12th Annual Collection

This anthology, edited by the dream team of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, features 36 short stories and a few poems that were outstanding during the year 1998. Well, at least outstanding according to these editors. I, the average reader, was not nearly so impressed.

There were some excellent stories. Terry Dowling’s “Jenny Come to Play” was haunting and blood-chilling. Delia Sherman’s “The Fairy Coney Catcher” was liberal and beautiful, and Patricia McKillip’s short story, despite the fact that I can’t remember its name, stood out for me. Jane Yolen, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link all provided excellent short stories, too.

I have to make special note, though, of the fact that “Twa Corbies”, the short story by Charles de Lint, did not bowl me over the way I was expecting. I was hoping to love it. In fact, I just kind of went meh, which was my reaction to most of the other tales in this collection, aside from the truly atrocious stories, which made me want to gag.

The problem, too, for me with this book came from the fact that I had an audio book produced by the Library of Congress which was narrated by a grandfatherly British man with a dry voice that did not inject any of the stories with any kind of warmth or emotion. Being blind, I can usually ignore the voice if I listen to an audio book, or put the warmth and emotion I need in there myself (which is what I do often when I’m reading books via my very artificial-sounding screenreader) but sometimes, especially when listening to a mediocre short story, it’s really hard to even try.

I’m hoping that the next Datlow/Windling collection I find is slightly better, both in terms of quality of work and quality of recording on tape.