A collection of the best fantasy and horror short fiction published in 2006.

I always enjoy these anthologies, and this one was no exception. The stories are both literary and entertaining, and there's a good mix of styles. As is usually the case, however, I found that the fantasy selections were strongly weighted in favour of contemporary and/or urban stories, with a few historical pieces thrown in. Are there really so few authors doing good work with traditional fantasy? The few traditional selections were not, to my mind, all that they could have been. They mostly employed dense, difficult language that forced me out of the story as I decoded the author's meaning.

While I found most of the stories enjoyable and thought-provoking while I was reading them, very few jumped out at me this time around. The sole exception was "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire" by Ysabeau S. Wilce. Oddly enough, the story uses the dense, difficult language I mentioned above, but the author makes it work for her. Instead of shunting me out of the story, it forced me further in and kept me involved. The story itself is rather gruesome and cruel, filled as it is with characters who navigate via a very different sort of moral compass, but I found myself utterly entranced by the worldbuilding. I absolutely loved it, and have since sought out more of Wilce's work. She's fantastic.

I definitely recommend the collection as a whole to those who like short fiction. I didn't feel that it was as strong as previous entries in the series, but it was still most definitely worthwhile. ( )

(Amy) Yes, I'm a year behind, but see elsewhere for the laments about books getting lost in the stacks around here...

Anyway. I used to be a real devotee of the YBFH series, and for a while was obsessively collecting back issues. Then I stopped reading it at all for a few years (my poverty relapse, that was), and then forgot about it, and with one thing and another this is the first I've read since the one published in 2002, and therefore the first I've read without Terri Windling.

What I always liked best about the series was the Summation sections at the front, which I would read with pen and paper ready to hand, noting down anything that seemed interesting that I had missed. Well, this year, that was a great big zero. In the years since 2001, I have apparently got much better at keeping track of the year's output on my own, because I'd heard of almost all of it, and just about everything that sounded interesting I had in fact already read. So that was disappointing. (I'm not sure why, though - goodness knows anything that makes me put more books on my to-buy list would be a mixed blessing!)

Also disappointing were the stories themselves. Caveat: I'm not a fan of horror in general (though some horrific fantasy is enjoyable), so in reading these anthologies I've always approached those stories introduced by Ellen Datlow with a bit of hesitation. In this instance, though, an awful lot of the K.L./G.G. stories were highly creepifying in their own right, so by halfway through I was a little uneasy whenever starting a new story. I actively enjoyed five of the nearly 40 stories, of which one I had read previously. The number to which I actively objected was smaller - two or three, maybe - but still, that leaves over 30 stories which left little or no impression, which is still not a terribly good ratio.

I don't regret having read it - a couple of those stories I liked were good enough to make up for the rest, particularly "In the House of the Seven Librarians" - but I'd be reluctant to go out of my way to pick up any more. I might end up buying the one published last year, but then again, I might not. And since there won't be one this year, I have to wonder if I am not alone in this reaction...
(http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2009/01/the_years_best_fantasy_and_hor.html) ( )

My favorite thing about this series is the annual wrap-up the editors do for fantasy and horror the previous year. It's a great way to catch up on any good books I might have missed over the year and I've often gone back to pick up a recommendation or two.

In spite of the usefulness of the summaries, the point of the book is to present the best short fiction of the year in horror and fantasy. On the horror side, the stories are excellent, and I generally enjoy them. In most years, though, I find the fantasy selections unsatisfying. The stories lean to the modern fantasy and magical realism side rather than more traditional forms of fantasy. I haven't decided if this lack is due to the editors' taste or a limitation of the catalog available for selection. It's hard for me to believe nobody's writing any stories like Fritz Lieber used to.

The current volume is worth a flip-through, for the annual summary if nothing else. ( )