* I do not have the book anymore, having lost it on a train, but I believe this count is about right.I WOULD LIKE to thank David Barraclough, Kim Newman, Vincent Chong, Mandy Slater, Amanda Foubister, Rodger Turner and Wayne MacLaurin ( ), Peter Crowther and Nicky Crowther, Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker, Gordon Van Gelder, Andy Cox, Ellen Datlow, Charles Black, Debra L. Disappointing in 2022 that more great women horror writers are not being included. But good lord was finishing this book a chore.įinally, this volume features about 5 stories by women to 18 by men*.
Perhaps we should be charitable and say the reliance on creakily well established writers is due to the terminal nature of this volume. Competent, generally, but never surprising and very far away from the best. Most of these stories are the same type of stories their creators have been telling for decades, and for me the lack of innovation made this mostly a stultifying read. In short, far too many of the story introductions begin "Author X has been publishing for 30 years and." The result is a collection where despite the titular implication that there might be some kind of vita nuova, is a list of names that could largely have populated this anthology in the 1980s. (Perhaps it is an inside joke between the two, given that a similar criticism of a prominent anthology by the great editor was similarly rudely treated in the very first Best New Horror, but I know whose books I prefer reading.) The rarity of critical comments makes them stand out perhaps more when they do happen, and they struck me as sour and unpleasant.
The book starts with an approximately 80 page introduction that is generally little more than an endless summary of what happened ("this book was released and then this book and then this book and, a little later, ALSO THIS BOOK") interspersed with some very occasional deeply odd personal takes on the material - I am not sure by whom the movie What We Do In the Shadows is overrated, or why Jones continues to dish out backhanded compliments to Ellen Datlow. In truth I found this volume disappointing. This is the final volume of an anthology that is now older than many great horror writers. Necrology: 2019 ― STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN The Burning Woods ― MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH Under the Frenzy of the Fourteenth Moon ― RON WEIGHELL Introduction: Horror in 2019 ― THE EDITOR You'll also find the usual Introduction: Horror in 2019 and Necrology of those who have left us. Kiernan, Alison Littlewood, Jonathan Carroll, Michael Marshall Smith, Angela Slatter, Reggie Oliver and Richard Christian Matheson, amongst many others. In this latest edition of THE WORLD’S LONGEST-RUNNING ANNUAL SHOWCASE OF HORROR AND DARK FANTASY you will find cutting-edge stories by such authors as Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R.
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