The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Six by Ellen Datlow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Calling anything the best of the year is a tricky proposition. Taste is subjective; one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. However, I’ve never read an Ellen Datlow anthology that I didn’t think was top-notch, so I’ve come to trust her taste implicitly. While there were a small handful of stories in this volume that didn’t resonate with me the way they clearly must have for Datlow, overall this is a very strong sampling of short-form horror fiction from 2013. Among the standouts for me were “The Good Husband” by Nathan Ballingrud, which might be my favorite story of the bunch, “The Soul in the Bell Jar” by KJ Kabza, “That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love” by Robert Shearman, “The Monster Makers” by Steve Rasnic Tem, “The Only Ending We Have” by Kim Newman, “Fine In the Fire” by Lee Thomas, which is another favorite, and “Jaws of Saturn” by Laird Barron. This is my first time reading a volume of THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR but it certainly won’t be the last. Recommended for fans of horror, and also for writers interested in learning how great short-form horror fiction works.
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