Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link & Gavin Grant, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2006

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2006

Edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, Gavin Grant

St. Martin's Aug 2006, $19.95

ISBN: 0312356145

The nineteenth annual fantasy and horror collection of forty tales is as always consists of top selections accompanied by seven essays. In the fantasy summation, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant point out that there were many fewer genre anthologies than normal, but that they still had too many strong entries to choose from. Ellen Datlow, on the other hand, felt that the horror genre had an increase in terms of magazines and anthologies to select from, insisting she could have filled three books this year with quality tales. As always the inclusions (from both genres) run the table in terms of themes and format. Fans receive a taste of what happened in 2005, especially how wide the genres have become. There are also treatises on media ("horror does better during Republican administrations"), graphic novels, anime and manga, music, and obits in a year in which superstars Andre Norton and Will Eisner, etc. passed away. Though this reviewer enjoys the articles that summarize 2005, it is once again the included tales that make this compilation from famous, almost famous and the newbies a sure shot at award nomination time as this is an excellent entry in one of the superior, if not the best, annual collections.

Harriet Klausner