Reviews

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Ninth Annual Collection by Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling

_lilbey_'s review

3.0

Faves:

Home for Christmas, Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Screens, Terry Lamsley
Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinocerous, Peter S. Beagle
Lunch at the Gotham Cafe, Stephen King
Queen of Knives, Neil Gaiman
Too Short a Death, Peter Crowther
Switch, Lucy Taylor
The Granddaughter, Vivian Vande Velde
After the Elephant Ballet, Gary A. Braunbeck
The Printer's Daughter, Delia Sherman

iamericat22's review

4.0

Solid collection, especially love The Lark and the Lion and Lunch at Gothem Cafe

silverleaf's review

adventurous dark inspiring mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

crowyhead's review

5.0

I love these collections. I don't read much short fiction, generally -- I used to subscribe to some of the genre fiction magazines, like "Asimov's" and "Realms of Fantasy," but they had a tendency to sit there and not get read. So I like these collections because I can catch up on some of what I've missed. Plus Windling and Datlow don't just get stories from the usual genre sources, there's stuff from "The New Yorker" and literary magazines as well. Anyway, this collection, from 1996 (collection stuff from 1995) doesn't disappoint at all. Some of my favorites were the most off-beat stories: "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros" by Peter S. Beagle, in which a gentleman befriends a talking rhino who insists he is not a rhino at all, but a unicorn; "The James Dean Garage Band" by Rick Moody, in which James Dean is alive and well and starting a musical revolution; and "The Printer's Daughter" by Delia Sherman, which is a more classic fantasy tale but weird and wonderful nonetheless. Good stuff.

spacenoirdetective's review

4.0

Out of this collection, I enjoyed the most out of:

* Home for Christmas by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
* Heartfires by Charles deLint
* King of Crows by Midori Snyder
* Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros by Peter S. Beagle
* More Tomorrow by Michael Marshall Smith
* Lunch at the Gotham Café by Stephen King
* Dragon-Rain by Eileen Kernaghan
* La Loma, La Luna by Sue Kepros Hartman
* Switch by Lucy Taylor
* Scaring the Train by Terry Dowling
* Resolve and Resistance by S.N. Dyer
* La Dame by Tanith Lee
* Dragon's Fin Soup by S.P. Somtow
* A Lamia in the Cevennes by A.S. Byatt
* Henry V, Part 2 by Marcia Guthridge
* Mrs. Greasy by Robert Reed
* The Printer's Daughter by Delia Sherman
* The Lion and the Lark by Patricia A. McKillip

The best stories out of all these would be the Hoffman, King's story, Dragon's Fin Soup, Henry V Part 2, Mrs. Greasy, and Printer's Daughter.

kellyhager's review

5.0

This is a novella he did exclusively for the Kindle. (Thank you again, family!)

A college professor orders a Kindle and discovers it's special. It has books that technically haven't been written (in our reality, anyway). And, as it happens, that's not the only thing that makes the Kindle unique...

I'm not a huge fan of short stories or novellas, as a rule, but I really enjoyed this one. (And I will admit to being disappointed that I can't read as-yet-unwritten novels by authors I love.)

Connection to other King Stories: There are references to Hearts in Atlantis (specifically the low men in yellow coats) and the Dark Tower series.

Movie version: No (not yet?).