A review by camerontrost
Touch Wood by D.F. Lewis, Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Evans, Neil Gaiman, Stan Nicholls, Charles de Lint, Yvonne Navarro, Bill Pronzini, Simon Ings, Spider Robinson, Garry Kilworth, Charles L. Grant, Steve Lockley, Karl Edward Wagner, Peter Crowther, T. Winter-Damon, William Relling Jr., Adam Corbin Fusco, Stanley Wiater, Colin Greenland, Stella Hargreaves, Michael Marshall Smith, Bentley Little, Thomas F. Monteleone, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, John Brunner

2.0

It wasn't easy deciding whether to give this anthology two or three stars, but I've gone with just two. Why? Well, it's generally hard to rate an anthology, because you inevitably like some contributions more than others. The main problem is that this book contains twenty-five works over three hundred and seventy-two pages, but only four of them impressed me. That's not to say that I thought all the others were bad. The writing in itself was generally fine, but most lacked originality, effect, or a point of any kind. The four that pulled me in are "The Ten O'Clock Horses" by Paul Lewis and "Funny Weather" by Steve Lockley (these writers both live in Wales and are friends who presumably work on their writing together), "Little Lessons in Gardening" by Karl Edward Gardner (beautifully written, creepy, informative - with regards to botany, and unusual), and "The Wager" by Thomas F. Monteleone, a gripping tale in the tradition of Poe. I would certainly be interested in reading more of these authors' stories.