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A review by octavia_cade
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: Volume Three by Paula Guran
dark
slow-paced
4.0
As with most short story anthologies, there were a couple here that I bounced off entirely. For the most part, however, many of the stories here were interesting and enjoyable. Some, like "The Nag Bride" by A.C. Wise and "Laughter Among the Trees" by Suzan Palumbo, were genuinely compelling, and it's fair to say that the compelling outnumbered the rest.
There seems to be a strong focus here on family, particularly the dissolution of family. I suppose it has to be dissolution, the undermining of the home, because this is dark fantasy and horror, and so a cohesive, surviving family unit is probably something that's not going to be especially prevalent. I'm not entirely sure, to be honest, if this is a strength of the collection or not. On the one hand, there's a very cohesive feeling about the anthology, which I find appealing, but on the other I have read some fantastic dark fiction over the past year that I would personally have rated above some of these stories, although some of those wouldn't have fit so well within the fractured family theme. I guess that's the problem with "Best Of" anthologies, though - they're so very personal in their approach, and so very subjective. I will say that I tend to feel a lot more sympathetic to Guran's choices than I do to an editor such as, for example, Gardner Dozois - earlier this year I read a "Best Of" anthology put together by him and was not enthralled - so that's something to keep in mind when reading anthologies in the future. (It's always interesting to see where tastes coincide... and where they don't.)
There seems to be a strong focus here on family, particularly the dissolution of family. I suppose it has to be dissolution, the undermining of the home, because this is dark fantasy and horror, and so a cohesive, surviving family unit is probably something that's not going to be especially prevalent. I'm not entirely sure, to be honest, if this is a strength of the collection or not. On the one hand, there's a very cohesive feeling about the anthology, which I find appealing, but on the other I have read some fantastic dark fiction over the past year that I would personally have rated above some of these stories, although some of those wouldn't have fit so well within the fractured family theme. I guess that's the problem with "Best Of" anthologies, though - they're so very personal in their approach, and so very subjective. I will say that I tend to feel a lot more sympathetic to Guran's choices than I do to an editor such as, for example, Gardner Dozois - earlier this year I read a "Best Of" anthology put together by him and was not enthralled - so that's something to keep in mind when reading anthologies in the future. (It's always interesting to see where tastes coincide... and where they don't.)