The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010
Kyle Murchison Booth • Book 4
by Paula Guran, Kelley Armstrong, Holly Black, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Joe R. Lansdale, Stewart O'Nan, Sarah Pinborough, Norman Prentiss, Barbara Roden, Lucius Shepard, Peter Straub, Michael Shea, Kelly Link, Ekaterina Sedia, Catherynne M. Valente, Gerard Houarner, Gemma Files, Kurt Dinan, Elizabeth Bear, Roby Davies, Maura McHugh, Dale Bailey, Deborah Biancotti, Gary McMahon, Holly Phillips, John Mantooth, Marc Laidlaw, Margo Lanagan, Michael Marshall Smith, Nadia Bulkin, Nathan Ballingrud, Paul Tremblay, Peter Atkins, Sarah Monette, Seth Fried, Stephen Graham Jones, Steve Duffy, Steve Rasnic Tem, Suzy McKee Charnas, John Langan
Why You'll Love This
Forty-plus writers — from Kelly Link to Joe R. Lansdale to Caitlín R. Kiernan — compete to unsettle you, and nearly all of them win.
- Great if you want: a tour of where literary horror and dark fantasy intersect in 2010
- The experience: anthology rhythm — unsettling, varied, best read in deliberate doses
- The writing: styles range from Lansdale's grit to Valente's lush mythic prose
- Skip if: anthology unevenness frustrates you — quality genuinely varies by story
About This Book
Darkness is everywhere in these pages — tucked into small-town rituals, bleeding through the walls of haunted houses, crouching in alleyways and Antarctic wastes and the quiet spaces between people who love each other badly. Paula Guran's inaugural annual collection gathers stories that refuse easy categories: some are fairy tales gone feral, some are quiet dread that builds without a single dramatic gesture, and some hit you somewhere you weren't expecting to be hit. The stakes range from cosmic to achingly personal, but every story here insists that the dark isn't just out there — it's already inside.
What sets this collection apart is the sheer range of voices Guran has assembled — Ramsey Campbell and Joe R. Lansdale alongside Kelly Link and Catherynne M. Valente, Margo Lanagan beside Nathan Ballingrud — and how that variety creates a cumulative effect no single author could manage alone. The prose moves from lush and mythic to stripped and brutal within the span of a few pages, and the editorial instinct for sequencing makes the whole feel shaped rather than merely compiled. Readers who stay with it will find the tones and images haunting them long after the book is closed.