The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four | |||||
edited by Ellen Datlow | |||||
Night Shade Books, 388 pages | |||||
A review by Mario Guslandi
This is the case with "Roots and All" by Brian Hodge, an extraordinary, insightful tale where the strength of brotherly
love and the nostalgia for a long gone past get imbued with supernatural horror or with Leah Bobet's "Stay," a creepy,
atmospheric piece revisiting the myth of the Wendigo.
Stephen King's "The Little Green God of Agony" is a very horrific, vivid piece featuring a man affected by an unbearable
pain of not quite human nature, while Anna Taborska's "Little Pig" is a short but adrenaline-rising piece reporting
the tragic episode of a mother struggling to save her children from a pack of hungry wolves.
The latest story by the unprolific but excellent Terry Lamsley, "In the Absence of Murdock," is a weird, superb
tale revealing unsuspected, hidden aspects of everyday reality.
Other stories (that I won't mention) failed to impress me the first time and still don't, despite the inclusion
by Datlow in the present anthology.
On the other hand the volume features a few outstanding stories which had escaped my radar and that
I enjoyed very much. First of all what I consider the very best story in the book, Simon Bestwick's "The Moraine,"
a phenomenal tale of terror, intense and frightening, where a couple hiking in the mountains get lost in the mist
and have to face an inexplicable, inhuman horror. Then "Blackwood's Baby" by Laird Barron, an extremely dark piece
about a hunting expedition to trace down a murderous, devilish, ageless pagan god and "Omphelos" by Livia
Llewellyn, a story of terrible beauty where an ill-fated vacation discloses the dirty secrets of a family traveling toward nowhere.
As always, although not everything is quite "the best," a book well worth reading.
Mario Guslandi lives in Milan, Italy, and is a long-time fan of dark fiction. His book reviews have appeared on a number of genre websites such as The Alien Online, Infinity Plus, Necropsy, The Agony Column and Horrorwold. |
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