Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Reviews

Book Review: The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Three

By Sandy Amazeen Aug 30, 2011, 0:55 GMT

What frightens us? What unnerves us? What causes that delicious shiver of fear to travel the lengths of our spines? It seems the answer changes every year. Every year the bar is raised; the screw, tightened. Ellen Datlow knows what scares us; the nineteen stories included in this anthology were chosen from magazines, webzines, anthologies, literary journals, and single author collections to represent the best horror of the year. ...more

Filled with zombies, werewolves and assorted end of the world scenarios, Nightshade’s Volume Three horror collection features everything readers would expect along with some interesting surprises and twists. With “The Revel” and “City of the Dog,” John Lagan wrote what might be considered the two best stories of the anthology. Brian Hodge’s “Just Outside Our Windows, Deep Inside Our Walls” is an unusual sort of horror story about a boy, isolated from the world by his terrified parents, who befriends the new girl next door with unexpected results. With its simplistic prose, “When the Zombies Win” by Karina Sumner-Smith is an equally different kind of horror. “The Folding Man” by Joe Lansdale is sufficiently creepy to entertain although readers could be pardoned for taking exception to the overall rushed feeling.

Stronger then the previous two collections, there is plenty to like about this anthology celebrating all things that go bump in the night (and sometimes the day.) There are only a couple stories that fall flat, the rest are top notch, keep-you-awake-at-night or thought provoking reads making this one of the best horror collections currently available.