Darkness

Starred review from February 15, 2010
This diverse 25-story anthology is a superb sampling of some of the most significant short horror works published between 1985 and 2005. Editor extraordinaire Datlow (Poe
) includes classic stories from horror icons Clive Barker, Peter Straub, and Stephen King as well as SF and fantasy luminaries Gene Wolfe, Dan Simmons, Neil Gaiman, and Lucius Shepard. The full diversity of horror is on display: George R.R. Martin's “The Pear-Shaped Man,” about a creepy downstairs neighbor, and Straub's “The Juniper Tree,” which chronicles a drifter's sexual molestation of a young boy, exemplify horror's sublime psychological power, while Barker's “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament” and Poppy Z. Brite's “Calcutta, Lord of Nerves” are audaciously gory masterworks. This is an anthology to be cherished and an invaluable reference for horror aficionados.

Starred review from October 20, 2003
Ghosts with surprising substance flit through this sterling anthology of new weird tales, and most have purposes more sophisticated than the chain rattling and caterwauling of their old-fashioned forebears. In Jeffrey Ford's "The Trentino Kid," the ghost of a teenager serves as an instructive specter of unfulfilled promise for the aimless narrator. Lucius Shepard's "Limbo" features an obsessive romance between a spiritually deadened criminal, who can't tell life from the afterlife, and an enigmatic young woman who complicates his predicament. In Glenn Hirshberg's "Dancing Men," the ghost is the shadow of the Holocaust, which haunts a survivor of the concentration camps and becomes an indelible legacy passed on to future generations of his family. Even when more traditional ghosts appear, such as the grandfather clock animated by the spirit of a murder victim in Tanith Lee's "The Ghost of the Clock" and the lingering influence of a madwoman that terrorizes a child in Ramsey Campbell's "Feeling Remains," they have a psychological dimension that adds depth and power to their horrors. Datlow has cast her net beyond the horror genre's usual names and pulled in contributors whose stories are the equal of their best work, as well as mystery, fantasy and SF writers whose tales seem to be the ghost story they've always wanted to tell. Just as her anthology Blood Is Not Enough
(1989) helped redefine the vampire for modern readers, this book is sure to provide a yardstick by which future ghost fiction will be measured.

April 1, 2010
With several acclaimed horror anthologies to her credit already, including the first volume of the recently inaugurated Best Horror of the Year series, Datlow eschews best of labels for her new gathering, instead selecting favorites from her last 20 years of editing. With her only criterion being lasting thrills, the selection favors such familiar genre masters as Peter Straub, Stephen King, and Clive Barker. It also includes a few surprise contributions from such non-horror-genre writers as Joyce Carol Oates and sf master Gene Wolfe. Twenty-five stories in all embrace a wide spectrum of styles, from gore-laced splatterpunk to subtler, psychological horror. A suicidal woman exults in her newfound ability to bump off male tormentors by the power of thought alone. Invading aliens wait for the perfect amusing opportunity to take control of humanity. An engineer tired of his fear of heights devises his own death on a business flight. Datlows keen eye for narrative zest makes this one of her most entertaining compilations to date.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)