Fearful Symmetries

March 17, 2014
Datlow’s “experimental” crowdfunded horror anthology is nicely unthemed, avoiding vampires, werewolves, and zombies while including ghosts, witches, and newly trendy wendigos. The last merges quite nicely with an Arctic setting in Siobhan Carroll’s “Wendigo Nights,” one of the standouts. Other highlights include always reliable, always evolving authors like Pat Cadigan, Caitlín Kiernan, and Michael Marshall Smith, whose “Power” is a rare science-fiction horror tale. Gemma Files’s “A Wish from a Bone” launches the volume with an elegant update to the classic “wrath of ancient gods” plot, and Helen Marshall’s “In the Year of Omens” is perfectly creepy. There are a few misses—Gary McMahon’s “Kaiju” feels incomplete, while Terry Dowling and John Langan both turn in surprisingly subpar tales—but on balance, this is an excellent anthology for horror fans, with a nice range of tones and styles and some intriguing new voices.

June 15, 2014

Twenty previously unpublished tales of horror have been collected here by master anthologist Datlow (currently editor of Night Shade Books' "Best Horror of the Year" series). The contributors range from well-known horror and dark fantasy authors such as Caitlin R. Kiernan, Brian Evenson, Laird Barron, and Garth Nix, but there are also four newcomers selected from a submissions pile of over 1,000 hopeful, unsolicited writers. One of the best stories is Nathan Ballingrud's "The Atlas of Hell," about a wise guy who goes to collect from a thief and runs into an occult artifact. Another is the creepy governess gothic "Suffer Little Children" by Robert Shearman. VERDICT This is a satisfying collection for horror fans, including a wide range of styles and themes. On a side note, Datlow encountered resistance when she wished to put together an unthemed horror anthology, so she and ChiZine turned to Kickstarter for crowd-sourced funding to publish the book.

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