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darkling_talesFor once, I've managed to bag my copy of Stephen Jones' famous yearly anthology, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, before Christmas! I was impressed to find just one copy gracing the shelves of Sheffield Waterstone's mere weeks after its publication. This means that, for once, I will be able to cough up a review that's actually topical. You can find a listing of the stories here, and my thoughts are below the cut as usual..
Ever since I read the contents list online, I'd been looking forward to this twentieth edition of Best New Horror, and to three stories in particular: The Oram County Whoosit by Steve Duffy (a fantastic but hard-to-find author), The Old Traditions are Best by Paul Finch (because of it's intriguing subject matter) and Reggie Oliver's A Donkey at the Mysteries (Oliver being another talented but elusive writer.) Of the three, only Paul Finch's story fully lived up to my expectations. The Old Traditions is about the bizarre and hallowed Obby Oss, ostensibly a man dressed as a horse who parades around the Cornish town of Padstow on May Day, surrounded by Morris dancers. The story's young hero, a juvenile offender sent on a weekend break to Cornwall as part of an equally strange hug-a-hoodie rehabilitation scheme, is scornful of the entertainments on offer, and pays no attention to the locals' tales about the blood-soaked origins of the Obby Oss. Needless to say, his insouciance is soon challenged in a very enjoyable manner in parts reminiscent of the sinister village festival in The Wicker Man, with possibly a nod to the beach scenes in M R James' O Whistle and I'll come to You as well! Finch's writing is immaculate and unlike the Oss itself, it's free from bells and whistles. I'd like to check out more of Finch's work on the strength of this story, though a quick Google suggests this may be an expensive process :(
Steve Duffy's story surprised me, as its rollicking, semi-humorous tone and Lovecraft-cum-Jack London subject matter were not what you'd expect from the author of the beautiful pastoral horror story 'Our Lady of the Flowers'. Drawing heavily from Mountains-of-Madness era Lovecraft, 'The Oram County Whoosit' is definitely one of the better additions to the Cthulhu mythos, and it was fun enough to make me forgive Duffy his departure into new All-American terrains. As for Reggie Oliver, last year's stunning tale 'The Children of Monte Rosa' left me keen to see how the author would follow that class act, and perhaps a certain amount of disappointment was inevitable. 'A Donkey at the Mysteries' is simply not as scary as last year's story, but I suspect Oliver was going for a more subtle sense of unease in any case, and his writing is still top-drawer. I enjoyed the antiquarian theme - a young man falls in with strange company while exploring some ruins on a remote island that was once home to one of the 'Mystery'cults of Ancient Greece - and will still be keeping my eyes peeled for more of Oliver's work, which is frankly like gold dust among the supernatural fiction collecting community at the moment. Oh well, at least Steve Duffy has a new collection of stories planned for this year...
Also of interest were two more recent authors who are starting to get well established, the Canadian Simon Strantzas and Brit Gary McMahon. After enjoying several of Strantzas' stories, I found 'It Runs Beneath the Surface' gritty, relentlessly miserable urban horror a bit predictable, though it's pretty much a perfect example of its kind. McMahon's 'Through the Cracks' was equally grim but somehow more fun, perhaps because it featured such a great central concept (which I'd better not give away!) But for sheer unalloyed Doom, I must admit that Mark Samuels' short effort '"Destination Nihil" by Edmund Bertrand' takes first prize, condensing all the horrors of British rail travel, corruption, madness and death into an entertaining handful of pages. While British authors seem to be hellbent on cornering the market for urban horror lately, Jones has also managed to include a couple of more rustic stories, also by renowned authors. Christopher Fowler's railway fantasy 'Arkangel' is one of the best stories in the book, as full of life as all his best work, and offering a rich, vivid (if somewhat traumatic) depiction of life in a benighted Eastern European town. The unusual relationship between the three main characters also adds some zest to the proceedings - even in his darkest moments I always find Fowler's writing to have a pleasingly jaunty quality to it - but the fun is eventually replaced by cataclysmic horror (not that there's anything wrong with that.) Finally, Brian Lumley's 'The Place of Waiting' offers a more peaceful setting - beautiful Dartmoor in my native county of Devon. I appreciated Lumley's decision to eschew violence and mayhem to concentrate on a purely supernatural horror, and I did enjoy reading about the rugged moorland where I often frolicked as a child, but the story feels a bit too long and fails to quite hit home, though it's certainly not without pathos, dealing as it does with lost souls haunting the 'tors' on Dartmoor.
But what of our American friends? Well, their presence is much diminished compared to recent years, with at most a quarter of the stories coming from transatlantic pens. Luckily, the quality is on the up this year. I especially liked Michael Bishop's 'The Pile', an account of weird goings-on surrounding a heap of junk in the communal yard of a condo, and the people who add or subtract objects from it. The famously unstable mixture of comedy and horror works surprisingly well here. The historian-turned-fantasy-writer Albert E Cowdrey uses his knowledge of America's bloody history to great effect in 'The Overseer', a novella set in the plantations of the Old South and civil war-era New Orleans. Cowdrey's depiction of the race-fuelled tension between the children (legitimate and otherwise) of a wealthy planter is at times harrowing due to the sheer amount of social injustice involved, but never excessively depressing, and will probably be quite informative to British readers ignorant of American history.
All in all, the 20th outing of Best New Horror is one of the best I've read since I started following the series around number 14. There are very few bad stories. Peter Crowther hands in an odd piece of faux-Stephen King (the flavour of King dealing with grumpy old men hanging around in bars) with 'Front-Page McGuffin and the Greatest Story Never Told' which is especially confusing coming from a British author. It's not badly written, but not my cup of tea either. Neil Gaiman's 'Feminine Ending's' is dreadfully written (I'd expect nothing less), and in lieu of the dreary Kim Newman effort that traditionally closes every Best New Horror Jones proudly presents us with a story from Stephen King himself. 'The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates' is apparently the first such tale the Dark Prince of Really Big Books has deigned to submit to Jones' series, and if his recent stories are all as soppy and predictable as this one, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I would also have liked to see more stuff by newer authors. It's not as if Jones can't pick a winner - Sarah Pinborough's 'Our Man in the Sudan', for instance, is a very successful and haunting yarn about British spies floundering in the mystery of the African desert. And perhaps the series should also open up to overseas authors from places like Australia.
But overall, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 is great value for money, and this one has a particularly classy jacket with an owl on. To commemorate the series' 20th anniversary, there's also going to be a Very Best of Best New Horror coming out some time this year. That title might well be ridiculous enough to justify the purchase of the collection on its own, and apparently some classy names are involved. Does anyone else know anything about this? And have any of you read Number 20 yet?
Ever since I read the contents list online, I'd been looking forward to this twentieth edition of Best New Horror, and to three stories in particular: The Oram County Whoosit by Steve Duffy (a fantastic but hard-to-find author), The Old Traditions are Best by Paul Finch (because of it's intriguing subject matter) and Reggie Oliver's A Donkey at the Mysteries (Oliver being another talented but elusive writer.) Of the three, only Paul Finch's story fully lived up to my expectations. The Old Traditions is about the bizarre and hallowed Obby Oss, ostensibly a man dressed as a horse who parades around the Cornish town of Padstow on May Day, surrounded by Morris dancers. The story's young hero, a juvenile offender sent on a weekend break to Cornwall as part of an equally strange hug-a-hoodie rehabilitation scheme, is scornful of the entertainments on offer, and pays no attention to the locals' tales about the blood-soaked origins of the Obby Oss. Needless to say, his insouciance is soon challenged in a very enjoyable manner in parts reminiscent of the sinister village festival in The Wicker Man, with possibly a nod to the beach scenes in M R James' O Whistle and I'll come to You as well! Finch's writing is immaculate and unlike the Oss itself, it's free from bells and whistles. I'd like to check out more of Finch's work on the strength of this story, though a quick Google suggests this may be an expensive process :(
Steve Duffy's story surprised me, as its rollicking, semi-humorous tone and Lovecraft-cum-Jack London subject matter were not what you'd expect from the author of the beautiful pastoral horror story 'Our Lady of the Flowers'. Drawing heavily from Mountains-of-Madness era Lovecraft, 'The Oram County Whoosit' is definitely one of the better additions to the Cthulhu mythos, and it was fun enough to make me forgive Duffy his departure into new All-American terrains. As for Reggie Oliver, last year's stunning tale 'The Children of Monte Rosa' left me keen to see how the author would follow that class act, and perhaps a certain amount of disappointment was inevitable. 'A Donkey at the Mysteries' is simply not as scary as last year's story, but I suspect Oliver was going for a more subtle sense of unease in any case, and his writing is still top-drawer. I enjoyed the antiquarian theme - a young man falls in with strange company while exploring some ruins on a remote island that was once home to one of the 'Mystery'cults of Ancient Greece - and will still be keeping my eyes peeled for more of Oliver's work, which is frankly like gold dust among the supernatural fiction collecting community at the moment. Oh well, at least Steve Duffy has a new collection of stories planned for this year...
Also of interest were two more recent authors who are starting to get well established, the Canadian Simon Strantzas and Brit Gary McMahon. After enjoying several of Strantzas' stories, I found 'It Runs Beneath the Surface' gritty, relentlessly miserable urban horror a bit predictable, though it's pretty much a perfect example of its kind. McMahon's 'Through the Cracks' was equally grim but somehow more fun, perhaps because it featured such a great central concept (which I'd better not give away!) But for sheer unalloyed Doom, I must admit that Mark Samuels' short effort '"Destination Nihil" by Edmund Bertrand' takes first prize, condensing all the horrors of British rail travel, corruption, madness and death into an entertaining handful of pages. While British authors seem to be hellbent on cornering the market for urban horror lately, Jones has also managed to include a couple of more rustic stories, also by renowned authors. Christopher Fowler's railway fantasy 'Arkangel' is one of the best stories in the book, as full of life as all his best work, and offering a rich, vivid (if somewhat traumatic) depiction of life in a benighted Eastern European town. The unusual relationship between the three main characters also adds some zest to the proceedings - even in his darkest moments I always find Fowler's writing to have a pleasingly jaunty quality to it - but the fun is eventually replaced by cataclysmic horror (not that there's anything wrong with that.) Finally, Brian Lumley's 'The Place of Waiting' offers a more peaceful setting - beautiful Dartmoor in my native county of Devon. I appreciated Lumley's decision to eschew violence and mayhem to concentrate on a purely supernatural horror, and I did enjoy reading about the rugged moorland where I often frolicked as a child, but the story feels a bit too long and fails to quite hit home, though it's certainly not without pathos, dealing as it does with lost souls haunting the 'tors' on Dartmoor.
But what of our American friends? Well, their presence is much diminished compared to recent years, with at most a quarter of the stories coming from transatlantic pens. Luckily, the quality is on the up this year. I especially liked Michael Bishop's 'The Pile', an account of weird goings-on surrounding a heap of junk in the communal yard of a condo, and the people who add or subtract objects from it. The famously unstable mixture of comedy and horror works surprisingly well here. The historian-turned-fantasy-writer Albert E Cowdrey uses his knowledge of America's bloody history to great effect in 'The Overseer', a novella set in the plantations of the Old South and civil war-era New Orleans. Cowdrey's depiction of the race-fuelled tension between the children (legitimate and otherwise) of a wealthy planter is at times harrowing due to the sheer amount of social injustice involved, but never excessively depressing, and will probably be quite informative to British readers ignorant of American history.
All in all, the 20th outing of Best New Horror is one of the best I've read since I started following the series around number 14. There are very few bad stories. Peter Crowther hands in an odd piece of faux-Stephen King (the flavour of King dealing with grumpy old men hanging around in bars) with 'Front-Page McGuffin and the Greatest Story Never Told' which is especially confusing coming from a British author. It's not badly written, but not my cup of tea either. Neil Gaiman's 'Feminine Ending's' is dreadfully written (I'd expect nothing less), and in lieu of the dreary Kim Newman effort that traditionally closes every Best New Horror Jones proudly presents us with a story from Stephen King himself. 'The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates' is apparently the first such tale the Dark Prince of Really Big Books has deigned to submit to Jones' series, and if his recent stories are all as soppy and predictable as this one, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I would also have liked to see more stuff by newer authors. It's not as if Jones can't pick a winner - Sarah Pinborough's 'Our Man in the Sudan', for instance, is a very successful and haunting yarn about British spies floundering in the mystery of the African desert. And perhaps the series should also open up to overseas authors from places like Australia.
But overall, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 is great value for money, and this one has a particularly classy jacket with an owl on. To commemorate the series' 20th anniversary, there's also going to be a Very Best of Best New Horror coming out some time this year. That title might well be ridiculous enough to justify the purchase of the collection on its own, and apparently some classy names are involved. Does anyone else know anything about this? And have any of you read Number 20 yet?
