Book Review: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Sixteen

The sixteenth installment of Ellen Datlow’s annual horror anthology features some exceptional entries from established talent, and if you haven’t encountered many of these authors before, this is a great introduction. Many of these stories had been recommended to me in recent years, and having them in an aggregated collection is a great way to catch up on the influential pieces of short fiction that you may have missed.

Not for the first time, I’m going to praise the uniformly high quality of Datlow’s selections. Perhaps that’s boring—people do love a hater—but I figure my tastes are well aligned with hers, as there’s not a single story in this entry that I found unworthy of inclusion. I wouldn’t have balked at the inclusion of lesser-known authors, as I’ve read some exceptional offerings from younger talent in recent years that I would place above some of these, but that’s the nature of the business.

Readers get a nice shot of thematic and structural variety in this collection, with no two stories drawing too directly from the same well, and I think most will find at least a few entries that really resonate with them. The collection starts dark and classic before taking on a more speculative angle near its close.

Here are the stories that stood out to me:

“The Importance of a Tidy Home” by Christopher Golden

In this opening entry, a fallen academic and his friend of circumstance follow the Schnabelperchten, otherworldly Yuletide spirits that go from home to home in search of dusty mantels and untidy beds. They witness these creatures in the execution of their strange duty—and draw their attention. I’ve been down on Christopher Golden’s work before, but here he undeniably succeeds.

“Dodger” by Carly Holmes

Carly Holmes contributes one of the most psychologically frictional depictions of motherhood I’ve encountered in fiction. In “Dodger,” a young mother gradually embraces the resentment she feels toward her son and daydreams about a return to her life as it was before he came along. As a parent to a toddler myself, I found that she really captures and magnifies the elements of parenthood that make you feel so agency-less in the face of your perpetual responsibility.

Endlessly memorable, this story imparts thick tension to the mundanities of parenthood. Needle-sharp and exceptionally paced, I spent much of this story holding my breath.

“Rock Hopping” by Adam L.G. Nevill

Nevill wields his unique gift for imparting malice to remote spaces in this short story, wherein three kayakers overnight on the Great Saban Stone, a tiny island off the coast of Devon. Only, this place has a shadowy history, and some of the island’s former inhabitants may have left things that echo in the present.

If you follow Nevill on social media, you know he’s a big believer that “the bay provides” across many elements of life. His experience as a kayaker lends sharp authenticity to this narrative, and the landscape of southwest England provides a distinctive—and for most readers, unique—backdrop to his evolving brand of folk horror. Top-shelf stuff.

Check out other things I’ve written about Adam Nevill’s work.

“That Maddening Heat” by Ray Cluley

A man inherits the family grocer and, with it, documents that shed light on a harrowing event he experienced early in life. Worse yet, something from this incident may haunt him still.

The narrative style of this story is particularly exceptional. It’s folksy, but the narrator always feels terribly aware that he’s frighteningly close to speaking out of turn about the events he is describing. His hesitancy to divulge the more salacious elements of the story until he absolutely must yields a beautiful, blooming tension. It’s a delicious slow-burner that starts almost like an old-fashioned ghost story and gradually becomes more and more sinister through a series of sudden turns. Excellent work.

“Jack O’Dander” by Priya Sharma

A masterclass in how subtlety can be so effective in horror fiction when it eludes the reader’s anticipation. Natalie is haunted by her older sister’s childhood abduction, but anytime she considers the memory, her mind is drawn to the cryptic figure of Jack O’Dander, a character the missing sister used to torment her.

Priya Sharma is one of those authors who impress me every time I read her work, and here she shows a cleverness and finesse that few can match.

“The Scare Groom” by Patrick Barb

I love a good story where a seemingly bizarre folk ritual is dropped into a mundane setting. In the town of Crowfly, a young woman is wed to the Scare Groom, a seemingly inanimate scarecrow who somehow imparts prosperity to the community as a result of the union.

It starts very arcane and then abruptly becomes an almost quick-paced personal story of the bride. Barb did an excellent job editing this story, and it’s quite possibly his best work to date. A near-perfect short story, and it hits a lot of the critical notes that we want to see in horror fiction.

Patrick Barb has also written other things, and I have written about them.

Beyond these, there are also excellent entries that I particularly enjoyed from Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, Andrew Hook, and Caitlín R. Kiernan.

The sixteenth annual installment of Datlow’s flagship anthology series features some excellent work, and it’s a great read for anyone looking to catch up on the acclaimed short fiction of recent years. It’s also an excellent resource for anyone seeking a new author to appreciate, as it provides a solid sample of what makes some of these writers so exceptional.

Score: 8.5

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