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ARC for review.

So, short story anthologies versus collections. If you are reading a collection it's probably because it's by an author you already love. If you are reading an anthology there are bound to be stories by writers who have a style you don't particularly care for, but then you also get the opportunity to find a great new author. From a rating standpoint you're nearly always going to end up running the gamut - lots of twos you don't love, some fours you like and, if you are lucky, maybe a surprise five here and there.

All that said, that's exactly what I found here. Datlow did a great job curating a broad selection of scary stories. There's no real over-riding theme, and, as always, there were some I thought I didn't work at all, and some I really enjoyed - my own personal standouts were "The Witch Moth" by Bruce McAllister (loved the line "some people who love see only the light. My grandmother saw the darkness too, and still loved. That made me feel safe...." (56), "Kaiju" by Gary McMahon (the banality of evil), "Mount Chary Galore" by Jeffrey Ford (if for nothing more than for the description of something smelling like "a home permanent on the Devil's ass hair" (144) and "Shay Corsham Worsted" by Garth Nix (loved the description of aging combined with horror, "it was a good day to die, if it came to that, if you were eighty and getting tired of the necessary props to a continued existence. The medicines and interventions, the careful calculation of probabilities before anything resembling activity. (313)).

Overall quite successful if you like discovering new dark fiction authors.