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Best Horror of the Year, Volume 10

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Best Horror of the Year, Volume 10

By: Ellen Datlow
Narrated by: Will Damron, Christina Delaine
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About this listen

For more than three decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the tenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night

Included in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as Neil Gaiman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Stephen King, Linda Nagata, Laird Barron, and many others.

With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today's most challenging and exciting writers.

©2018 Ellen Datlow (P)2018 Tantor Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Fiction Horror Scary Short Story Horror Anthology
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The stories aren't very horror and they don't end properly, they just stop when they get to the good bits. The narrators are quite talented, but I did yell at them unintentionally when suddenly the next one announces the next story. These stories pale in comparison to even the weakest ones in a compilation such as the 'Hardcore Horror', which I refunded this one to get the next volume of.

Well narrated, but the stories are lacklustre

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I've listened to four volumes (8, 9, 10 and 11) of this series of collections, all because they were included in the Plus Catalogue, I wanted to give this series a good chance to change my initial impressions. The narrators are the best part of this series, most of them performing the works very convincingly, conveying a range of voices, accents, pacing and intonation; all quite good. This is the only positive I can find for this series based on the volumes to which I've listened.
Maybe my expectations for writing are way above the average writer's capabilities these days, I don't honestly know (other than I'm 60 at the time of this review and I've read thousands of quality books over my lifetime). In MY opinion there are maybe 3 to 4 good to very good short stories in each of the collections out of approximately 20 stories per collection. Out of those I would classify perhaps 2 as "horror". I constantly kept asking myself "how is this story called horror"? The majority I could class as "thriller" or "suspense", if I was generous. My ad hoc estimate is that one third of the stories are preoccupied with cultural politics from the post 2010's sexual orientation and gender being sprinkled around like salad dressing but no genuine part to play in providing character motivation or development. Many stories I considered generally internally inconsistent and uninteresting with characters that were mostly one dimensional, paper thin and failed to engage me. I usually found myself unaffected and unengaged in the characters by the time I finished each story. I was genuinely surprised when I came across an interesting and absorbing story.
I won't be pursuing this series any further unless I can come across the earliest of the series in the Plus Catalogue, none of these are worth the cost of the average Audible title in my opinion. Had I purchased any of these I'd have been requesting a refund.

Only bother if it's in the Plus Catalogue

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