The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 4

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror

by Paula Guran (Editor), Fawaz Al-Matrouk (Contributor), Octavia Cade (Contributor)

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series returns with a splendidly startling fourth volume!

From paranormal plots to stories of the supernatural, tales of the unfamiliar have always fascinated us humans. To keep the tradition alive, fantasy aficionado Paula Guran has gathered the most delightfully disturbing work from some of today’s finest writers of the fantastique!

No two mysterious shadows are alike, and the same can be said for the books in this series. T he Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 4 contains more than three hundred pages of mystical fiction. Reader beware and indulge if you dare, because these chilling tales are sure to spook and surprise!

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Anthologies

306 pages, Paperback

Published October 24, 2023

About the author

Paula Guran is senior editor for Prime Books. She edited the Juno fantasy imprint from its small press inception through its incarnation as an imprint of Pocket Books. She is also senior editor of Prime's soon-to-launch digital imprint Masque Books. Guran edits the annual Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series as well as a growing number of other anthologies. In an earlier life she produced weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (winning two Stokers, an IHG award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination), edited Horror Garage (earning another IHG and a second World Fantasy nomination), and has contributed reviews, interviews, and articles to numerous professional publications.

Reviews

[John Mauro · Rating 4 out of 5]

My complete review is published at Grimdark Magazine.

I love that time of year when Paula Guran releases her newest volume of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. This year’s anthology, officially titled The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Volume 4), is actually Guran’s fourteenth entry in the series, having restarted the numbering after switching to a new publisher (Pyr Books) four years ago.

Across her prolific career, Paula Guran has published over fifty anthologies in fantasy, science fiction, and horror. She is a two-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award and two-time nominee of the World Fantasy Award. With Paula Guran as editor, you know it will be a top-quality collection.

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Volume 4) kicks off with “Shadow Plane,” Fran Wilde’s story of the physical and psychological isolation of two travelers stranded on a mountain that doesn’t appear on any map. The story is masterfully written and reads like an alpine version of The Blair Witch Project.

The next story, “The Dyer and the Dressmakers” by Bindia Persaud, is a subtle but unsettling tale, full of enchanting colors, where dying and dyeing are more than just homophones.

It seems inevitable that at least one of the stories in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror would be a repeat from another collection that I’ve read. That story for me is the wickedly horrific “Wet Red Grin” by Gemma Files, which I also reviewed as part of Ellen Datlow’s outstanding anthology, Screams from the Dark . Personally, I enjoyed revisiting this masterful story set in a nursing home during the real-life horror of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Next up is “The Lending Library of Final Lines,” a dark fantasy by Octavia Cade about a magical book that can pull readers into the story when the pages are eaten. The setup of this story reminded me of The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean.

Stephen Graham Jones is always a delight, and “Men, Women and Chainsaws” doesn’t disappoint. His contribution to The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Volume 4) has a classic horror feel and is inspired by the ultraviolent The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

The shortest story in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Volume 4), “The Woman Who Married the Minotaur” by Angela Slatter, is brief but fun. The story is exactly what you would think based on the title.

Probably my favorite story in the collection is “The Voice of a Thousand Years” by Fawaz Al Matrouk. This story is both a philosophical tour de force and a deeply emotional tale of an old man who discovers spiritual transference.

I also thoroughly enjoyed “Bonesoup” by Eugenia Triantafyllou, about a grandmother who wants to provide proper nourishment to strengthen her granddaughter’s bones. “Bonesoup” has a fairy tale-type quality that strikes the perfect balance between dark fantasy and horror.

Cassandra Khaw’s contribution to the anthology, “How Selkies Are Made,” feels like a companion story to their masterful dark fantasy novella, The Salt Grows Heavy. The short story is not as dark as the novella, but it’s still an enjoyable read.

I adore just about all horror stories from A.C. Wise. Her contribution to The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Volume 4), “Sharp Things, Killing Things,” is a stylistic departure for Wise, told in the first-person plural. Wise succeeds in capturing the collective zeitgeist of young people in small-town America while delivering a truly chilling tale of horror.

A few of the stories were more uneven in the middle of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Volume 4), but the anthology closes out strong with the final two stories: “A Monster in the Shape of a Boy” by Hannah Yang and “Lemmings” by Kirstyn McDermott, both of which are very creative and well written. Part of the joy of reading short story anthologies is discovering new writers. Both Hannah Yang and Kirstyn McDermott are new to me, and I look forward to reading more from them in the future.

Whether your goal is to discover new authors or revisit established favorites, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Volume 4) is a very welcome addition to Paula Guran’s long-running series.

[Irene Well Worth A Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Volume 4 is an exceptional anthology that makes me want to search out and read the previous volumes because apparently, I have been missing out on something special.

The first story, Shadow Plane by Fran Wilde set the bar pretty high. If surviving a plane crash and being trapped in the bitter-cold wilderness isn't scary enough just wait until you see what those shadows are up to. This was a super freaky story that will have you scared of your own shadow.

Red Wet Grin by Gemma Files is a creepy story that is set in a nursing home where a new patient with a wicked smile has evil plans for staff and residents.

The Lending Library of Final Lines by Octavia Cade is gruesome, sad, original, and twisted. Complete books don't exist in this world but loose pages have an incredible and heartbreaking use. Reading can be dangerous.

Stephen Graham Jones knocks it out of the park with his story Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Breakups can be messy, but this story of romance, revenge, and the bonds of parental love was a riveting page-turner.

The Feeding of Closed Mouths by Eden Royce was another of my favorites. I knew it would be from the opening line "When the news said three more young men had been found dead in their homes, Grace knew her mother had come to town." All I'm going to say about this story is WOW!

A Belly Full Of Spiders by Mario Coellho is a story of abuse and the supernatural. It is dark and disturbing and brilliant.

The Long Way Up by Alix E. Harrow is a tale of loss, and grief, and what one woman is willing to do for the love of her life.

The past catches up with a small group of teens in Sharp Things, Killing Things by A.C. Wise. This is a story that gave me goosebumps!

Swim the Darkness by Michael Kelly kind of broke my heart. Life is short even if you're not a girl with a strange affliction, so live as if you're on borrowed time. I'm not crying you're crying.

In The Smile Place by Tobi Ogundiran is about a boy who suffers a traumatic experience then later goes missing, and the big brother who lives with guilt over it. It's also scary as hell!

If you love dark fiction you need this anthology!
My thanks to Pyr Books

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting mix of stories, but a lot of them felt less than "best" for me.

[Brigitte · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorites in the collection: “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” by Stephen Graham Jones; “The Woman Who Married the Minotaur “ by Angela Slatter; “How Selkies Are Made” by Cassandra Khaw; “Sharp Things, Killing Things” by AC Wise; and “In the Smile Place” by Tobi Ogundiran. I especially loved the Jones and Wise stories. Those are two I’ll study and unpack to see how they pulled them off.

[Am Y · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are 21 stories in this collection. The first 14 were mostly quite good - some of them exceptional - and I really enjoyed them. The last 7 were pretty bad - a lot unexplained, mostly, as if you had just been given a snippet of an entire story. Or else too self-reflective, heading nowhere, and serving no purpose except to waste the reader's time. If I had to rate this compilation based on the first 14 stories alone, it would garner 4 stars. Based on the last 7 stories, I would give the book 1 star.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t normally do this, but this was just one of those times when I couldn’t resist rating each of the stories in this collection individually. As all collections are, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, particularly as it straddles two genres that sometimes stride along happily side by side exchanging anecdotes and experiences, and sometimes travel miles apart with dark caves, sucking swamps and haunted forests in between. That only one of those two genres is my usual jam gave the feeling that I should “show my work” so to speak, as any collective will reflect that for this particular reader the two great tastes don’t always go great together. Readers who prefer to read on the horror side of the fence will likely have a similar reaction but with the emphasis on different stories. In the listings below, (DF) represents Dark Fantasy and, of course, (H) is for Horror.

It also felt like these stories made up an important collection, one that should be read and shivered over, not just in the run up to this Halloween, but for Halloweens to come, whenever readers are looking for a wide-ranging collection of stories that go bump in the night.

Without further ado, the stories in, and my commentaries and ratings upon, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: Volume Four.

“Shadow Plane” by Fran Wilde (H with a hint of SF) A story about vlogging and mountain climbing that turns into a much older tale about medical experimentation, the things we do in the shadows – and the things the shadows do to us. Chilling and compelling. (A-)

“The Dyer and the Dressmakers” by Bindia Persaud (DF) Dyes for clothing come from dyers, literally in this tale about dying for the art of dyeing at the pleasure of the crown. Fell flat – or rather colorless – for me. (C-)

“Red Wet Grin” by Gemma Files (H) The old horror of possession and body snatching – although a twist on that – mixed well with the new horrors of COVID lockdowns, nursing homes, and the kind of greed that turns a blind eye. Great story with thoughtful conclusion that chills on multiple levels. (A+)

“The Lending Library of Final Lines” by Octavia Cade (DF) In a dying seaside town made for dying in, a woman sells the last pages of books to folks ready to commit suicide by crab. Eating the pages is magic, pulling them into the story just long enough to drug them, and let them be drug to death. Interesting but the incuriosity of the protagonist leaves the reader not having enough to give it depth because she refuses to have any, (B-)

“Men, Women and Chainsaws” by Stephen Graham Jones (H) A young woman pours her life’s blood, into the Chevy Camaro that her parents died in, so that the car can come back to life a la Christine along with her parents’ spirits to help her reenact their deaths with a one-victim version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (B)

“The Woman Who Married the Minotaur” by Angela Slatter (DF) Ultimately bittersweet and utterly romantic, this is exactly what the title says it is, the story of a contemporary woman who marries the immortal minotaur from the Labyrinth on Crete. They have a sweet and surprisingly normal life together, but love made him mortal, and in the end, they wouldn’t have had it any other way. (A)

“The Voice of A Thousand Years” by Fawaz Al Matrouk (DF) A beautiful but sad story about the power of education and knowledge set against the recalcitrance of religion, personified in the story of one old man who discovers a magical instrument and does his best to give it new life even at the cost of his own. (A+)

“Bonesoup” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (H) A bit of a variation on Hansel and Gretel where the ‘wicked’ witch merely wants to save the life of her grandchild by giving other children sugar to replace their bones even while she reserves the meat for her granddaughter who finally figures out how to return the favor. A fairy tale retelling that is every bit as scary as they used to be before the Grimm Brothers made them not so grim. (A-)

“Challawa” by Usman T. Malik (DF) Historical dark fantasy that tips into horror at the very end as a woman returns to her family homeland in India to write a story about the horrors of the early matchmaking industry, only to end up in an exchange of historical tales and ghost stories that leads to a deadly reenactment, that is needed to remove the foreign invaders AGAIN. (A+)

“How Selkies Are Made” by Cassandra Khaw (DF) Not as dark as it might have been. It’s a story and it’s a story about how stories get told. And it’s about how foolish humans can be when they’re in love. A woman promises the wrong man entirely too many things he’s not deserving of. After seven years of abuse, she takes her own fate into her own hands, without murder, without breaking her word, but with the help of a selkie. Of course, that’s not how the story gets told. And it’s a bit unsatisfying in the end because the husband really deserved a much worse ending than the loss of a wife he never cared for in the first place. But she kept her honor. (B)

“The Feeding of Closed Mouths” by Eden Royce (H) Her mother is a hag. Not metaphorically, but a real honest-to-badness hag. A monster who once helped her kill a former co-worker and rob a bank, both of which kinda deserved it. But asking a hag for favors seems to be a sure fire way of turning into one yourself, especially if you’re already halfway there. Plenty creepy with a well done heel-turn but not up to some of the other stories in the collection (B-)

“A Belly Full of Spiders” by Mario Coelho (H) Oh so very much horror about a boy who is no longer a boy rescued from monsters hiding in plain sight by a monster who truly is monstrous, with the help of one hell of a lot of spiders who turns out to be on a mission to save all the little children who are held captive in the dark. (B+)

“The Long Way Up” by Alix E. Harrow (DF) It’s a long way down to hell to retrieve her husband, but Ocean is determined to get Ethan back – no matter what it takes. What it takes is faith, trust and listening in this fractured, modernized, gender-reversed version of Orpheus and Eurydice (B+)

“Douen” by Suzan Palumbo (H) The story of a child ghost who, because she never got to grow up, is experiencing ghosthood through a child’s perspective but reacting with a ghost’s powers. The story is both creepy and innocent, and that both the ghost and the humans manage to reach reconciliation at all was a surprise but the story as a whole was more interesting than compelling. (C)

“The Ercildoun Accord” by Steve Toase (DF/H) The concept of conducting archaeology in the lands of faerie, with human tools and human concepts under tricksy fae contracts and conditions was both weird and cool and did a fantastic job of tripping – or rather, being tripped – over the line from Dark Fantasy to Horror in a well-executed combo of inevitability and resignation, even if the reader can’t imagine why ANYONE would be doing this job in the first place! (B+)

“Sharp Things, Killing Things” by A.C. Wise (H) Everyone has a guilty conscience – even if they don’t remember exactly what it is they are guilty of. Or it’s a story about dark small towns where everyone is up in everyone’s business and the cruelties inflicted in childhood ripple out in depressing waves from both the tormentors and their victims. Or it’s a straight up horror story about a town where the only way out is death and he’s going around making sure everyone takes him up on the offer. This one is really good of its type, it’s just not a type I personally care for. (C+)

“Swim the Darkness” by Michael Kelly (DF) This one reminded me of Shark Heart by Emily Habeck, but this story is much more gently told and is less about the girl who becomes a fish and more about parental regrets and the grief of losing a child when it’s supposed to be the other way around. The equivocal ending feels right, because the story has always been more about him than her. It’s possible to interpret this as him grieving so hard he follows, or him regretting so much he can’t let go. I liked the story better than Shark Heart, but it just wasn’t my jam. (B-)

“The Summer Castle” by Ray Naylor (DF/H) On the border between dark fantasy and horror, and not very clear about it into the bargain, it’s the last summer of childhood for two boys on the eve of war. The horror is all in the implications of that war but the story is a bit more amorphous and nebulous than I hoped for from the author of the totally awesome The Mountain in the Sea. (B-)

“In the Smile Place” by Tobi Ogundiran (H) If you put two other stories in this collection, “Men, Women and Chainsaws” and “Sharp Things, Killing Things” into a blender I think you’d get this story. Which makes it even weirder than it was when I read it. It combines the visitation of adult regret over being a young bully of “Sharp Things” with the haunted places and revenge of supposedly inanimate objects of “Chainsaws” into a single weird and creepy story. (B-)

“A Monster in the Shape of a Boy” (DF) At first, this is a dark fantasy about a boy training to become a monster hunter after he fails his first test – when a monster shaped exactly like himself surprises him so much he forgets his training and does not kill it immediately. His training is grim and dark as it seems designed to turn him into more of a monster than the one he was supposed to kill, only for the story to come full circle at the end and make the reader wonder who is really the monster after all. (B)

“Lemmings” by Kirstyn McDermott (H) It’s fitting that “Lemmings” is the last story in this collection, because I actually remember the video game Lemmings from its original release, and this is absolutely the last place I ever expected to see it referenced. The game’s graphics were simple and the lemmings were suicidal, but underneath the pixelated gore was a story about scarce resources, preserving the tribe, and the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few and the few being ready, willing and able to throw themselves off a cliff to meet those needs. The way that this story takes that concept and merges it with a viral sensation and a viral plague takes the silly and makes it chilling in the extreme. (A-)

Escape Rating A-: I had to do actual math to get close to a collective rating for this one. There were several stories I straight-up loved on both the Dark Fantasy and, surprisingly for me, the Horror side of the equation, notably “Red Wet Grin” by Gemma Files, “The Voice of A Thousand Years” by Fawaz Al Matrouk and “Challawa” by Usman T. Malik.

If you’re looking for something appropriately spooky and scary to read this Halloween season, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: Volume 4 – and all of the previous volumes in this series! – are sure to give you just what you’re looking for. Especially if you’re looking for stories that HAVE to be read with the lights on.

Originally published at Reading Reality

[Count Belchenbarf · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one was a do not finish, and sent it to the local secondhand bookstore. I made it halfway through the book, and only two stories had any real bang to them. The first one, about the plane crash, was a good yarn, and the one about the musical instrument with a soul trapped in it was excellent. The rest of the stories...meh. They simply weren't entertaining. Rather ironic, considering that some of the authors are fairly well known, maybe they are just having an off year.
Thing is, with a poor collection like this, is it due to a lack of good submissions by authors, or the editor simply can't make good choices? I'd have to guess the second one, with the amount of authors that probably sent in stories, there should have been better ones to choose. Another case of an editor being overrated is a possibility, much like Ellen Datlow. I've read three of Datlow's collections, and the best one was average compared to most collections. The other two flat out sucked. You want a good editor, hire K Trap Jones or Lee Murray, they know how to do it.

[E.M. White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opening with the usual disclaimer that no reader will be satisfied with every story in a collection, this volume nicely rounds up some powerful meditations on grief and loss, all from very distinct perspectives. The stories I'd most recommend out of this lot are:

“Swim the Darkness” by Michael Kelly. Resonantly painful in a way I'm glad to read in fiction and would prefer not to experience for myself. And I'm always a sucker for gorgeous imagery.

“Douen” by Suzan Palumbo. This one's genuinely distressing at several points and empathetic throughout. I also can't recall the last time I've seen the voice of a child character written so convincingly. Readers who struggle with the dialect used throughout the story will benefit from broadening their horizons anyway. :)

“The Long Way Up” by Alix E. Harrow. The only issue with this story might be the none-too-likeable main character, but some stories work best with a main character who isn't likeable!

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd already read a little more than half of the stories in this volume, which are excellent and I highly encourage folks to read them (especially the Eden Royce and “Bonesoup” by Eugenia Triantafyllou as well as "Douen" by Suzan Palumbo, which is one of my favourite short stories ever).

[Robert Knudsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it

There is not one story I would say loved it because all the stories say that this was a well put together magazine. You did everything right because I loved all of the stories

[Amanda Castagnoli · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Bill Borre]

"Lemmings" by Kirstyn McDermott - Jinx watches a video on social media of a boy on a rooftop who says "We are the virus. And we are also the cure." then falls backward as someone else films the body hitting the ground below and pixel and sound effects from the video game Lemmings are edited in. The author doesn't explain why but for some reason this experience convinces Jinx mass suicide is an activity that she wants to partake in and ends up the same way.

"The Woman Who Married the Minotaur" by Angela Slatter - This story describes the relationship between a witch and the Cretan minotaur.