The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 17 by Ellen Datlow
I have to admit, as a horror writer, editor and reader, these “best of” anthologies are like candy. Part of me wants to curl up on the couch and read such a lovely volume straight through, and another part wants to savor it, reading it story by story, taking a break in between.
Best Horror of the Year, Volume 17, the newest edition of the annual collection curated by Ellen Datlow, comprises 22 stories and one poem published in 2024, all at the top of their field. There won’t be any duds in one of Datlow’s anthologies, and this is no exception.
This hefty volume starts with the usual roundup that such anthologies have. You might be tempted to skip it, but please don’t. Datlow includes awards given in 2024 for books and movies released in 2023, lists of notable horror industry publications, novels, magazines, collections, anthologies, poetry, novellas and non-fiction. The only list Datlow doesn’t include is the people the horror industry lost over the previous year.
Digging into the stories, you’ll find ghouls, human sacrifice, plastination gone very wrong, plus ghosts and other unquiet undead. Some would be total spoilers if I even hinted at what they were about! A couple of Datlow’s selections I had read and enjoyed in their original anthologies last year, so they were like revisiting old friends.
Here are just some of the standouts that haunt me:
- The horrifying “Lullaby of Anguish” by Marie Croke explores the careless cruelty of children, brought forward into adulthood.
- Richard Thomas’s masterful, breathless, single-sentence story, “Sunk,” hints at Lovecraftian themes, exploring cults and underwater humanoids in a stream of lovely writing that will make you wonder how he wrote it. Be prepared to read it twice.
- “Ribbon Rule” by Mae Jimenez looks at a world where there is not only no free speech allowed, but also no speech at all, and what happens to those who rebel.
At the end of the book, Datlow includes a list of great stories that couldn’t fit into this volume. On her website, she also features a “recommended reading list” of even more short fiction, along with the original anthologies or publications in which they appeared. Your TBR pile just got a lot bigger!
With Volume 17, Datlow has put together another outstanding collection that belongs on every horror fan’s bookshelf or e-reader.
About Ellen Datlow:
Ellen Datlow has been a leading force in science fiction, fantasy and horror editing for more than four decades. She served as Fiction Editor of OMNI Magazine for seventeen years before helming SCIFICTION, the fiction arm of the SCI FI Channel’s website, for six years.
Currently, Datlow acquires short fiction for Reactor and novellas for Tor.com and its horror imprint, Nightfire. She’s edited dozens of acclaimed anthologies across genres and age groups, including The Best Horror of the Year annual series, When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson, Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror, Screams from the Dark: 19 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous and Christmas and Other Horrors. Her forthcoming reprint anthology, Fears: An Anthology of Psychological Horror, continues her legacy of curating the best in dark fiction.
Datlow’s work has earned her numerous honors, including multiple Hugo, Locus, Stoker, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Awards, as well as lifetime achievement awards from both the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Convention.
She co-runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in New York City with Matthew Kressel.
