The Mammoth Book Of the Best Of Best New Horror [Paperback]

Bought this book based on rave reviews ... was sorely disappointed.

Most of the stories it contains are not frightening in the least. I'm sorry, but adding a slight supernatural element into an otherwise ordinary story does not make it into "horror." For examples of true horror, see the collection Fine Frights (stories chosen by Ramsey Campbell). Now there's some genuinely spine-tingling, creepy tales.

This collection, on the other hand, is a bunch of sappy yarns. There are a few stand-outs, such as Haeckel's Tale, but they are too few and far between to keep the overall experience from being tedious.

*** SPOILER ALERT BELOW ***

The first story in the volume, "No Sharks in the Med," is a perfect example. It's practically a romantic comedy. We get to follow around this honeymooning couple in Greece, learn all about the wife's admiration for her husband's "bottom" (gasp), only to discover in the end that their taxi driver and his brother are trying to ... shoot them with a shotgun. Of course, the good guys win in the end anyway, by throwing a rock onto the evil-doers' boat. Horror? Please. The story certainly made me want to visit Greece, but that's not the point of a horror collection.

Another tale that started promising, "20th Century Ghost," ends up being all about an old movie theater being restored. Oh yeah, and the ghost occasionally gets a nosebleed. Nothing frightening there.

Overall, nothing much bad happens to the protagonists of "Best of the Best New Horror." For the most part, the worst fate they can expect is reminiscing about their childhood. Does this collection contain some fine writing? Yes. Does it contain fine horror? Occasionally, and seemingly by accident.

When it comes to these types of books, i RARElY look into ones that have as many books as this series does. still, I have another book of this, the last one, and i have to say i loved it. i love the fact that people like Campbell appear in here quite a bit and i love the fact that there is not a lot of fluff being added. In it you have more than the new writers being showcased inside. You have people that win awards, people that are good and win because of that, and those things really ar eimpressive. I am not saying that awards are something that means a great deal in the world of hoor, but it helps to find people that can write and to put them together. This is especially true when you take a great deal of writing and stick it into one pot, allowing it to simmer in the midns of people who love horror and, if they are like me, read the tales before bed and hope for that free horror movie in their dreams.
And this delivers. It delievers and more.

When they tout this as mammoth, they really are not kidding. Here you have 640 pages devoted to the art of creating the next frightening picture. Granted, many of these are not new. Still, they are sexy works. yo have Joe Hill and you have Campbell, and you have Lebbon and you have Gaiman. along with that are stories that are nto eactly easy to find unless you want to fork out the money to get each and every set. Even if you have some of them you might want to look and see if it is worth your time. Accordingly, I am including a listing because, to eme, I have to have a lister. Without them, you simply have comments and you don't know what to look up. so, here you are:
NO SHARKS IN THE MED Brian Lumley
THE MAN WHO DREW CATS Michael Marshall Smith
THE SAME IN ANY LANGUAGE Ramsey Campbell
NORMAN WISDOM AND THE ANGEL OF DEATH Christopher Fowler
MEFISTO IN ONYX Harlan Ellison
THE TEMPTATION OF DR STEIN Paul J. McAuley
QUEEN OF KNIVES Neil Gaiman
THE BREAK Terry Lamsley
EMPTINESS SPOKE ELOQUENT Caitlín R Kiernan
MR. CLUBB AND MR. CUFF Peter Straub
WHITE Tim Lebbon
THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT: ANNO DRACULA, 1981 Kim Newman
CLEOPATRA BRIMSTONE Elizabeth Hand
20TH CENTURY GHOST Joe Hill
THE WHITE HANDS Mark Samuels
MY DEATH Lisa Tuttle
HAECKEL'S TALE Clive Barker
DEVIL'S SMILE Glen Hirshberg
THE CHURCH ON THE ISLAND Simon Kurt Unsworth
THE NEW YORK TIMES AT SPECIAL BARGAIN RATES Stephen King

Is this enough to make you pull the trigger? I should hope so. i liked this, quite a bit in fact, and have to say that it is worth getting. The Hill story is scary and collected in his one short story work. Leboon's White is also collecte din White and othe tales of Ruin, wich has great stories in it but White is a different breed of ending the world. Haeckel's Tale is cheesy is some ways but has some horrible stuff in it, making for a funny trip down the lane of not-quite-lame but not-quite-perfect. No sharks in the Med is something I also liked a lot, having fun with it and knowing how it would end and then finding that i was not right.

Over and over the series speaks, citing 5 at so many turns. I have to say get it becaus eof that, and because i like what is involved.

Initially I didn't buy it (thus the reason this review is appearing a month after its publication) precisely because I do have all 20 volumes (I started buy them about halfway through when I returned from living in the US to the UK; I bought up the back catalogue secondhand).

I did pick up a copy during the book's launch at the 20th World Horror Convention held over the weekend of 25th-28th March 2010 in Brighton, Elngland. But I got the copy inscribed and inscribed by the editor (plus 10 of the contributors in attendance at the convention) to my wife's best friend, who's also a horror fan, thinking there's no need for me to get one as I've already got all 20. However, the book was too big to pack on the journey home, so I had to take it on the plane as hand luggage, and so browsed through it during the flight. (PLEASE NOTE: ignore the page count listing above, as this is based on the average size of each volume over the years - this 20 year celebration is actually over 750 pages, thus the increase in cover price.)

I decided to buy a copy because, although I have all the stories themselves, this 20 year summation comes with TWO indexes to the entire series (one listed by Author and one by Story Title) plus a 2 page preface, an 8 page introduction and a 1 page foreword to each story - all in all amounting to a superb 30 page non-fiction article on the entire history of the series.

Each volume in the series averaged 20 stories, with an average page count of 550. So why then, you may ask, is this 20-story `Best of the Best' 750 pages? Because almost half its content is made up of short-novels, or novellas if you like - perhaps the single best length at which horror fiction truly works, as this collection ably demonstrates. If, like me, you have several shelves worth of `The Mammoth Book of...' titles (and not just `Best New Horror') then you will find that this new book makes a superb companion volume to `The Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels' (1988) edited by Mike Ashley. Here you have stunning novellas from the likes of Harlan Ellison, Lisa Tuttle, Peter Straub and Tim Lebbon.

As this book in a sense is all about clocking-up the numbers, and not only in years and the number of stories featured, this is a good a time as any to talk about some reader-gripes over the years:

For instance, the frequent inclusion of Ramsey Campbell, with a total of 17 stories. Quite frankly, Ramsey Campbell is the single greatest living horror writer; he has an ability - unmatched by any other writer in the field - to imbue his stories with a sense of menace and unease in every single sentence, in every single paragraph, on every single page. `Nuf said.

Kim Newman is also someone singled-out for appearing too often (15 times).

Yet, no one's ever complained about Steve Rasnic Tem. Sorry, who's he? Never heard of him? He appears in `Best New Horror' 14 times...

The bestselling novelists Christopher Fowler and Michael Marshall Smith are also frequent contributors (with 12 and 13 stories respectively). They, too, have been commented on as appearing too much (yet, again, no mention of Nicholas Royle - 12 stories). The point being that it is only the names of the `big writers' whom people have noticed and complained about. But even then, it still makes no sense: they're all terrific writers so it's utterly irrelevant how many times they've appeared (incidentally, Michael Marshall Smith should probably have appeared as many times as Ramsey Campbell; he really is that good, and versatile also, as witness his early science fiction novels, `Only Forward `and `Spares', his crime thrillers, such as `The Straw Men', and the wonderful short novel he did only a few years ago, `The Servants' - oh, and he's an amazing book designer: at the World Horror Convention in the seaside town of Brighton a beautiful volume of poetry called `Off the Coastal Path' edited by Jo Fletcher (PS Publishing, 2010) was launched. Easily one of the best design jobs Smith has ever done. Way too much talent for one person if you ask me!).

Last year someone posted a comment to my review of Best New Horror 20 saying Neil Gaiman was always featured. Of the 20 volumes Gaiman only appears 9 times. And rightly so: `Smoke & Mirrors' and `Fragile Things' are easily amongst the best collections - in ANY genre - published in the past 20 years (Caitlin R Kiernan and Thomas Ligotti also appear 9 times... but, again, nobody complained about that).

As for myself, I've also come under attack because of my frequent reviews of Stephen Jones books. To address the allegations, I am not affiliated with the publisher nor am I a friend of the editor (yes, I have met the man at conventions where his books are sometimes given advance-publication launches, but shaking the man's hand once a year and saying `Hi, nice to meet you!' hardly entitles me to the presumption of calling the gentleman a friend!

What can I say? I love Jones's books... and I salute Robinson/Running Press for publishing them.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 6 reviews  3.7 out of 5 stars