Year's Best Fantasy 7

The editor says in the introduction they changed format possibly to present more work, and says he'd really like to publish half a million words. He doesn't say how large the wordcount was in the last book, or in this one, but presumably this is bigger.

Changing format of course will piss off collectors who like to have consistent looks, and the electronic collectors too, who as far as I can see now don't have one to buy.

He says they have deliberately chosen a wide range of stories (which certainly apperas to be true), and stayed away from novella type work for length reasons.

Fantasy collections that have a lot of mundane stuff are never going to rate amazingly highly for me, but there are some pleasant surprises - Pimpf I had read before, and that is a cool story, and another Eternal Champion milieu tale from Moorcock.

The standout is Laird Barron's Hallucigenia, and he is singled out as possibly being a major talent. Given the three stories of his I have read so far (5,4,3) for a 4 average, sounds pretty reasonable to me. His story here is what I would call something like a cross between Lucius Shepard and Brian Lumley, and definitely worth a look.

Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Build-a-Bear - Gene Wolfe
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Pimpf - Charles Stross
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Four Fables - Peter S. Beagle
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Potter's Daughter - Martha Wells
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Thin On the Ground - Howard Waldrop
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter - Geoff Ryman
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Osteomancer's Son - Greg van Eekhout
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Yours Etc - Gavin Grant
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Sea Air - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : I'll Give You My Word - Diana Wynne Jones
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Bea and her Bird Brother - Gene Wolfe
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Bonny Boy - Ian R. Macleod
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Ghost Mission - L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Christmas Witch - M. Rickert
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Roaming Forest - Michael Moorcock
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Show Me Yours - Robert Reed
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Lepidopterist - Lucius Shepard
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : The Double-Edged Sword - Sharon Shinn
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : Hallucigenia - Laird Barron
Year's Best Fantasy 7 : An Episode of Stardust - Michael Swanwick

Competitive teddies.

3 out of 5

Bob Howard manages to get told off for not playing MMORPG's enough at work, given that is his current assignment, to stop real monsters gaining a foothold there.

He even gets an intern, asthe Laundry finds a kid who gets in deeper than he should while playing and hacking, and hands him to Bob. They go on a bit of a dungeon bash to save the day.

4 out of 5

Bad jokes two many.

3 out of 5

Fairy girl's hands like clay.

2 out of 5

Mexican trip brain sucker cutoff escape.

3.5 out of 5

Surfeit of spirits.

3 out of 5

Hierarch restructuring.

4 out of 5

Dead girl ghost correspondence.

3 out of 5

Garden monster penchant for swimming is infectious.

3 out of 5

Coven trap fraternal dictionary defense.

4 out of 5

Hereditary problems.

2.5 out of 5

Orphan changes.

3.5 out of 5

Poetic spook spooks.

3.5 out of 5

Bad bone girl.

3.5 out of 5

Rackhir the Red Archer travelling meets a princess of Immryr, luckily for him with what they get involved in.

4 out of 5

Time for drug revenge.

3.5 out of 5

Cocoon people's master conquest plan cropped at the top.

4 out of 5

Paralysis no longer in the cards.

3.5 out of 5

Things that are definitely not better than a kick in the head by an equine?

Being taken over by entities from the Outer Dark.

5 out of 5

Just a vixen for a con.

4 out of 5

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