Ellen Datlow

In 2008 I was busy moving out of my parents’ house and going to university in another city to complete a reading-intensive English Literature and History degree, so I was understandably out of touch with the current publishing trends in my favourite genre. And yet, if this collection showcasing the “year’s best” fantasy and horror is anything to go by, I apparently wasn’t missing out on much… Reading this collection was honestly a slog, and I am hard pressed to recall any stories show more that stood out to me from the over 2 months it took to get from cover to cover. What I do recall is a decidedly sharp focus on stories with strong horror elements and a preponderance of tales with overtly obnoxious chauvinist tone. I’m talking stories where all the women are typified by the male gaze, the protagonists mansplain ad nauseum to the reader, and are narrated via storytelling that relies on shock value, violence, and expectedly sordid mystery to get us to the finale. Honestly, very few of the tales made it past the first few pages for me, and I regularly found myself throwing the collection down in disgust to pick up literally anything else on my TBR to remedy my reading mood. It’s really too bad that the collection was so disappointing, because I was looking forward to getting into some short stories, discovering some new authors, and revisiting a time period in publishing that I seemingly missed out on. So much for nostalgia always being a positive recollection, I guess… show less

Very uneven collection of stories. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed one of the authors, of whom I am not a fan, and disappointed by another, that I usually enjoy.

I know I am among the minority of horror fans who don't enjoy Christopher Golden's stories. It's a style thing. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised by the first story in the book, The Importance of a Tidy Home. I loved it! So much, that it persuaded me to set up a cleaning schedule for the coming year and vow to become a better show more housekeeper. Excellent short story!

After beginning and abandoning a few books by Stephen Graham Jones, I typically avoid his books. His story in this collection, Our Recent Unpleasantness was a delight. It begins with plain characters and a simple story. Then it then veers off course into a strange Lynchian universe. Trippy!

Alma Katsu's story His Castle is also a great read. There's something edgy and different to the lore that Katsu dredged up from the ancient days.

A little Lovecraftian noir with a NYC accent pops up in The Blessing of the Waters by Nick Mamatas. Good story with an authentic flow.

All the other stories were readable and fun. Except for the last two.

When I heard “climate change” in No Light, No Light my brain switched to the off position. I know I'm supposed to care deeply about the subject, but I'm sick of it. It doesn't scare me. It makes me tired and bored. At the first mention of the subject, I rolled my eyes and scrolled. I didn't read past the first mention of the premise.

Then there's John Langan's story After Words. Normally, I dig Langan's writing. Not this time. I couldn't finish the story. Dude. Don't compel me to read about your blow job in order to get the story. It's vulgar and creepy. show less

Day and Night is a bit of a gimmick structurally, presented as two books bound back-to-back, one “Day” and one “Night.” It is a clever idea, though it makes referencing page numbers awkward for horror nerds trying to revisit specific stories later.

Despite Ellen Datlow often leaning toward dark fantasy over pure horror, this anthology felt much more horror-forward than many of her collections. Over half the stories landed solidly as horror for me, with several being genuinely show more frightening.

The standout stories were The Door of Sleep by Stephen Graham Jones and “The Wanting” by A. T. Greenblatt, both of which stayed with me long after finishing them. The Door of Sleep in particular uses a meta structure that could have become self-conscious or clever for its own sake, but instead becomes deeply unsettling and emotionally serious by the end.

There were a few stories I did not finish, but these were mostly cases of personal taste rather than bad writing. Only “The Picknicker” by Josh Malerman truly failed for me, largely because it read more like a melancholy love story than horror.

Overall, this ended up being one of the stronger Datlow anthologies I have read, especially for readers looking for horror with real emotional weight rather than collections that drift too heavily into dark fantasy and dreamlike atmosphere. show less

Christmas and Other Horrors (edited by Ellen Datlow) is a competent but ultimately disappointing anthology. The contributors are talented, and most of the stories are perfectly serviceable. The problem is not quality so much as category.

This is not a Christmas horror collection. It is, for the most part, dark fantasy and modern folklore.

Many of the stories rely on traditional folkloric figures or ritualized rules transplanted into the present day. In theory, that should be fertile ground for show more horror. In practice, too many of these pieces ask for an uncomfortable level of suspension of disbelief. Modern settings—touristed cities, contemporary social systems, public visibility—are treated as if they could still operate like closed folkloric worlds. The result is a persistent logic gap: who knows the rules, how are they enforced, and how are the consequences quietly absorbed in a modern society? The stories rarely engage with these questions, and the tension collapses once you start asking them.

Compounding this, a surprising number of the stories end well. Conflicts are resolved, lessons are learned, order is restored. That narrative shape belongs to fable or fantasy, not horror. A Christmas horror anthology should leave some residue—unease, consequence, contamination. Too often here, the stories reassure instead.

There are standouts, and they highlight what the collection could have been.
“The Ones He Takes” by Benjamin Percy, “Our Recent Unpleasantness” by Stephen Graham Jones, and “The Lord of Misrule” by M. Rickert all feel genuinely original. These stories use the Christmas or seasonal framework in ways that engage the modern world rather than ignoring it, and they allow the unease to linger. They understand that horror isn’t about rule-following—it’s about what happens when the rules fail, or when they are enforced unevenly.

Unfortunately, those successes are the exception. Most of the remaining stories are competently written but forgettable, resolving too cleanly and leaning too heavily on inherited folklore without interrogating how it functions now.

In the end, this is not a bad anthology—but it is a misfiled one. Readers looking for Christmas horror may find themselves underwhelmed, while readers interested in dark fantasy or modern folkloric tales may be more satisfied. For me, the mismatch between promise and execution made this a solid but unmemorable read. show less