After unfortunate delays, the anthology HORROR: THE BEST OF THE YEAR 2006 EDITION is finally available. Even with curbed expectations, I had to ask upon completion, “That was the best you could find?”

With two notable exceptions, the stories here most cover a narrow range from marginal to dreadful. And not dreadful in the “ooh, that was spooky” way, but “ugh, that was terrible.” Right off the bat, let’s just let Joe Hill and Clive Barker off the hook. No need to sweat it out over the commercial break, fellas, because you two are safe.

Hill – who I didn’t know until recently is the son of Stephen King – writes about “The Cape,” a well-worn blanket which inexplicably gives a boy the power of flight. He never becomes a superhero, but certainly struggles; it plays like the flipside to UNBREAKABLE, with a most disturbing ending. It comes from his short-story collection 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS, which has been garnering raves and now I can see why. Meanwhile, Barker’s “Haeckel’s Tale” shocked me yet again – we covered it last fall as part of the DARK DELICACIES anthology – so its inclusion is certainly merited.

Then there’s another level of stories that are merely okay. Into this category fall the likes of Joe R. Lansdale, Simon Owens and Nicholas Royle, who write about murder, grief and hauntings, respectively. Richard Bowes’ “There’s a Hole in the City” is a moving but clunky examination of New York life in the days after 9/11 … but is it horror? I don’t think so.

And then there are the tales that seem like they stemmed from a fiction writing class, on the day the professor assigned them to try something experimental and eschew plot and lucidity in favor of wowing the reader with pretentious sentences. Too many of the book’s 17 contributors stumble into this group, so there’s no need to name names. A few make so little sense, the only thing scary about them is that they were ever considered horror in the first place.

Needless to say at this point, I’m disappointed in John Betancourt and Sean Wallace’s inaugural edition. I read a ton of short horror fiction last year, and even most of the bad ones were better than a majority in this collection. It’s not that I want to see a volume of stories I’ve already read; far from it, I’d love to be exposed to new writers with whom I’m unfamiliar. But this edition dares me to pursue their works further. I still look forward to next January’s 2007 EDITION, in hopes the editors will get back to the scares and avoid the snores. –Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE ULTIMATE FRANKENSTEIN edited by Byron Preiss and John Gregory Betancourt