Christmas and Other Horrors
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Hugo Award winning editor, and horror legend, Ellen Datlow presents a terrifying and chilling horror anthology of original short stories exploring the endless terrors of winter solstice traditions across the globe, featuring chillers by Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu and many more. Even though many celebrate the winter solstice as a time of joy, a darker tradition of ghost tales and horror stories resides in the long winter nights. This anthology of all new stories will scour the world for the unholy, the dark, the dangerous, the horrific aspects of a time when families and friends come together—for better and worse. Alongside Christmas celebrations, around the world are Makara Sankranti in the Hindu calendar in India, Yalda Night in Iran, Chanukah, the Roman Saturnalia, the Krampus, Dongzhi (solar term) in East Asia where sunlight passes through the 17 arches of Seventeen Arch Bridge, Summer Palace, Beijing, the pagan festival of Yule, St. Lucia’s Day in Scandinavia, the Druidic tradition of Alban Arthan, Soyal for Hopi Indians, Peruvian solstice festivals, and even Christmas in Antarctica at the research stations. Because the weather outside is frightful, but the fire inside is hungry… Featuring stories from: Nadia Bulkin Terry Dowling Tananarive Due Jeffrey Ford Christopher Golden Stephen Graham Jones Glen Hirshberg Richard Kadrey Alma Katsu Cassandra Khaw Josh Malerman Nick Mamatas Garth Nix Benjamin Percy M. Rickert Kaaron Warren
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Grabbed this for a seasonal read on audible’s cyber Monday sale and dove right in.
This is an enjoyable anthology that features different holiday creatures, traditions, and locales. From the Christian Christmas, to folkloric creatures and the winter solstice. I particularly enjoyed that each story was finished with a small snippet of the author describing where they came up with the story idea. Which read like little behind the scenes inclusions.
But with a lot of these large anthologies, I have to wonder if creating them just for a large chunk of them to go to invited authors is the best move. Especially when many of these were just okay. My wonder is if the authors are writing just to be included off the invite, rather than a desire to write the story…which I could be entirely wrong, and enjoyment is subjective. That’s also not to say that I disliked any of them outright, and I appreciated how well rounded it was with its diversity of traditions, but maybe I was just looking for more of a Christmas-centric horror collection, which would be on me!
Stephen Graham Jones, Josh Malerman, and Gemma Files are a few standouts, with stories that I particularly enjoyed, as well as their reasonings for writing.