Hailing from the folks at Titan Books, Christmas and Other Horrors is a collection of modern horror stories from the likes of Garth Nix, Josh Malerman, and Tananarive Due, and edited by Ellen Datlow, who has plenty of experience collating tales of horror and suspense (such as her Snow White, Blood Red collection).
Some of the biggest names in horror find themselves here – Stephen Graham Jones has a chilling, if not hugely festive, tale about a guy who loses his mind after a startling incident, that’s very Kingesque; Alma Katsu offers a creepy take on the Mari Lwyd myth; and Christopher Golden opens the collection with a Krampus-style story about the perils of untidiness.
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Christmas and Other Horrors also pleasingly diverse – Glen Hirshberg delivers one of the best stories in the collection about three generations of the same family completing an unusual Hanukah tradition, and finding untold terrors within, while Richard Kadrey blends cosy Christmas feeling and monster horror to sublimely terrifying effect, and Nadia Bulkin chills with a spooky, Festivus-flavoured ghost tale.
As with any collection, certain stories fail to deliver – Benjamin Percy’s tale of a mysterious Christmas morning return is ingenious enough but too short to make a real impact, while Jeffrey Ford’s offering likewise has untapped potential in its creepy, folklore fable – but most achieve their goal of providing scares or chills. Some of the tales manage to achieve something like catharsis – Cassandra Khaw’s tale manages to end on a moment of pitch-black, spite-riddled triumph, to name one.
Ultimately though, Christmas and Other Horrors is a fine collection of creepy festive tales that will appeal to a wide range of horror aficionados. Potentially one of the season’s best anthologies of horror stories, this is sure to please even the most particular of horror fans, and will ensure that anyone who appreciates the spooky side of the coldest season will have some enjoyable reading material for when the dark nights settle in…
Christmas and Other Horrors is out now from Titan Books.
