Read only these:

The Snow Pavilion by Angela Carter - DNF - I guess the author and I are not a good match. Her sentences don't flow for me and having to read the same sentence over and over again was no fun. The story starts out with a female poet meeting a female whose husband is out of town. They seem to do this often. They share a bed and the poet doesn't like waking up to all the perfect dolls staring at her. ... as far as I got.

Crow Girls by Charles de Lint - 2* - meh
It's a bit fairy-taleish which I've learned I'm not fond of. And, it's not really dark enough for my preferences. And, it's very angsty, it even caused eye rolling... One character is an artist and is painting the crow girls after a sighting. Her friend the fiddler is driving by, sees her lights on, stops by for coffee because he ran out. But it is 2AM! *eye roll* Maybe there are people like that out there but I don't know any.

It's hypothesized in this story that the "crow girls" show up when you need them. They spark something in the person that sees them. "Sometimes they blow bright the coals of a longing that can't ever be eased." So is everyone in town walking around all dreamy eyed? Nothing ever comes of this "stoking of the coals" but from what I understand he tells a lot of stories in this world, this may be the first story with the crow girls.

Opens with... People have a funny way of remembering where they've been, who they were. Facts fall by the wayside. Depending on their temperament they either remember a golden time when all was better than well. Better than it can be again, better than it ever really was: a first love, the endless expanse of summer vacation, youthful vigor, the sheer novelty of being alive that gets lost when the world starts wearing you down. Or they focus in on the bad, blow a little incident all out of proportion, hold grudges for years, or maybe they really did have some unlucky times, but now they're reliving them forever in their heads instead of moving on. But the brain plays tricks on us all, doesn't it? We go by what it tells us, have to I suppose, because what else do we have to use as touchstones? Trouble is we don't ask for confirmation on what the brain tells us. Things don't have to be real, we just have to believe they're real...

The above was interesting and I suppose the rest of the story plays off of this concept but seeing the correlation in the character's lives (which I called angsty above) wasn't easily done by me. Maybe the author is too poetic for me. Not ready to give up on him yet but getting there. ETA: Actually after a little more research I've decided to cut him lose.

The Witch's Heart by Delia Sherman - Ut-oh From the editor's intro, the story is based on the Neil Gaiman Sandman comic book series... I haven't read any of those but I'll give this short story a shot. // DNF You'd think I'd like it, a she-wolf, a witch, a cabin in the woods.... Unfortunately I couldn't get into it. I even re-started it once but I really don't like to be told stuff and then later, figure out what's going on. Sit in confusion until the author decides to tell you what their talking about. meh

O, Rare and Most Exquisite by Douglas Clegg - 2* It was a pleasant read but I can't decipher the ultimate meaning of the story. I can't decipher the metaphors. For that reason I can't say I liked it.

Caribe Magico by Gabriel García Márquez - 1* Translated from Spanish but it might as well been left in Spanish. I have no idea what that story was about.

Ursus Triad, Later by Kathe Koja & Barry N. Malzberg - WTF! How does that end up in The Year's Best? I struggled with the prose. The bears raping Goldilocks was relentless. I don't know what went over my head but it must of been a crap year for short stories for that one to end up in a Best of the Year anthology.

Not Waving by Michael Marshall Smith - 2* Way too long for what it offered and ultimately pointless. A guy has an emotional connection with a woman who is not his wife. His wife hates cats. Is this other lady a cat? They seem to imply it. He ended up not leaving his wife because she could not handle the breakup so he broke it off with the other woman. His wife feeds him a cat, the cat that seems to come around more now that he is cheating on his wife. It can't be the lady he cheated with because the cat was cooked up when he was with her. He does not leave his wife, instead he builds a family with her. Stupid!

The Witches of Junket by Patricia A. McKillip - ugh another DNF. I felt dropped into a group of people who knew things and talked amongst themselves without including their guest (the reader) in the conversation. Yeah I'm sure by the end it would all become clear but I like to be included from the go. I also couldn't get past the "talking fish".

Never Seen by Waking Eyes (1996) by Stephen Dedman - 3.5* - I was worried because it seems to start out as a story about a man obsessed with little girls and in the end it becomes clearer as to why he is and what he is doing. Thanks to a friendship with a vampire, who will be an 8 year old little girl forever, he gets some sweet revenge.

Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti - DNF I admit after my disappointment with the above stories, I may not have given this one much of a chance. But I suspect we are not a good match anyways. From what I read he is ambiguous which I’m not good with. ( )

Some were 5 star and others were 3 star so average of 4 stars. ( )

I really enjoyed this fantasy and horror collection a lot. It's the first in this series of anthologies I've read, and it won't be the last. Most of the stories in this collection fell around the four-star mark for me, but there were many that I rated the full 5 and some that rated as low as 2. My absolute favorites included:

- The Secret Shih Tan by Graham Masterton
- The Phoenix by Isobelle Carmody
- Crow Girls by Charles de Lint
- Beckoning Nightframe by Terry Dowling
- Angel by Philip Graham
- Not Waving by Michael Marshall Smith
- The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Suzannah Clarke
- Radio Waves by Michael Swanwick ( )

This acclaimed series, winner of numerous World Fantasy Awards, continues its tradition of excellence with scores of short stories from such writers as Michael Bishop, Edward Bryant, Angela Carter, Terry Lamsley, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A.R. Morlan, Robert Silverberg, Michael Swanwick, Jane Yolen, and many others. Supplementing the stories are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantastic fiction, Edward Bryant's witty roundup of the year's fantasy films, and a long list of Honorable Mentions-all of which adds up to an invaluable reference source, and a font of fabulous reading.