The Dark : New Ghost Stories

Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately, not as good as Datlow's other anthologies
Review: I so badly wanted to give this book five stars. I can only offer my apologies to the many Datlow fans out there. And I'm one of them.

I've read all six of the fairly tale/fantasy anthologies that Ellen Datlow created with Terry Windling. Of those, I would give five stars to five out of the six volumes. They were all that good. Perhaps I simply have expecations carried over from those books which simply don't apply here. In those books the stories tended to have a point or a moral. That's the nature of many fairy tales. Obviously, this is much less so with ghost stories.

The problem I have with "The Dark" is not only that many of the stories didn't seem to have a point to make, it's that the book misrepresents itself on the cover. The image you see is of a cloudy night with bats flying eerily through the sky. It denotes gothic, damp and foggy stories about being lost in the woods, visiting an eastern European country, or a ghost story from a hundred years ago. To give Datlow credit, she explains in her introduction that these are "new" ghost stories that sometimes tell about spirits appearing in mid-day to demand their revenge. But she also states that she hopes the stories will keep readers awake at night.

And that, essentially, is what the problem is. Some of these stories are excellent literary character studies. For example, "The Trentino Kid," the first story in the book, is a good look at a clam digger having to confront the lack of direction in his life. It's a very good read. But it is not that scary. There are other stories that follow the same pattern - such as "The Silence of the Falling Stars" about a park ranger in Death Valley.

Then there the stories that just shouldn't be in the book at all. I have no idea why "The Dead Ghost" is even in this anthology. It comes off as an exercise from a college writing course. It's not that the writing is bad - it's not - it's that it's a single scene with no emotional build-up.

If you're looking for just good stories with an element of supernaturual, buy this book. If you're looking for something that keeps you awake at night, look elsewhere.