I’ve been struggling with reading long-form fiction the last little while (picking up books and dropping them like they’re definitely not hot), so I figured why not pick up a collection of short stories and see if that works a bit better. I’m always sceptical of anything claiming to be the “best of” anything, but with a stacked author list like this one how could I go wrong? I skipped maybe 25/30% of the stories herein (some authors’ voices just don’t work for me and too hardcore sci-fi still isn’t my jam), but I was pleasantly surprised by quite a few of the stories herein - and some by authors who I hadn’t heard of, and now get to explore further! Stand out stories (in no particular order) include: “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” by P. Djélí Clark, which is speculative historical fiction at its BEST (all-caps required); Kelly Barnhill’s “Dreadful Young Ladies,” for its strange denizens who I consider perfectly lovely; “The Staff and the Stone” by Garth Nix, a classic example of good worldbuilding and sorcery; Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Starship and the Temple Cat,” an unexpected sci-fi fav that follows a ghostly cat, who turns out to be a much-needed hero; and Alex E. Harrow’s “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” wherein she exposes librarians for the witches they are, (the best sort). I don’t read widely enough in the territory of short speculative fiction to judge whether this small (but weighty) collection of tales is truly the “best” of the year, but there sure are some excellent tales herein! ( )

I especially liked Yoon Ha Lee's "The Starship and the Temple Cat." The other few stories in here that I found of some interest are

• Elizabeth Bear's "Okay, Glory"
• Darryl Gregory's "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth"
• Dave Hutchinson's "Golgatha"

Ursula LeGuin's "Firelight" was also of some interest, but really just as a coda to the Earthsea series. Other than that, and perhaps a couple of others, this anthology wasn't of much interest at all. Maybe it's generational and I'm just not attracted to current-day sci-fi. ( )

This last volume in this series and it's a pity. Many of these stories are really well written and I have no idea how anyone could really have narrowed down the Hugo short-list. In hindsight there were only a small few that I didn't re-read the second time around. I still adore "The Witches guide to escape.."
This was a book with stories that I enjoyed enough to want to buy the book so that I can re-read them again at my leisure ( )