The World Fantasy Award  winning anthology Strange Tales is back with a third volume of seventeen weird or unusual tales, encompassing a variety of subjects and writing styles, but sharing a distinct character: good quality. Predictably, not every story pleases this reviewer to the same extent, but that’s just a matter of personal taste.

I will mention first the three stories which struck me as really outstanding. Nina Allan’s The Lammas Worm is an extraordinary piece told in an exceptionally captivating narrative style, revolving around old unwholesome myths and featuring a weird girl who joins a circus company, bringing  about trouble and tragedy.  Sanctuary Run by Daniel Mills,  where a young man seeking refuge from a snow blizzard becomes the guest of  a strange community, is dedicated to Robert Aickman and  does have an Aickmanesque tone, disquieting in a puzzling way and  totally fascinating, especially for the  things left  either unsaid or unexplained. I was also bewitched by Angela Slatter’s  Sister, Sister, a vivid, powerful fantasy where a former princess is abandoned by her husband for her wicked, inhuman sister.

Other stories in the book are really excellent. Reggie Oliver provides Countess Otho, a complex, supernatural tale depicting a number of dark events taking place in the world of theatre, while Adam Golaski (The Great Blind God Passed Through) uses elements of dark folklore to create an obscure but compelling story of terror and death. A freak car accident, a young woman lost in the middle of nowhere, a lonely house inhabited by two old maids whose long deceased father is somehow still present… those are the elements involved in Simon Strantzas’ Her Father’s Daughter, an elegant journey into the darkness.

A bunch of other tales are ‘simply’ good. In the offbeat Divan Method, Eic Stener Carlson effectively psychoanalyses a man whose life has been obsessed with geometric shapes. Elizabeth Brown contributes the enjoyable A Woman of the Party, an intriguing tale of deception and premonition, where the wife of a politicians loves, cheats , suffers and loses her newborn baby. Gary McMahon’s The Good, Light People constitutes an interesting example of religious horror, featuring a young girl having visions. John Gaskin’s Party Talk, although a rather flimsy ghost story is remarkable thanks to the author’s great storytelling ability.

In conclusion, another excellent collection of stories apt to delight not only the afficionados of horror and dark fantasy, but any lover of good fiction.

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