I received a digital ARC of this book from Netgalley.

All short story collections are a mixed bag. The only thing these have in common is a slight tendency to be dark and messed up, and that they were edited by Ellen Datlow. It's a really good mix, with several surprises.

Home by the Sea by Pat Cadigan- A dark story about vampires and trying to get along at the end of the world. Some people fall into deep ennui, some do anything for sensation, including watching torture and being tortured themselves. It's always seemed to me that the people who survive the apocalypse might have it worse than those who died, and this story seems to agree with me.

The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson- This one is wonderful and sad. Dogs begin to talk and most people can't deal with the sudden commentary from formerly voiceless pets. The dogs are mostly abandoned and often killed, but one person does what she can to save them.

The Bedroom Light by Jeffrey Ford- I remember almost nothing about this story, and I can't find a synopsis online. I think there's a cat that has kittens unexpectedly? For me, one of the weaker ones in the collection.

The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven by Laird Barron-I'd read this one before, and I have mixed feelings about it. A woman runs from her abusive husband with her female lover, waiting for him to be put away so she and her daughter can start over. But her girlfriend finds a coyote or wolf skin in the woods behind their cabin, and starts to transform in terrifying ways. I wanted the woman to have a happy ending, but sometimes that's just not in the cards for horror protagonists.

The Crow Palace by Priya Sharma- A story about discovering family secrets and wishing you hadn't. Julie comes home after her father dies. Her sister is older, but the bird table outside has been built on, and the corvids seem to have a personal interest in her. This one really gets into the creepy otherness of birds, especially corvids, who should not be as smart as they are.

Some Strange Desire by Ian McDonald- A member of a hidden society of shapeshifting hermaphrodites needs to save their sibling from a rare disease peculiar to their species. I really like this one, but it's a little slight.

The Lepidopterist by Lucius Shepard- This is another one I don't remember clearly. A boy and his father work as wreckers scavenging from ship wrecks. One day, they meet a man with very strange butterflies that spin giant cocoons that hatch human sized butterflies. Creepy, but not one of the stories that really stuck with me.

Bird Count by Jane Yolen- A woman in a passionless marriage meets a giant, sexy hawk man who makes sweet love to her. Not what I was expecting from Jane Yolen, who I still tend to think of as a children's writer, but this is pretty good, maybe even sexy if you're into that.

Anamorphosis by Caitlín R. Kiernan- Very classic Kiernan. This might have been her first published work, but I'm not sure. Has the dreamlike, or I should say nightmare like atmosphere and the hints of transformation and loss that characterize so much of her writing. The atmosphere sticks with me more than the plot, which I think is about a kidnapped child and maybe fairies.

The Hortlak by Kelly Link- Kelly Link is a short fiction darling, but her work is very hit and miss for me. A lot of it has people who accept very weird circumstances with strangely nonchalant attitudes. This one has a guy who lives in a convenience store near a trench to the underworld. His boss constantly wears new and ever more absurd sets of pajamas. Not my favorite.

In the Month of Athyr by Elizabeth Hand- There's a long history in feminist sci-fi of contemplating what men might do if women ever become really unavailable to them. Lots of people fear that, faced with women who refuse to make themselves smaller or subservient to men, at least some men will create their own pseudo-women who do just as they're told. This story has a pretty high bar to entry, so much so that I feel like it detracts from the actual plot.

Precious by Nalo Hopkinson- This is a version of Diamonds and Toads by Perrault, although I don't remember any toads in this one. There are a ton of versions of the fairy tale, my favorite of which is probably Jennifer Murdley's Toad by Bruce Coville. This one is good, if a bit short.

Daniel’s Theory About Dolls by Stephen Graham Jones- Stephen Graham Jones is an undeniably talented writer. He never writes the story you're expecting, which is alternately amazing and frustrating. All of the relationships in his work are troubled and varying degrees of unhealthy, where a man finds out what's really behind his brother's obsession with dolls.

The Mysteries by Livia Llewellyn- A woman gives birth (literally) to a nightmare carnival in order to defeat her grandmother, who is something like a vampire or ghoul. Llewellyn is another writer who is hit and miss for me. She's very interested in women's bodies and their potential for transformation and horrific eroticism. I imagine some people will like this more than I did.

Dancing Men by Glen Hirshberg- A man leads a group of young adults on a holocaust history tour.
While in Prague, he faints and remembers his grandfather. When he has a kid, he took part in a Navajo ritual for his grandfather, and he comes to believe that his grandfather intended something pretty sinister with this ritual. This is pretty good, with strong sensory details of the desert, but I wonder why grandpa's nurse was willing to help with the creepy ritual.

The Office of Doom by Richard Bowes- I work in a library and have for several years, so maybe that's why I enjoyed this story. Don't try to request the Necronomicon through inter-library loan, folks. I feel like librarians are pretty well prepared for eldritch incursions, but that's just me.

Black Nightgown by K. W. Jeter- I don't really remember this one either. I think there's a young man in love with a young widow, but she's still in love with her dead husband? I recall a very melancholy mood, but not much else.

A Delicate Architecture by Catherynne M. Valente- This one is another fairy tale retelling, this time from the perspective of the witch with the gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel. It's great, among my favorites in the collection. Why did the witch build her house out of gingerbread? The answer is a brilliant bit of Valente's imagination, and it made me hungry.

The Goosle by Margo Lanagan- Another one I'd read before, but it retains its power. A dark version of Hansel and Gretel featuring rape and cannibalism, this one is a lot to take. But the writing is unique and fascinating, and it ends on a note of hope and the possibility that even the most hurt can make a better future for themselves.

Eaten (Scenes from a Moving Picture) by Neil Gaiman- Gaiman references this story in the forward to his story collection Smoke and Mirrors, but the story doesn't actually appear there. For my money, this is pretty minor Gaiman, doing something that he does better in other work. It's creepy, but the faux screenplay directions detract more than they add, in my opinion.

Teratisms by Kathe Koja- Even reading a synopsis has not brought this one back to my memory. A brother and sister travel around taking care of their monstrous younger brother. I retained nothing about this one, so take that however you want.

The Monsters of Heaven by Nathan Ballingrud- A man loses his son in a park and faces the wreckage of his marriage. Then he finds, like many others, an inhuman creature that people call angels. This one is deeply sad, and reminds me very strongly of Nick Cutter's The Deep, although that one is much more overtly horror.

That Old School Tie by Jack Womack- Another one that I remember absolutely nothing about. Can't find a synopsis online easily. Is it good? Who knows!

Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates by Pat Murphy- My memories of this one are pretty vague. After nuclear war but before all the humans are dead, a roboticist works on making robots to live on in the post apocalypse.

Overlooking by Carol Emshwiller- I got nothing, guys.

Sonny Liston Takes the Fall by Elizabeth Bear- This is gorgeous, a story of hope and sacrifice told by the personification of Las Vegas. I don't really know anything about boxing, but that doesn't matter too much. Sonny Liston is the sacrifice required to make Muhammad Ali, the loser whose loss is a secret win, even if he can never enjoy it.

Technicolor by John Langan- Here's another one I've read before, or maybe I read it first here and then again somewhere else. I don't know. But it's a lovely, disturbing story of Poe's The Masque of the Red Death and it's imagined inspiration. The period detail is great, and the lecturer's voice is very authentic.

The Sawing Boys by Howard Waldrop- This is supposed to be a take on The Musicians of Bremen. A bunch of city gangsters plan to rob a rural village, then decide not too. It's full of 1920's slang, so if you like that sort of thing you might enjoy this. It didn't really work for me.

Shay Corsham Worsted by Garth Nix- I read this one before as well, in another Datlow anthology. Old man Shay never veers from his routine, which is good. Lots of people die when his routine is disrupted. It's fantastic, among my favorites with it's rising tension and frustration as people fail to take the person who knows the most about the danger seriously.

Seventy-Two Letters by Ted Chiang- This is history if Lamarck was right and Darwin was wrong, a beautiful story about science and humanity and a young man brave enough to discard the eugenic beliefs of his colleagues. A great end to the collection.

Edited by sounded like something I would really like but, I don’t think it’s for me. It’s not this book but me. It just wasn’t what I have been looking for lately. I don’t have anything negative to say about this book. Just that it wasn’t for me.

This collection is proof that I should continue to pick up whatever I can that has passed through Ms. Datlow's approval desk. You'd think that for such a lengthy collection there'd be a decent amount of misses, but I have to say that I enjoyed each story in this collection. Ellen Datlow continues to be a titan in the editing scene, and her choices here feel so coherent and flow so well, even for a best-of un themed collection. A few times in this collection, Datlow mentions the difficulty of selling collections without a theme, I certainly hope this one is an acception, because I'd love to have more of them. Definitely recommended for fans of horror and speculative fiction, there's something here for everyone.

There are twenty-eight Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror stories in this Anthology, and though many didn't hit the mark for me after the first read, I look forward to returning to them in the future.

Ellen Datlow is a well known and respected Editor; I am always thrilled to read anything edited by her.

Here are a few of my favorites from EDITED BY

’The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven’ - by Laird Barron

’The Crow Palace’ – by Priya Sharma – Love it!

’The Lepidopterist’ - by Lucius Shepard

’Precious’ - by Nalo Hopkinson

’Daniel’s Theory About Dolls’ - by Stephen Graham Jones. – Creepy Good!

’The Mysteries’ - by Livia Llewellyn. – Love this opening sentence - ’It is that unnamable time of a late December morning, that nighttime hour that bleeds into tired dawn.’

’Dancing Men’ - by Glen Hirshberg – Heartbreaking and one of the best short stories in this anthology.

’A Delicate Architecture’ – by Catherynne M. Talent

’Sonny Liston Takes the Fall’ - by Elizabeth Bear

Thank you, NetGalley and Subterranean Press, for loaning me an eGalley of EDITED BY in exchange for an honest review.

Like any anthology, your mileage may vary! The introduction to this collection is appropriate in its awe of Ellen Datlow's work - she has edited an impressive array of work, crossing genres and collecting a fantastic assortment of authors new and old. Given this background, I wanted to like this collection much more than I did - I enjoyed the few authors I seek out no matter where I read (Catherynne M. Valente, Nalo Hopkinson), but the rest missed the mark.
One of the struggles with crossing so many genres is a lack of connective genre-tissue in an anthology, but I also think the level of body horror and other darker themes hit differently in the middle of a pandemic. Perhaps readers who are seeking out horror in these times will appreciate the collection more than I did.
Overall, a fine read, particularly for those who are comfortable picking and choosing what to read from an anthology rather than taking the holistic approach.

Ellen Datlow is one of the best fantasy editors out there, and this anthology only proves that once again. A variety of stories to fascinate, enthrall, and draw the reader in as always.

I read anthologies to freshen my reading and find new authors....or new to me....that I can add to my TBR list.

Typically, an anthology will have a theme, weddings, funerals, prom night, etc. This one has a slightly different theme, all stories have been edited by Ellen Datlow, an immensely famous name in sci fi/ fantasy genre literature that ensures each story in this book will be a great one. Add to that, authors famous for their book length stories giving us some very good, condensed length stories that will definitely having you checking out some back libraries for more. There are no "duds" in this anthology. Read it and I guarantee you will be sharing with your reading circle.

Many thanks to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for the ARC!

Edited By is a fantasy and horror anthology compiled from previous works Ellen Datlow has edited. I had never heard of Datlow before picking up this book, but I loved the idea of celebrating an editor in the industry. I feel that editors in general are kind of ignored in the reading world when they do some of the most important work. Readers get to learn about Datlow in the introduction by Gary K. Wolfe and in an interview with her written by Gwenda Bond. I also loved reading Datlow's blurbs after each short story, which explained where and why she originally published it. I felt I got to know her a little even from those short sections. I'm so glad I now know about Datlow and I intend to check out some of her other anthologies.

The collection itself contains thirty stories that almost fully cover the vast range of the genres. This is probably what surprised me the most about the book. I'm used to anthologies that focus on a particular audience or a specific subgenre. This collections has some of everything. There are stories geared toward adult, YA, and middle grade readers. There is urban fantasy, more traditional fantasy, fairy tale retellings (my favorite!), sci-fi, Lovecraftian horror, erotica, literally everything. I think that most any fantasy and horror reader will able to find at least one story they love in here. However, this big range does mean that it's unlikely a reader will enjoy every story, which is a problem I ran into it.

Short story collections are often a mixed bag for me, and that was the case here. However, there were several that I really loved. As I mentioned, there were several fairy tale retellings, and two of them were my absolute favorite stories in the collection. "Precious" by Nalo Hopkinson is a retelling of "Diamonds and Toads," which I was so happy to find. It's not a tale that gets retold often, and I loved Hopkinson's take on it. She focuses on what happens after the main character is enchanted to have money and jewels come out of her mouth when she speaks. Catherynne M. Valente's "A Delicate Architecture" is a retelling of "Hansel and Gretel" that tells the backstory of the witch. Valente writes in a beautiful fairy tale style, and the fact that it was a retelling took me by surprise. It doesn't become clear until the end. Other standout stories were "The Crow Palace" by Priya Sharma, "Bird Count" by Jane Yolen," and "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" by Kij Johnson. That last one in particular was haunting. It's one that will really make the reader think about how humans treat animals.

Unfortunately, other than these few stories, I was fairly indifferent to the rest. I was a little disappointed with the Neil Gaiman story. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him before, but this one is styled as a screenplay, which I just found tedious. There were several stories that I just skimmed through. It's not that any of the stories were bad; a lot of them just didn't interest me when I read the first few pages. However, I'm sure that plenty of other people will enjoy the ones that weren't my thing.

Overall, Edited By is a collection that holds something for everyone and is a wonderful celebration of an important editor in the world of fantasy and horror literature. Even though not all of the stories were for me, I found some great stories and new authors I want to check out.

Ellen Datlow's editing work in horror is lengthy and well-known, having edited a vast number of authors including people like Ted Chiang, Neil Gaiman, and Caitlin R. Kiernan. "Edited By" is a large collection of these works that she has edited, put together by Ellen Datlow. It showcases the large swath of subgenres in horror that Datlow can handle, and the light touch of her hand with each other's turn of phrase and language.

Unfortunately, this work lacks something important: Ellen Datlow's own voice. Each story comes with a very short post-script by Datlow talking about the work, but usually only about the collection it belonged to and a brief compliment of the author. This anthology would have been better served, and much more cohesive, had Datlow elected to write a bit more in-depth about each story or author. A bit of analysis on her own hand wouldn't go amiss, or more storytelling about the history behind the work's fruition or the relationships between authors and editor.

Additionally, because this anthology is not organized in chronological order, it means that the changes in Datlow's editing style and genre is abandoned and extremely difficult for the reader to grasp. Several stories from the early 90s that needed better editing are in the latter half of the book, and some of the best from the latter 2000s are in the front half. Although this book is themed via Datlow, it lacks a lot of internal organization and thought to pull it together. Its success most rides on the talent of each of those individual authors and their stories rather than how "Edited By" itself is put together.

This anthology is one of many produced by veteran fiction editor Ellen Datlow, whose forty year career has been long and impressive, and whose impact across many genres is immeasurable. Unfortunately, her tastes and mine have almost never aligned, and so this anthology was absolutely a bust for me. I requested it because of how many familiar authors contributed, but I should have realized that their contributions would veer closer to horror - a genre I do not care for at all - than to the fantasy I prefer.

It got off to a terrible start: the first story read like your standard literary fiction (another genre I have no taste for) of a marriage falling apart with apathy being the main feeling, but to this it added a gut-churning element of body horror that actually made me have to go lie down because I felt sick and lightheaded. Perhaps this is how Datlow intended to weed out the weak among her readers? At any rate, despite having no desire to continue, I feel obligated to finish the books I request from NetGalley, and so I did.

The rest of the stories did not leave me sick to my stomach, but they didn’t leave me wanting more either. With each story I finished, I was relieved to be that much closer to done. The general atmosphere was of reading literary fiction with a dose of the fantastic, usually in a very dark shade. Most stories left me numb or indifferent to both the stories’ events and endings (when there was an actual, closure-providing ending). I spent a lot of time not completely sure what was going on in these stories, and not caring enough to expend the effort to figure it out.

The stories I liked best (which really felt more like the ones I disliked the least) were Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Delicate Architecture,” Nalo Hopkinson’s “Precious,” Pat Murphy’s “Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates.” My least favorite stories were “Home by the Sea,” and “Black Nightgown.” I was also deeply unimpressed by the Gaiman piece, even though his name was one of the ones which drew me to this anthology (to an extent disproving her assertion in her interview that a big name “someone like Neil Gaiman” will not increase sales - though I would not have bought this book anyway - I would’ve read it from the library by preference).

A problem with this book is that because Datlow’s editing crosses several genres, so do the pieces contained therein, meaning that what they really have in common is that they were all pieces Ellen Datlow liked enough to pay for at some point in her career, and unless a reader’s tastes perfectly align with hers, there will be more unappealing stories in this anthology than average, simply because genre fiction readers tend to like their own genres best, and while all of these stories share some commonalities (dark, kind of boring when not gruesome, full of sex that if you wrote it in a notebook the FBI would come knocking at your door looking for bodies), very few people have dark and dull with FBI-worrying sex as their favorite genre. What’s funny is that in the interview in the end Datlow acknowledges the difficulty of selling non-themed anthologies, which is essentially what this is.

I have no idea to whom I would recommend this anthology. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t.

Excellent collection of stories. Ellen Datlow has an eye for unique tales, and she hasn't let me down with this volume. You know, if you see her name as editor on a book, exactly what you're going to get. What you get is greatness, and stories thst you will remember. Excellent

This is a fantastic anthology filled with some of the best of previous anthologies from Ellen Datlow. I think this belongs on any horror reader's shelves.

I tried to read this book and did not enjoy the subject matter or writing style. This is not preferred genre.

Collection of stories from anthologies she’s edited. She’s done so many and selected enough of a variety here that it’s hard to say there’s any theme, though she does like horror, and there are a lot of different varieties of sexualized horror, including sexual abuse, especially in the first half. I enjoyed the last two, Shay Corsham Worsted (a sly horror/spy mashup) by Garth Nix, and Ted Chiang’s amazing Seventy-Two Letters.

Every anthology put together by Ellen Datlow has been excellent. Every anthology put together by Subterranean has also been excellent. This is no exception! Best of both worlds. There is a diverse variety of excellent stories here that span Datlow's career as an editor. I really appreciated her notes after each story that provide honest insights. This is one of the best anthologies she's put together and I recommend it highly.

I've been reading anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow for years so I was beyond thrilled to see that Subterranean Press is putting out a collection of some of her favorite stories.

The stories cover a wide variety of speculative fiction and decades of Datlow's career. The stories are all high quality - exactly what you'd expect. It was a treat to reread stories from anthologies I have and to discover hidden gems.

The surprising parts are her very frank comments after the story. I love that she spills some tea about authors and publishers- nothing career wrecking, just fun anecdotes.

Not surprisingly, this is a very strong collection of stories in a variety of genres. Never hearing of Datlow before, I'm very impressed. I'm going to seek out some of her other work right away. Recommended.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

I haven't had much luck with anthologies lately so I was glad to find an exception in EDITED BY. I remember Datlow from OMNI (I was a subscriber until it went New Age) but this collection is not limited to those glory years. She went on to a full career of editing after that, and what we have here is a looong collection of her handpicked best (I'm three stories in as I write this and my Kindle still says I have over 8 hours to go). I didn't want to finish the entire volume before reviewing it, since it's clearly a top-notch collection. Definitely recommended for summer reading, quarantine or not.

Review Copy

If someone put you on a quiz show and asked you to name even five book editors, could you do it? Could you name editors that weren't authors themselves? I'm not sure that I could without a lot of prep time. In fact, the only editor to ever jump to the front of my mind is Ellen Datlow.

Maybe it's because she's been in the business of editing manuscripts for 40 years. Possibly, it could be that I've read most of her BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR and much of our tastes align. Perhaps she's just a damn fine editor.

EDITED BY contains Ellen's stories. Well over 600 pages of wondrous stories by the likes of Laird Barron and Jane Yolen to name a couple. Each story is unique. If you don't happen to like one, move on to the next. But be sure to at least try each one. Like all of Ellen Datlow's books you're bound to find an author you had never before read, thus opening a whole new world of books to you.

Enjoy!

I am a long time reader of anthologies edited by Datlow. She is an expert editor. I always enjoy the stories and frequently find new (to me) authors.

In this anthology she brings together a diverse selection of short stories.

I found this book to be well worth the read and highly recommend it.

I was given a free ARC. I am leaving my honest opinion.