mixed habitat & densely vegetated hiding places

This is an anthology of horror (and horror-adjacent/generally dark-themed) fiction and poetry by Black women. I picked it up because it includes a story by Cherene Sherrard, who wrote that pirate fantasy story I liked so much, as well as one by Sheree R. Thomas, the editor of the Dark Matter anthologies. But I figured since the trouble was taken to do an interlibrary loan for me, I might as well read the whole thing.

It was a mixed bag, as anthologies tend to be. There were some pieces I really liked, some that were fine but not that memorable, and some that were so poorly written or fundamentally misconceived that they were hard to get through. The range of skill levels was pretty dramatic. It actually felt a lot like reading everything in a fic exchange, where you get very polished and compelling work rubbing elbows with stories that read like the author has never written a story before. The copyediting was also not the greatest, with a lot of typos and unintended scene/line breaks. (I think the Dark Matter books may have spoiled me a bit, in the quality of both the writing and the editing.)

( discussion of selected works )

( list of included works )