What I've Read: Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology

Birds are creepy, aren't they? From the poetry of Poe to the classic Hitchockian masterpiece The Birds, avian anxiety has long populated the horror medium.

Black Feathers, a new horror anthology selected by awesomely ubiquitous editor Ellen Datlow, adds its answer in the affirmative. The stories that populate these pages take on a wide variety bird species, including parrots, swallows, and, yes, the classic ravens, magpies, and crows. Each story is uniquely fraught with tension, offering new visions of the feathered fiends - some grim, some gory, and some gorgeously grotesque.

 Black Feathers includes stories from Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay and many others who deftly examine the multitudinous angles of avian horror. The writing styles and story lengths offer a great deal of diversity within the anthology; none of the stories run together and all of them add something essential to the collection. Black Feathers will doubtlessly find fans in its well-executed examination of the unsettling, liminal realm of the avian.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.