Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition

Horton fittingly describes “lyricism” as the quality linking his selections for the best fantasy stories of 2006. The morosely poetic “A Fine Magic” by Margo Lanagan pits two attractive sisters against a spurned suitor’s wizardly wrath; Jeffrey Ford’s brilliantly understated “The Night Whiskey” is a dark fantasy gem about a rural village whose residents commune with the dead; M. Rickert’s dreamlike masterwork, “Journey into the Kingdom,” follows a forlorn man who becomes enamored with a mysterious painter and her fantastical history; Benjamin Rosenbaum’s contemplative “A Siege of Cranes,” arguably the anthology’s most poetic and profoundly moving entry, depicts an improbable journey of retribution across a devastated wonderland of magic and myth. (July )