So far only read:
-- The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall by Kaaron Warren, narrated by Kim Lakin-Smith - 2*
Offered by Tales to Terrify #54 podcast

hmmm... what to say.... the best I can do is a memory trigger because I don't have a strong opinion of the story. Like, what was the point?! A woman procures rare, sometimes dangerous dogs for buyers. It's a sad little world where dogs are neglected and women don't have a voice. She must conduct her business always saying her husband is off doing something else when in reality he is immobile and mute after an bad incident with a dog.

She doesn't really seem to care what happens to the dogs but she must like dogs because she owns some. I found it rather pointless but the narrator was lovely and I remained interested enough to make it to the end.

Why is the title about the Gaze dogs vs. the Vampire dogs!?

Another disappointingly average year-end wrap-up from Ellen Datlow and Night Shade Books. Datlow always seems to get the best from her contributors when she is putting together original anthologies, but most of the stories in these volumes so far simply leave me cold.

Three of the stories come from Datlow's own [b:Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy, and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe|3273427|Poe 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy, and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe|Ellen Datlow|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1267902241s/3273427.jpg|3309622], two of them based on "The Masque of the Red Death." In Suzy McKee Charnas' "Lowland Sea," a coterie of celebrities holes up in a mansion to escape the spread of the "red sweat." In John Langan's "Technicolor," a college professor examines Poe's story, tying it in with the journey of a Napoleonic soldier, to sinister ends.

The editor has also selected a story from her [b:Lovecraft Unbound|6505011|Lovecraft Unbound|Ellen Datlow|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255712365s/6505011.jpg|6696594]: In "The Crevasse," by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud, antarctic explorers discover ancient structures beneath the ice.

In Steve Eller's "The End of Everything," a young man in a world overrun by undead finds himself curiously unthreatened.

In Steve Duffy's "The Lion's Den," an unexplainable incident at a zoo may have world-changing implications.

"The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall," by Kaaron Warren, chronicles two sisters-in-law's quest for an exotic and dangerous breed of canine. Between this and [b:Slights|6555133|Slights|Kaaron Warren|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327966690s/6555133.jpg|6747729], this author is becoming a favorite.

In Carole Johnstone's "Dead Loss," a fishing boat picks up something very strange--something the sea wants back.

The arrival of a mysterious young girl causes upheaval in the ranks of a traveling circus in Nina Allan's "The Lammas Worm."

There are a few very good stories in here, more that are just fair. The less interesting stories have the unfortunate effect of bringing the whole experience down (the more of those one reads, the less patience one will tend to have with the next story, I find.) ( )

While I won't say that this book inspired many terror-producing moments, it is definitely an improvement over the first collection. The book opens once more with a summation of books, stories, etc. from 2009, some of which have already gone on my wishlist. It is followed by 17 stories (* indicates the ones I really enjoyed):

1. "Lowland Sea," by Suzy McKee Charnas
2. "The End of Everything," by Steve Eller
*3. "Mrs. Midnight," by Reggie Oliver
*4. "each thing I show you is a piece of my death," by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer
5. The Nimble Men, by Glen Hirshberg
6. What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night," by Michael Marshall Smith
7. "Wendigo", by Micaela Morrissette
8. "In the Porches of My Ears," by Norman Prentiss
9. "Lonegan's Luck," by Stephen Graham Jones
*10. "The Crevasse," by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud
11. "The Lion's Den," by Steve Duffy
12. "Lotophagi," by Edward Morris
13. "The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall," by Kaaron Warren
14. "Dead Loss," by Carole Johnstone
*15. "Strappado," by Laird Barron
16. "The Lammas Worm," by Nina Allan
*17. "Technicolor," by John Langan

Note the number of asterisks -- when I read Volume 1, I noted three standouts -- now we're up to five. So, not counting "Strappado," by Laird Barron (which I've already read and which is one of my favorite stories by him), that leaves four that are new to me. Hands down, the best story of this group is "each thing I show you is a piece of my death," which is related through a mishmash of different media forms. It is built around the idea of "the background man," who begins to show up embedded within a number of television shows, movies, etc., with no explanation for his presence. "Mrs. Midnight" spans two worlds -- London of the present, and the same city during the time of Jack the Ripper, with a theater connecting the two. "The Crevasse" would have been a perfect fit for Robert M. Price's The Antarktos Cycle, with its Lovecraftian style and Antarctic exploration theme. "Technicolor" took me totally by surprise, but I've come to expect good things from John Langan. A college professor takes his students through Poe's inspiration for "Masque of the Red Death," building the suspense until the very last moment.

While this anthology was not great, it's much better than the first volume of this series. Between the two, the stories that were standouts for me in this book were of much higher quality and had a better creep factor going on. ( )