This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Map of Lost Places will be released on April 22, 2025.

I don’t read very much horror, but I really enjoy liminal space stories. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, so I was cautiously intrigued by The Map of Lost Places, a dark fantasy and horror anthology edited by Sheree Renée Thomas and Lesley Conner. But I’ve enjoyed plenty from both editors, and the table of contents was littered with authors I knew I liked, so I decided to give it a try. 

As I said, I don’t often read horror, and there are a couple reasons. First of all, I can be squeamish about gore and body horror. And honestly, that wasn’t much of an impediment to my enjoyment of this one. There is some of each, but not an extreme amount. But I also often struggle with the difference between horror story arcs and those in more familiar-to-me fiction. The inexorable march toward an untimely end certainly ratchets up the tension in the reader, and when it’s done exceptionally well, even I can appreciate it. But the times that horror really hits me hard are usually when it’s used either as a psychological deep dive into the mind of the lead or as a way to shine a harsh light on the ills of society. We see a little of both in The Map of Lost Places—though 20 of the 22 falling short of novelette length makes the former a little more difficult—but I often found myself wishing either to be pulled a little deeper into the stories or to be genuinely surprised by the way they develop. 

The anthology is not grouped in any obvious way, and I can think of few instances where I read two consecutive stories with especially similar approaches, which helps keep the anthology from feeling like too much of the same thing. Perhaps the most common sort of story is the classic “venture into a dangerous area, slowly realizing just how dangerous it truly is.” Those stand and fall on the writer’s ability to build the tension, and one story of this type is so expertly done as to be my favorite in the entire anthology. Codewalker by G.M. Paniccia imagines a world in which plugging into virtual reality programs is highly regulated, with safety concerns limiting the options to slick, corporate products. But the lead and a few online friends treasure any instances in which they come across hidden gems by basement coders. It’s dangerous, but they’re careful. Can the reader see where this is going? Of course. But a truly nightmarish beauty makes this one of the few stories in the anthology that I’d wake up the next morning still thinking about. It’s excellent. 

Depending on how you group stories, you could also make an argument that the actual most common type in The Map of Lost Places is the comeuppance story. Sometimes that’s on an individual level, with quick and vicious punishment of hubris, and sometimes it’s on a societal level—there’s certainly more than one tale of the supernatural striking out at humanity for environmental sins. These sorts of stories are pretty familiar, even for someone who doesn’t read much horror, and my most common response was just wishing I couldn’t see everything coming. But the quality of Fatima Taqvi’s writing in societal comeuppance tale You Have Eaten of Our Salt makes it stand above the others, reminding me in some ways of Shiv Ramdas’ Hugo finalist “And Now His Lordship is Laughing.” 

But the social commentary isn’t limited to comeuppance stories, and my favorite in my back-of-the-envelope taxonomy is the social commentary story about being trapped in an unpleasant situation. In Beth Dawkins’ Three Ways to Break You, it’s being literally and supernaturally trapped in a small town with little social mobility and a corrupt criminal justice system. On the other hand, in Vivian Chou’s Girlboss in Wonderworld, USA, it’s being metaphorically trapped in the race to achieve a certain sort of lifestyle. In the former, the lead is flailing against so many outside forces that it’s impossible to get out unscathed. The latter also has societal pressures aplenty, but it’s the lead who, in the face of a series of unfair expectations, responds with bargain after bargain that leaves her literally losing pieces of herself to sustain her lifestyle. Both are plenty compelling. 

There are also a handful of split timeline stories, and while those aren’t necessarily groundbreaking, there’s something about a split-timeline ghost stories with uncanny resonance between the present and past that really hits for me when executed well, and Silverheels by Rebecca E. Treasure really delivers. It’s an Old West/ghost town story about women fleeing from creepy, entitled men, and it’s executed well enough to make it my second-favorite in the whole anthology. Another split-timeline tale, When I Cowboy in Puuwaawaa by Ferdison Cayetano takes a more daring approach in the way it disorientingly blends the narratives together, and while the cleaner Silverheels clicked a little better for me, both are quality reads. 

Of course, there are some stories that aren’t afraid to get a little bit weird, perhaps none more than Rich Larson’s Place of Lost Stories, a disorienting and grotesque metafictional story that is at least in some ways about creating art, with a whole lot more under the surface. It’s one of those where I wanted a little bit more at the end, but it’s engaging throughout and shows the kind of ambition that I love to see in short fiction. Samit Basu’s Development/Hell is also willing to get a bit weird and meta, mashing up horror tropes in a haunted house story that shifts wildly from one iteration to the next. It’s another one that’s well worth the read. 

There are others that don’t neatly fit into any of the above categories, and there are lots in the anthology that I haven’t highlighted here—including a couple that I liked pretty well. But while there are plenty here that I found highly engaging and one that really stuck with me after reading, there are also a lot that just never clicked for me. Admittedly, most of my short fiction reading involves me picking and choosing individual stories out of a publication based on familiarity with the author or the degree to which the first few paragraphs grab me. It’s unsurprising that I won’t find as many favorites when reading cover-to-cover as when I pick and choose based on what looks like favorite potential. But The Map of Lost Places didn’t have quite as many standouts as I would’ve liked. There’s certainly plenty to make this worth picking up and reading a couple of stories. But there are also a lot that go about how you’d expect, and on the whole, it doesn’t hit the level of the magazines edited by either Thomas or Conner. 

Recommended if you like: horror anthologies.

Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Five Short Stories, which is a permanent square, and it’s Published in 2025, which will doubtless be a square on next year’s Bingo.

Overall rating: 13 of Tar Vol’s 20. Three stars on Goodreads.