Reading it piecemeal but so far I'm impressed. A couple of my all time favourite stories have come from this anthology. Ramsey Campbell's 'Down There', and Brian Lumley's, 'The Thin People' are real stand-out stories so far.

Edit: Have read all that I can remember, may have missed one or two since it's a while since I picked it up again, but I can honestly say it was a very enjoyable read with some absolutely wonderful stories. Another one to add to the stand-out stories list above is the final story about the invisible man by Kim Newman, 'The Chill Clutch of the Unseen'. Very good anthology.
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My review of this book can be found on my Youtube Vlog at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jRToPbZXCA

Enjoy! ( )

This book, The Mammoth Book of Monsters, was great. Although it was not very 'horror'-y, it was still a very good anthology with many different talented writers. Each and every story had it's own feel to it, and had satisfying endings. The monsters in this anthology were varied. From tiny monkey things to mutated goo monsters to Godzilla! Godzilla's Twelve Step Program was particularly good, same with Rawhead Rex. The stories were all easy to understand and follow (except for The Medusa, but the foggy atmosphere does wonders for that story) and there was a good mix of funny and seriousness. Once again, a very good anthology, and I recommend it to anyone looking for something interesting to read. ( )

I've decided I need to read more anthologies. I found a number of The Mammoth Book of... anthologies on sale and picked them up. I started with The Mammoth Book of Monsters simply because it seems to be the least reviewed.

I enjoy reading anthology introductions and was looking forward to what Stephen Jones would have to say as he is such a well known and respected editor of horror fiction. I stopped reading it because it seemed to serve mainly as a laundry list of the monster in each story: "'Blah Blah' is an example of a modern vampire story, followed by So and So's story 'Blah Blah' which deals with werewolves." I'm surprised in all his years of editing, Stephen Jones isn't better at writing introductions. Starting the book with spoilers for each of the stories in the collectionis not a good idea. Ah well, on to the stories.

Unfortunately the first story in the book, 'Visitation' by David J. Schow, got things off to a bad start. The story felt fifty years out of date. A sort of modern version of William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder stories that just didn't work for me. Things weren't much better with Ramsey Campbell's 'Down There'. A story with a promising setup and fine writing that is just missing something at its core.

Things picked up a bit with Scott Edelman's 'The Man He Was Before', a sort of I Am Legend take-off, except the survivors are a dysfunctional family. Works better than I am probably making it sound.

From there (almost) each story was an improvement on the previous one. I really enjoyed Michael Marshall Smith's 'Someone Else's Problem', Sydney J. Bounds 'Downmarket' and Kim Newman's 'The Chill Clutch of the Unseen'. But the problem is that the good stories weren't quite good enough to make up for the poor ones and there were too many stories that were just so-so.

Even the stories by very good, known writers tended to be far from their best. For instance, Clive Barker (one of the best short horror writers I've ever read) is represented by 'Rawhead Rex' one of the cheesiest stories in his excellent Books of Blood collections.

It's doubly disappointing because a collection of monster stories offers such a wide canvas. In one way or another almost any horror story could fit that requirement. So why isn't this one better? A selection of okay stories and duds with an exceptional story or three does not make for a very good collection. And front loading the collection with two disappointments kind of affected my view of the book.

I will read further 'Mammoth Horror' volumes, but would be hard pressed to recommend this one. ( )