Strange Horizons Reviews, December 13-17

This week's Strange Horizons reviews kick off with Dan Hartland taking a look, and then another look, at the Jonathan Strahan-edited anthology The Best of Larry Niven, who surprises Dan by alternately validating his reputation as a purveyor of Analog-esque hard SF and complicating it.  Niall Alexander reviews YA author Michelle Paver's "arctic chiller" Dark Matter, which he lauds for its setting and for constructing an atmospheric yet ambivalent ghost story.  Finally, Richard Larson tackles not one but two zombie novels, this time on the literary end of the scale, with his review of Alden Bell's The Reapers are the Angels and Amelia Beamer's The Loving Dead, and in so doing makes only a tiny dent in the number of zombie-related books that have arrived on the magazine's doorstep since I've started as reviews editor.

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