Birds have always held a fascination to writers of the weird and the uncanny. It might be the uneasy relationship shared between humans and our prevalent feathered friends, it may be that we simply understand that these creatures are likely to be the evolutionary ancestors of dinosaurs. Some of the earliest examples of classic horror stories are based around birds – I’m thinking specifically of ETA Hoffmann’s owl-like haunter of children, The Sandman, how The Birds by Daphne du Maurier made the familiar sight of our feathered friends unsettling, or Edgar Allan Poe’s supernatural narrative poem The Raven – so there seems to be a rich vein of unheimlich to be mined here.

Datlow’s anthologies are never less than entertaining and Black Feathers adds to her array of rightly-celebrated titles. There are sixteen entries (one being a poem), all of the highest quality, although I should also add that – as with all anthologies – some stories worked better for me than others. For example, one of the tales – M John Harrison’s Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring – happens to be one of my favourite short stories of all time, and has been since I first encountered it in the mid 90s. The second reprint – The Obscure Bird – originally appeared in Black Static in 2011, and I had remembered how its seemingly straightforward prose bore all the unsettling hallmarks of Nicholas Royle at his best.

As far as I’m aware, all the other stories are original to this book. There’s a brilliant contribution from Joyce Carol Oates, heartbreaking and disturbing in equal measure. In Alison Littlewood’s The Orphan Bird, Arnold, an ornithological painter, reflects on childhood traumas caused by bullying and we get to see a startling insight into his disturbed world now. Blyth’s Secret by Mike O’Driscoll is an absolute cracker of a story, in which the narrator, Wil Blevins, ekes out a lonely existence in an isolated Welsh forest, close to where a young boy has gone missing. There’s a deep thread of discomfort running through this one, and the subtext is subtle and devastating, exactly the right side of ambiguous. Blevins’ jackdaw friend, Blyth, adds an element of psychology that brings to mind Norman Bates and his taxidermy obsession.

The Crow Palace by Priya Sharma tells the story of Julie and her twin sister Pippa, who fled the family home years before, following the apparent suicide of their mother. Pippa has cerebral palsy and Julie has to face the selfishness of her past, which is also entwined with mythology and a glorious slice of avian folk horror. This is a great way to end the book, finishing on a real high, with such a pitch dark tone, embodying the theme of the collection perfectly.

Black Feathers is a wonderful anthology, filled with stories from the best writers working today. Whilst I didn’t find every single story to be as engaging as the rest, there’s no denying the quality of the writing, and so this is a book that is easy to recommend. I’m sure even the most discerning reader of dark fiction will find much to love.