I waited for the first irl snowfall of the winter to begin this book to really get myself in the right mindset for some chilling tales. I wish this book could have met my enthusiasm halfway by being good.

I'm no stranger to short story collections, but I tend to opt for single-author books rather than anthologies because I find the latter tend to have a wider spread in quality between entries. Not really the case here (unfortunately). While I concede that each of the 13 stories (at least they got that right) clearly met the prompt of a central theme about cold temperatures and the scary things that can lurk in them, most simply didn't hold my interest. Entries that didn't feature supernatural elements felt like they were trying too hard for shock factor, and the ones that did were so camp they made me roll my eyes. Maybe each author was constrained by a limited wordcount (they all had pretty consistent lengths at least) and would have fared better with slightly more breathing room. I don't know.

I will at least call out my three favorites: Saturn by Frederick Street (excellent use of a title to instill dread if you know your Roman mythology), The Final Report on the Gerrard Report by Matt Dodge (I'm always a sucker for epistolary set in the Arctic Circle), and Cold Case by Neil Williamson (was not expecting a noir/detective case set in Scotland to slot into a collection like this so neatly). I won't say these three are strong enough to carry the book as a whole, but I wouldn't mind reading them again in a few years.