The first pair of reviews for Jane Yolen’s forthcoming THE EMERALD CIRCUS are encouraging.

THE JOYCEAN
BOOKNERDERY praises the collection.

Personally, I love
short story collections. The talent and skill it takes to create an
entire story and fit it into a few pages honestly blows me away
sometimes. With Jane Yolen’s THE EMERALD CIRCUS, I didn’t know
what I was expecting, but regardless, it was well beyond my
expectations. Not only is her writing style engaging and captivating,
but the stories themselves are magical and fantastic to read. Every
story in this collection is a retelling or recreation of stories or
characters or historical figures many of us are familiar with, from
The WIZARD OF OZ, PETER PAN, and ALICE IN WONDERLAND to Edgar Allan
Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Hans Christian Andersen.

<snip>

I loved every moment of this book and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. It grabbed my attention and I found myself wanting more of these stories. It left me thinking of other legendary characters or people and other fairy tales or myths, wondering how they came to be, if the stories we’re familiar with were true or whether there was indeed magic involved. If you are a fan of science fiction or fantasy, the classics or poetry, fairy tales or children’s stories, this book has something for everyone. I give this book a solid 5★s! The book will be released on November 14^th, 2017 and I wholeheartedly recommend it!

Photo: Jason Stemple

INFINITE TEXT enjoys the book.

THE EMERALD CIRCUS is a great introduction to Jane Yolen as it incorporates works from various points in her writing career. This anthology includes all the stories that haunt us past childhood and stay with us in a collective imaginary space. Arthurian Legends, Children’s Literature, and 19^th Century American gothic poets share a fantastical quality that remains a point of comparison when reading contemporary literature. At the end of the collection of retellings, Yolen takes a few pages to explain how the idea for each of these stories came about.

<snip>

This story is just an example of the kind of excellent work that Yolen accomplishes by creating alternative possibilities in this collection of retellings. Such attention to detail is present in all the stories in THE EMERALD CIRCUS and it is a collection I would recommend to everyone.

For more info on THE EMERALD CIRCUS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story