Tachyon tidbits featuring Jane Yolen, Mary Shelley, and Patricia A. McKillip

The latest reviews and mentions of Tachyon titles and authors from around the web.

Jane Yolen (photo: Jason Stemple), Mary Shelley (Richard Rothwell), and Patricia A. McKillip (Stephen Gold/Wikimedia Commons)

LILAC WOLF AND STUFF praises Jane Yolen’s THE EMERALD CIRCUS.

This is absolutely as much fun as the cover implies. Jane reimagines so many stories that we are familiar with. She takes sometimes real people, and adds something fantastic. How did Has Christian Anderson become such a beloved author of children’s tales? She has one about Queen Victoria and even Edgar Allen Poe.

She takes these stories and carves out a little piece and makes it her own. Her use of language was so enjoyable. She clearly can weave a story. I will be looking for more from her when my own must-be-read list finally dwindles.

Gabino Iglesias at LIT REACTOR includes Mary Shelley among 10 Female Authors Who Changed My Life.

Shelley made a big impact on me…twice. The first time, I was about thirteen and already a fan of Poe, Lovecraft, King, Laymon, and Stoker. Then came Shelley’s Frankenstein, which blew my mind. It was a strange, wonderful, weirdly emotional mix of science fiction and horror that moved me. It was also beautifully written and spoke to anxiety about scientific advances in ways my teenage brain couldn’t quite comprehend. The second time came many years later, when folks started telling me she hadn’t written the book. She was too young. She was too uneducated. In fact, they said, the corrections Percy Bysshe Shelley made to the original pages, which are housed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, “prove” that she didn’t write it. Well, fuck all that noise. Hearing that talk, which always came from white dudes who wanted to be writers, was more proof a woman can’t achieve anything without some dudebro doing everything in their power to minimize the achievement.

In an interview with THE QUIRKY BOOK NERD, young adult author Sarah Glenn Marsh discusses her inspirations.

Patricia McKillip is probably my biggest influence. Her writing is the strongest and most beautiful I’ve ever read, and I wish I had a style as elegant and mysterious as hers. If you’re not familiar with her work, here are some titles I love: Ombria in Shadow, Winter Rose, and THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD.

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on BEYOND FRANKENSTEIN: THE COMPLETE SUPERNATURAL SHORT FICTION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty