This is another short story collection that just did not work for me. Here I made it around 40% through before putting it down. I found the retellings a bit too on the nose while the language did not work for me. While there is nothing wrong with these stories, they just did not excite me in the least - and I don't want to be reading books that don't excite me or give me something new.

“‘I have had the love of children from all over the world because of my stories. A child’s love is the perfect love, for it is given with a whole heart. That love will outlast me a hundredfold. And it will outlast you as well.’”

I received a free e-copy through NetGalley from the publishers at Tachyon Publications. I love fairytale retellings, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about Jane Yolen.

The Emerald Circus is a collection of short stories inspired by fairytales, legends, and folklore including The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table, among others.

This is kind of a mixed bag, and I wish I had enjoyed it more. While I did like a handful of the stories, I also struggled to get through some of them, and there was nothing in it I absolutely couldn’t live without. Usually in a collection, one or two stories will hit me pretty hard, and that never happened here. The funny thing is that I’m not sure why. They’re very well-written. Aside from a few editing typos, Yolen has a beautiful prose-voice, and she’s obviously perfected her craft over the years. I’m a little confused about who the audience for this book is. I went in thinking it was for children/middle grade, because that’s what I’d heard about Jane Yolen, but I think I can say it’s emphatically not for kids. Many of the themes are much darker or more sexual, and even the writing itself is difficult at times. I’m hesitant to even call it a YA collection, but I think it’s somewhere on the spectrum between YA and adult.

I did like some of the stories. The first is a strong retelling of “The Snow Queen” with a twist as Hans Christian Andersen as the main character that was very enjoyable. I always enjoy Alice in Wonderland stories (of which there are three), but they don’t bring anything particularly new to the table. My favorite was easily the title story, “The Emerald Circus”, which pulls in some Wizard of Oz mythology. The story takes a rather meandering look at Dorothy’s history in Kansas and how she gets blown away by a tornado and joins the circus. I can see why it doesn’t work for a lot of people though because the story isn’t really about Dorothy, and the circus barely features. If anything, it’s a story about wanting more, and while it takes a while to get to its point, the message really resonated with me.

I didn’t care for “Lost Girls” at all. While I’d love a feminist version of Peter Pan, and I support the utility of strikes and picketing, the story only reinforces that girls can’t fight pirates; they can only be captured by them. “Evian Steel” unfortunately has the underlying message that menstruation is unclean and “The Quiet Monk” that homosexuality is wrong, and I just don’t appreciate references like that in my fantasy that go unchallenged. They’re small things, but they represent much bigger and more problematic worldviews, and they can really kill a story. The rest of the collection is just kind of… boring. “A Knot of Toads” has a cool premise but spends most of the story wallowing in darkness, and “Evian Steel” is unnecessarily long and lacks action (especially for an island full of women who make swords).

There are two stories about classic writers that stand out if only for their change in topic. I love the idea of incorporating figures like this into the rest of our collective mythology which, in a way, we already have. The Edgar Allan Poe story doesn’t quite take off, but I loved the Emily Dickinson one, which is surprising because I usually can’t buy into aliens unless they’re the premise of a story. (As a premise, fine, then I know what I’m getting into, but as a way to explain bad plot choices, absolutely not.) It’s lovingly written though, and Dickinson makes for a clever, sympathetic main character, the realest in the entire collection. I would read a whole book about her. All in all, this isn’t as good as I was expecting, but I’m still interested to read more of Yolen’s work. I have The Devil’s Arithmetic waiting on my shelf, which is no guarantee of reading it soon, but someday.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

These stories just didn't work for me. I've liked some of Yolen's work in the past and I love this genre, but I didn't find the stories captivating or memorable.

I was stuck between 3.5/4 stars so this is getting an odd 3.75 stars.

This is an anthology of stories that you may be familiar with. They are twisted fairy tales and stories based on real people like Queen Victoria. The characters appear multiple times throughout different stories with Alice appearing the most.
Dorothy and Alice share multiple instances including the twisted circus Dorothy gets transported to instead of the magical land of Oz and a different story where they share stories over tea.

I was expecting this to wow me and I do think the cover is gorgeous but it was under whelming in the end. A good 2/3 of the stories I really enjoyed but that last 1/3 was boring. The ones I did like stuck with me though. Some of the poems were okay but I didn't care for most.

The stories or people Yolen touches on that I remember are:
Beauty and the Beast
The Snow Queen
Alice in Wonderland
The Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan
Queen Victoria
The Raven
King Arthur
Robin Hood

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of the ebook for a fair and honest review.

This collection of short stories from Jane Yolen is awesome! Her writing is hauntingly beautiful and she takes some well known fairy tales and stories and spins them in a whole knew way. I would recommend this for any lover of fantasy!

I honestly could just not get into this book. I am all for retelling of old stories and everything, but this just always seemed to be depressing. It just didn't drag me in at all. I pretty much ended up just skimming.

A fascinating collection of mismatched tales some fractured fairy tales some de-constructed literature and some spin-offs from well-known stories a truly delightful and eclectic mix. Jane Yolen has been one of my favorite writers of fantasy fiction for quite some time. Merlin , Alice, Dorothy, Peter Pan and Emily Dickinson all have some sort of special place in the collection. This is truly a wonderful treat to read through. I particularly love the very first story in the collection - I will cherish it.

**Thank you NetGalley for another winner!**

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.

Then she has ones like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and even Peter Pan. The Peter Pan one was my favorite.

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.

Nice collection of short stories based on old fairy tales and folklore. Some were darker in theme than others-so I wouldn't recommend to any children under sixteen.
I will say though that Yolen is a very skilled and brilliant author, and I will continue to check out her work from here on out.
I would like to thank Jane Yolen and Tachyon Publications for the opportunity to read and review this wonderful collection of short stories.

I’ve been a fan of Jane Yolen since long before the current vogue for urban fantasy and fairy tale retelling. So I was excited to read this collection. All the stories have been previously anthologized, so I found I’d already read a few, but most of them were new to me and all of them were lovely. Highly recommended!
This review was based on an ARC ebook received by the publisher in return for an honest, unbiased review.

I’m not sure what I can say by way of introduction to Jane Yolen, recipient of SFWA’s Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, as well as uncounted other awards, that has not already been said. My children grew up on Sleeping Ugly, Owl Moon, and Commander Toad in Space, and I came of age as a writer with Sister Light, Sister Dark, Briar Rose, and The Devil’s Arithmetic. This current collection, the latest of many, showcases Yolen’s brilliant capacity for taking characters and situations, even worlds, and turning them literarily on their heads. Whether it’s Emily Dickinson sailing away on a starship made of light or Wendy organizing a labor strike in Neverland, or the real story of Disraeli and Queen Victoria, Yolen twists the old tales in innovative, delightful ways. I look forward to many more of her stories, short and long.

Loved this retelling of classic fairytales with great ironic feminist twists! Women are recast as the agents of change in these tales, not the passive princesses of convention, immobilised by their long hair and crushed by their corsets.

A gorgeously charming series of female-centric short stories. Occasionally heart-breaking, sometimes reinventing familiar and loved stories in ways you just don't imagine. A stand out is the story of Dorothy of Oz, but a very different Dorothy. From the eyes of one of the farm workers (and you were there, and you were there) this is a fierce, gay young woman who has thrown off her harsh poverty ridden beginnings for life in the circus.

All of these stories were new to me, even though Yolen herself isn't. It's a great collection, focusing almost entirely on twists on fairy tales, familiar works, and folk stories, usually through a bit of a feminist lens. I didn't dislike a single story in it, while a few of the stories I expect to linger in my mind for quite some time, particularly the twist on the Beauty and the Beast retelling (I reread the ending paragraph a few times, because it was just that shockingly wonderful and unexpected) and the Oz story that gives the collection its name. I also particularly enjoyed each of the author's notes that accompany the stories, as Yolen gives clever insight into how her process works and what inspires her, as well as giving context for the stories.

I'd suggest this book as an introduction to a VERY prolific fantasy author, for folks who like fairy tale retellings, for people looking for a set of nice short stories to read one at a time before bed, or for those who'd like a more empowered woman to take the lead in short stories they're reading.

So, I'm not a huge short story fan. For whatever reason, I just really struggle to get into most of them. However, I *am* a Jane Yolen fan, and the premise behind this book of short stories was just intriguing enough to convince me. And for once - I'm glad I gave it a shot. Out of the entire book, there was only one story that didn't quite seem to match the others. The rest were much better than the typical short stories I've read in the past. Some of it, I think, is the very different take on these classic stories we all know and love, and some due to the writing style. Whatever the reason, however, these were certainly a hit!

I received a free e-book copy of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Jane Yolen's Emerald Circus is a collection of short stories, many of which were inspired by books for children, legends (the Arthurian myth) or lives of writers. There is, for example, a story about Hans Christian Andersen, another about Emily Dickinson, a re-telling of what happened to Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz series, three (3) stories inspired by Alice in Wonderland. (Seriously. Three Alice stories. Honestly, that is two too many and that is if I am being generous.)

It is a very readable collection; the stories are very well written and compelling, drawing the reader in. My major overall complaint is that I wish many of them were longer, as it often seemed that a particular idea had more to give - for example, in "Lost Girls", a story about a girl who goes to the Neverland and becomes one of the "Wendys". But even though I wouldn't mind it being longer, "Lost Girls" might have been my favourite and I am not surprised that it received a Nebula award. I was less fond of the other Nebula award winner, "Sister Emily's Lightship", which has Emily Dickinson meet an alien-- maybe I would have enjoyed it more had I not read Connie Willis's "A Soul Selects Her Own Society", which deals with a similar subject? Admittedly, it seems that the stories concerning real-life writers were the least interesting to me, with "The Bird" - about Edgar Alan Poe - being perhaps my least favourite.

To go back to the high points of the collection, in addition to "Lost Girls", I would mention "Jewel in the Toad Queen's Crown", an odd story about Disraeli and Queen Victoria, "A Knot of Toads", about a scholar discovering her father's work on magic, and "Our Lady of the Green Wood", a tale about newborn Robin of Locksley. All of them were captivating and highly enjoyable. "Blown Away", the aforementioned Dorothy story, was also interesting for diverting from source material / treating it in a much more mature way than some other stories contained here would.

Overall, I think this is a collection worth reading, if a little uneven. Still, I am happy I had a chance to read it and I think I would next like to try one of Yolen's novels.

This book is so much fun for anyone looking for something that takes you’re favorite fairy tales or even classic literary authors and gives them a new twist!

The collection itself is filled with enough variation that if you don’t care too much for one of the stories you can skip ahead and not let it diminish your overall reading experience, and in my case when I got to the novellas featuring tales I’ve never heard of it was fun to read this interpretation before going off to google the original on my own when it was finished.

My favorite story is that of Wendy and the lost girls taken from her 1998 novella, I would take an entire full length novel dedicated to those characters alone because it was so well done.

**thank you to netgalley for providing this book in exchange for a fair and honest review**

I really like a couple of the first stories, and I thought this collection was well on the way to 4 or 5 stars, but a lot of the later ones didn't really do it for me. Yolen definitely balanced original, creative thinking with homages to the original stories. I think this book is worth picking up particularly for the feminist take on Peter Pan ("Lost Girls), the The Gift of the Magi/Beauty and the Beast mashup ("The Gift of the Magicians"), the more realistic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz story ("Blown Away"), and the several Alice's Adventures in Wonderland stories (particularly "Tough Alice"). An odd and intriguing collection!

First off I can say the cover of this book was why I got interested in it. It is so different and the bright green and yellow screams OZ! That being said, this story collection was really hit and miss for me, but introduced me to a new author I'll definitely be trying again. While I expected to not love everything within a story collection, let us be honest they can't all be winners; the major issue for me was that there were stories that I did not recognize, and I felt that you had to at least have an idea of the original in order to make sense of the retelling. Though I am sure that many others will know and recognize all of these I cannot say I was familiar with everyone. For those which I did not know, I found it hard to stay motivated, particularly when they came one after another. But I am glad I stuck with it, since I did always come across another which I would thoroughly enjoy! Inspired by classic literature and folk stories, Yolen puts her spin on everything from Peter Pan to Alice in Wonderland. The great thing about this collection is that each story felt different from the last and it was fun to see where her next inspiration would come from. I would not discourage anyone from reading this book, it is well written, imaginative, and a fun way to revisit some old fairy tales and fantasy stories.

The short stories in this were so refreshing: to be able to finish a story quickly on short journeys and not worry about having to remember what had happened when you stopped reading was great.

Lost Girls was my favourite - it switched up the story of Peter Pan, and painted a totally different picture of the goings on in Neverland, which I loved.

The little summary at the end of the book which explained where she came up with the ideas for the short stories was a great addition. It helped you if you didn't understand what story the plot came from (as I couldn't tell for a few of them) and also showed you her inspirations.

Overall, a great book, and I'll definitely be reading more short-story compilations in the future!