The Midnight Circus

July 13, 2020
Nebula Award winner Yolen follows How to Fracture a Fairy Tale with another, slightly more sinister collection of delightfully dark fairy tales. Each of the 16 stories is coupled with a companion poem and fascinating story notes that allow readers to delve into Yolen’s magical worlds. Yolen puts her own spin on the motif of fate weaving at a loom in the “The Weaver of Tomorrow,” an eerie tale about a young girl desperate to know the future, which stands out for its brilliantly deployed circular structure. Among the more chilling is “The Snatchers,” based on the history of bounty hunters conscripting Jewish men into the Russian military. The powerful final story, “Names,” also draws from Jewish history and is narrated by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. The only entry that feels out of place is “Wilding,” which, with its focus on shape-shifting and murder, has a science fiction feeling and doesn’t quite mesh with the rest of the collection. Despite this blip, Yolen’s many fans will be thrilled to find her largely true to form. This collection is a gift for fairy tale lovers.

August 1, 2020
A new collection of dark tales from an endlessly inventive writer. A girl uses magic to call her love but not to keep him. A child born in winter hears voices calling to him in the cold wind. A lonely man falls for a selkie who sings an enticing song. Yolen often uses the language and imagery of fairy tales to weave her original, spellbinding stories, which make a cohesive collection. They're all dark, though in most cases, that darkness encompasses loss but doesn't revel in it. As Yolen puts it in her introduction, there's "a frisson of terror rather than massive amounts of spilt blood." A couple of stories veer closer to true horror: The main character of "Great Gray" is drawn to the rare owls of the title because of his own predatory instincts, and the narrator of "Little Red" endures hinted-at torments because the alternative of returning home to her grandmother is somehow worse. But, as promised, there's very little blood in these pages--just glimpses of the darkness of human nature. Some stories, like "Inscription," read like Celtic folktales while "Requiem Antarctica" is a Jamesian tale of creeping madness at the ends of the Earth, and "An Infestation of Angels" is a retelling of the book of Exodus. And if the stories themselves somehow aren't enough, each is accompanied by a poem that extends its themes into evocative verse. Haunting stories from a modern master.

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September 1, 2020

Gr 9 Up-In 16 well-crafted stories, Yolen reveals the dark underside of her imagination, delving with surgical precision into horror, suspense, and the psychological fabric of nightmare. Culled from her prolific publication history, these tales-most of which draw on European Jewish, Russian, or Scottish folklore-find fresh life in this collection, each accompanied by an original poem and notes providing additional context. This book showcases Yolen's greatest strength-her marriage of fantasy and history, especially through the lens of folklore. In "The Snatcher," Yolen entwines her own family's story with a horrific figure from Jewish history, reimagined as a dark harbinger of conscription. "Requiem Antarctica" reimagines Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expedition through the lens of vampirism, and "Names" weaves together the horrors of anorexia and the Holocaust. The collection spans science fiction, mythology, and fairy tale, and despite its often gory imagery, remains imbued with Yolen's characteristic dry wit. Characters are rarely described physically. VERDICT An engrossing collection that will linger in readers' minds long after reading, and a perfect (re)introduction to Yolen's rich well of fantasy horror. For fans of Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, and Leigh Bardugo.-Molly Saunders, Manatee County P.L., Bradenton, FL

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