... readers are treated to a showcase of the strange, the obscure, and the dark musings of the author’s mind. This collection of short stories and poems is pleasing and greatly entertaining. From haunting angels to origin stories of unforgettable characters, and plenty of ocean and sea life, The Midnight Circus has something for everyone. Yolen is her descriptive and wild self, taking the reader on an experience they won’t soon forget. In these sixteen stories, we see the author at her unnerving best ... fairy tales we know or think we know, told in ways that will surprise, amaze, and, ultimately, entertain us. Always beautiful, dark, and imaginative, but never sentimental, these are fairy tales for a new age.
... dark and trippy ... mesmerizing, haunting, and often not for the faint of heart. This collection teems with Yolen’s weird, folkloric verve ... Her foreword and endnotes offer additional context for the work, creating a satisfying—if often unsettling—reading experience. Although she draws from conventional roots, Yolen has a talent for mashing up traditions to create something entirely her own ... The second half of the collection goes darker, to the extent that I might suggest a trigger warning ... Not that it’s all gloom and doom. There are enough powerful weavers, witches, and revenge against patriarchy to warm the cockles of a reader’s girl-power heart.
... this one focuses on the darker side of Yolen’s fiction. Some of her devoted readers might be a bit surprised to realize there is a darker side, and Yolen herself seems to share the surprise, but those Holocaust novels were pretty uncompromising, as is the one Holocaust tale that appears here, 'Names' ... As with her earlier Tachyon collections, Yolen offers not only fascinating story notes, but poems—some published here for the first time—that reflect on and add to the complexity of stories that, like the great story traditions she so knowledgeably draws upon, are never quite as simple as they first seem.
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 ... The collection spans science fiction, mythology, and fairy tale, and despite its often gory imagery, remains imbued with Yolen's characteristic dry wit ... 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.
... an endlessly inventive writer ... They’re all dark, though in most cases, that darkness encompasses loss but doesn’t revel in it ... there’s very little blood in these pages—just glimpses of the darkness of human nature ... 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.
... another, slightly more sinister collection of delightfully dark fairy tales ... 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.
