Really lovely collection. I'm not familiar yet with the previous three volumes, but I really enjoyed this one and will certainly circle back to the others!

I received a copy of The Scarlet Circus from netgalley in return for an honest review.

This is apparently this is the 4th such collection she has done. Let’s get something great. This woman truly has made some great work. I remember as a teenager reading her Pit Dragon Chronicles and really getting into the ideas she brought up in her books in ways I didn’t in my classroom. Her “How to Dinosaurs” books really catch the interest of the preschoolers I’ve read them to.

I am saying all of this because I was very meh over this collection of short stories.

So, despite the title, as the description lets us know, the short stories are connected by themes of love (but in unexpected twists in the endings in how we’d expected they’d play out), usually centering around the women in them and taking place in fairytales and myths.

If this sounds interesting to you, there’s a good chance you’ll like these stories. They’re told very much like old fairytales like they have certain truths to tell.

They are also leading you to where the twist of the story will come into play because it’s playing off those classic fairytales and myths to tell its own story that you’ll never guess the ending of. (Which you can, but it might not be your first guess of an ending)

That said. The first story is an interesting idea with questions of who’s fault it is, and who was right in the end, and if I cared more at the moment, I might like to think about the ending of the short story more. There’s the Romeo and Juliet story, whose ending annoyed me, but I can’t say anything about it because of spoilers. There’s the King Arthur story that I did read twice through because I did enjoy it. And then there’s every other story. Some that I remember, and most that are almost completely gone in my memory despite just reading them.

I know that short stories will have stories you like and not, but this collection only had one I loved, with one that I wanted to think more about, and that’s not worth it for me, but I could see where people who love retelling of fairytales and myths would love it. So a solid 3.5 because it’s a solid book, brought down to a 3 because it’s a “Meh”.

This collection is advertised as the fourth in Jane Yolen's anthology series, but as far as I know, there's only one other such anthology with circus in the title ("The Emerald Circus"), and the two other anthologies don't follow the circus theme. I've read all four, and I can say this one is my favourite, maybe because I liked more stories than in the others.

Despite the title, this doesn't take place in a circus nor is a circus the unifying theme, it's more about the whimsical nature of the stories, I'd imagine. There are 11 short stories here, none of which is new but has been plucked from previous publications to make into this collection. Yolen added a Story Notes segment by the end, in which she explains whence each story came from and adds the poems she's complemented each of the stories with. The result is a lovely bouquet of retellings and original stories, although I'd have loved it had this included some artwork; Yolen is so imaginative I'm sure she'd be a challenge for many artists.

Anyway, of all the stories, I loved these three best:

SANS SOLEIL
4 stars
This looked like a retelling of the Grimms' "The Singing, Springing Lark" at first, a B&B variant in which the cursed lion-prince can't be caught dead in the sunlight because it'd meant his curse becomes permanent. In this, Yolen takes it up a notch and makes the sunlight deathly to the cursed prince, whose name translates as "Sunless."
It's horrifying in a way, because the girl the prince marries in hopes of breaking his curse is a complete, utter, and irredeemable MORON. Everything that goes tragically bad is her fault, because she thinks in her own superiority that she can handwave away all warnings and dangers merely because she knows best, and is proven wrong when it's too late. It's tragic and told so well I liked it despite hating the heroine so much.

UNICORN TAPESTRY
This story had a sweet and plain princess whose talent lies in embroidery, a non-marketable skill in the royal marriages market unlike her sisters' beauty. But one day, she stumbles into a magical bird she helps and in return is granted the traditional three wishes. Not convinced anything will result of it, Princess Marian makes her wish half-heartedly, and returns to her routine in the castle, resigned to grow into an old spinster embroidering beautiful tapestries for the rest of her life.
To her surprise, the bird wasn't making fun of her, and Marian soon discovers there's magic in her embroidery, and that she soon will see that magic leap from the tapestry into her life. It's a sweet little story, ideal for readers that like plain heroines with quiet strength.

A GHOST OF AN AFFAIR
5 stars
This one is heartwrenching by the end, but starts so hopeful that I was thinking it'd be another love story with a cloying Happily Ever After and no substance. But substance it does have! It's so unique, it subverts your expectations all the way to the end, and just when you're convinced Andrea and Simon will make it and be together at last, it . . . well, I'll let you read it and shed a tear or two.
It's so beautiful a romance! I think this one could be made into a novella or even a short novel, but I kinda don't want it to be expanded on, because short as it is, with all its omissions and hints at, it's still going to pull your heart's strings.