Friday, April 27, 2012

The Night Circus- Erin Morgenstern


The Night Circus

After all the hype about The Night Circus, I have to admit that it was a book I was really looking forward to reading. Top of the bestseller list, fantasy, romance, what’s not to like? But it was different than that, and also more. This was a book that surprised me.

The Night Circus is essentially the story of two young magicians locked in a duel that both were entered into without their knowledge. The setting of their duel? The mystical, fantastical night circus, which is unlike any circus that anyone has ever been to, because it is sustained by real magic.  Celia is an “illusionist,” who doesn’t need sleight of hand or distraction to create her illusions, one of the main events of the circus, who travels around from city to city. Marco is the assistant to the circus owner, supervising from afar and constantly adding attractions, while being tied to it through the circus’ constantly burning bonfire. The book is the story of Celia and Marco’s dance around each other, their duel, their mutual admiration, and their eventual love. But only one of the participants can survive the contest.

I really liked The Night Circus. I was expecting more action in a book centered around a magician duel, but all in all, this is more of a book about the circus itself, and beauty and magic. It’s very well written and engrossing. There was a spot around the middle where I started to get tired of the constant additions to the circus with seemingly no outcome or events that even affected the participants, but near the end I was sucked back in.  The way the story is told is somewhat scattered, jumping from time period to time period, interspersed with brief pages of description as if the reader is a participant in the circus, but somehow it works.

4- very good and I’d re-read it, but the slow part in the middle kept it from being a 5.

No comments:

Post a Comment