Book Review – The Night Circus

Title: The Night Circus

Author: Erin Morgenstern

Genre: Fantasy, fiction, romance, magic

Pages: 512

First Published: September 2011

Series: standalone

Rating:  

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.

My Review:

Another really, awesome book!! At the moment, I’m just reading good book after good book, so there’s not going to be any bad reviews for a while. Which is good! Who doesn’t love a great read? Let’s get on with why The Night Circus is a great book…

The best thing about The Night Circus is the incredible world the author has created – as well as the characters she’s added into it. There is SO MUCH world building that has gone into creating it, and because of it, it makes the whole story feel less cheap, and more real, or 3D. And it’s not just the setting either! The plot line, atmosphere, and down to the smallest events that occur, are all sorted perfectly to create the book. That’s what makes the complication, and then resolution, so perfect. It’s like Morgenstern has the whole thing mapped out in her head, so when she needs to chop and change between past, present and future, it’s all already there.

The Night Circus does include many POVs, some in the same time period, while others are flashbacks, or are in the future. Now this feature could have made the book really messy, and hard to follow, but because it was so well planned out, it actually made sense. (There were parts that were a little unclear, but they soon made sense if you kept reading) The further into the book I went, more bits kept jumping out at me, and then clicked into place, until right at the end with the climax, and it all came together.

Okay, okay, I need to stop talking about planning. What about the characters? Celia and Marco were perfect I think, and each of the background characters had their perks. I think the only let-down would be too many. Between having plot-lines in the past, present and future, there were quite a number of people involved in this story. This is what made it a bit hard to follow at times.

Another perk; strong female characters! Yay! I love books that include them, and The Night Circus doesn’t just have one main, but also all the female side characters are strong and can make their own decisions. I really just love reading from their point of view, or about them.

“Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Okay, to sum up. The story takes a while to get into the ‘real’ plot-line, but once it does, it is impossible to put down. As I was reading it, I kept noticing the symmetry between it, and The Prestige movie. Both have two magicians, duelling over many, many years, while still trying to live their lives as normal as possible. (And, at the back of my copy of The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern actually says one of her inspirations for the book was The Prestige, so there you go.) I found the story really interesting, and fun to read about. Similar setting to Caraval if you liked that.

 “We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus