Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Published: September 13, 2011
Publisher: Doubleday
Pages: 512 (Paperback)
Series: N/A
Source: Bought
My Rating: 3 of 5 stars

 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.

Wow it took me nearly two years to finish this book and I'm actually not entirely sure why. It probably had a lot to do with the pace of the plot, but the rest of the book was very well crafted.

The plot for this could not have been slower. From the beginning to about the middle of the book every time I picked the book up I would become bored pretty quickly. I began to procrastinate reading it and genuinely uninterested in everyone but Celia and Marco. There seemed to be quite a lot of characters, they could be hard to keep track of, and their purpose wasn't entirely clear throughout the novel. Did it add to the depth of the story? Yeah, probably but honestly I could have done without the majority of the stories about the unimportant characters. It just wasn't exciting. 

I really did enjoy the writing for this book. The descriptions were rich and vivid. Everything about the circus was easy to imagine and beautiful. It reminds me of Laini Taylor's writing. Both authors seem very into every little detail and describing the scene as much as possible. If you're into that I would highly recommend this book.

As mentioned before the characters were really real in a way that most books don't seem to have. All the characters seemed to have a story and in a way all of them seemed to be connected to the main plot. The two main characters Celia and Marco were really the only ones I cared about despite the fact that the other characters weren't flat. They just had the most exciting story and I ended up really enjoying their relationship. 

This book took me way too long to finish, but in my defense the pacing was incredibly slow. In the end I really did enjoy it, especially when things started to get a little faster and more interesting.