Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus by Erin  Morgenstern

Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Format: Paperback

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Synopsis: 

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, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

Review:

Now, this is one book everyone should read! If you’re old, young, really young, a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, a father, mother, grandfather, whatever it is. You should read this. It’s a universal book that created so much buzz in the book community online that it was really hard to miss it and when it came to bookstores in Bahrain immediately after the hype. I was excited to get it but only managed to find a really awesome copy from the thrift store. It was a limited edition copy and that was one of the many reasons why I wanted to pick it up.

When I started reading the book, the setting the author wrote for us was the grey, and gloom of the late 1800’s. It was set everywhere around Europe from France to Frankfurt. And then, sometimes the characters were in New York, or Boston and even Australia.

The whole book corresponded with Le Cirque des Rêves, the circus that is only open at night. It starts with being in the circus then how the circus came to be and then how the circus carried out throughout the years. And believe it or not, the entire book didn’t really have a centerpiece. By that I mean that it didn’t really have one protagonist but many. It wasn’t just about the circus but everyone else in it.

The book did get really confusing because there were so many characters and Erin kept on bringing in more and more until perhaps near the end of the book. What made it even worse was when some chapters were dated in the early 1900’s it then switches back to the 1800’s. I got some characters and events mixed up that it was all too much for me. The book was most of the time overwhelming. Then comes the end of the book, I was a hundred pages away from the ending that only then did I get the whole story right. It’s like the author knew the right moment to glue everything together. I’m incredibly impressed by magical world of the Night Circus. I really thought I wouldn’t like it and I ended up loving it!

It doesn’t matter what age or what genres you like to read, just pick this book up and you won’t be disappointed! This is a book that will become a classic!

4.5/5 stars