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juushikaTitle: The Night Circus
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Published: New York: Doubleday, 2011
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 387
Total Page Count: 119,452
Text Number: 347
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A challenge between magicians gives rise to the most spectacular circus: clad in black and white, featuring wonders beyond imagining, and open only at night. But a place so miraculous, born of such an intense rivalry, may not survive forever. The Night Circus enraptures from the first page; I worried only that it would crumble halfway, but it's a success until the last. Reading the book is much like reading a Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab scent description writ large, so I was tickled to see the company mentioned in the acknowledgements: it's a sensual delight, emphasizing color, scent, and atmosphere so intensely that the circus comes to life, a unique and wondrous place, and the text is stylized in image rather than language (although the language itself is above average, combining readability with gentle poetry). There are three narratives: the core narrative succumbs to some clichés of character interaction, but provides a strong skeleton to support the beautiful exterior; the secondary narrative straddles the boundaries of the circus, and is easily the book's most evocative, enchanting, and emotionally fulfilling; the last is in second person, and while it sometimes gets swept away in the book's style it also provides a consummate, satisfying conclusion.
So easily could a book like this go wrong: it could be no more than an intriguing but empty aesthetic, the aesthetic could be in competition with the plot, it could all end bitterly and destroy its own dream.... The Night Circus fumbles occasionally, sometimes too in love with its own image and relying on a romance that for the most part failed to stir me, but on the whole Morgenstern knows Les Circues des Rêves as a rêveur does: intensely, in detail, in love, but with a never-ceasing fascination and sense of mystery that means the Circus always has another bit of magic in store. The book succeeds by seeings its vision through to the final letter, vibrant and evocative and emotional when it needs it most, and succeed it does. I highly recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Also, the framing narrative is set in autumn, rich with hot cider and scarves and spices. I thought you might want to know. (Hey. Hey.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sisterite. Yes, you.)
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Published: New York: Doubleday, 2011
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 387
Total Page Count: 119,452
Text Number: 347
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A challenge between magicians gives rise to the most spectacular circus: clad in black and white, featuring wonders beyond imagining, and open only at night. But a place so miraculous, born of such an intense rivalry, may not survive forever. The Night Circus enraptures from the first page; I worried only that it would crumble halfway, but it's a success until the last. Reading the book is much like reading a Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab scent description writ large, so I was tickled to see the company mentioned in the acknowledgements: it's a sensual delight, emphasizing color, scent, and atmosphere so intensely that the circus comes to life, a unique and wondrous place, and the text is stylized in image rather than language (although the language itself is above average, combining readability with gentle poetry). There are three narratives: the core narrative succumbs to some clichés of character interaction, but provides a strong skeleton to support the beautiful exterior; the secondary narrative straddles the boundaries of the circus, and is easily the book's most evocative, enchanting, and emotionally fulfilling; the last is in second person, and while it sometimes gets swept away in the book's style it also provides a consummate, satisfying conclusion.
So easily could a book like this go wrong: it could be no more than an intriguing but empty aesthetic, the aesthetic could be in competition with the plot, it could all end bitterly and destroy its own dream.... The Night Circus fumbles occasionally, sometimes too in love with its own image and relying on a romance that for the most part failed to stir me, but on the whole Morgenstern knows Les Circues des Rêves as a rêveur does: intensely, in detail, in love, but with a never-ceasing fascination and sense of mystery that means the Circus always has another bit of magic in store. The book succeeds by seeings its vision through to the final letter, vibrant and evocative and emotional when it needs it most, and succeed it does. I highly recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Also, the framing narrative is set in autumn, rich with hot cider and scarves and spices. I thought you might want to know. (Hey. Hey.
sisterite. Yes, you.)
