The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)

*****

         "The circus arrives without warning.  No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers.  It is simply there, when yesterday it was not."
         - The Night Circus, p. 1

         Le Cirque des Rêves stirs up a quiet sort of excitement wherever it goes.  It doesn't look like a normal circus: no circus of the usual kind is entirely in black and white.  Nor does a normal circus open at night and close as the sun begins to rise.  Inside are countless tents, each home to an attraction that is simply too marvelous to be real.  So wondrous is the Night Circus that hundreds of people - the rêveurs, as they are called - share fond memories of the circus as they track its progress around the globe, waiting for their next chance to visit.  Though the rêveurs know that Le Cirque des Rêves is more than just a circus, they could never guess at its true nature.  The Night Circus is the venue for a magical game with devastating consequences to all involved.  The players in the game are Marco and Celia, who have been training for this exhibition of talent since childhood.  When the game begins and identities are discovered, Celia and Marco fall in love.  As the pair tries to keep the circus from damaging all of the people it touches, they discover that the rules of the game are not at all what they had expected.

         The Night Circus was a very unique book, unlike anything I have ever read before.  Erin Morgenstern has a great eye for the details, bringing Le Cirque des Rêves to life with powerful descriptions of things including a dreamlike clock, caramel-scented air, and a pair of eccentric red-headed twins.  Morgenstern's writing made the circus feel quite real.  The characters were also done really well.  There's a lot of jumping back and forth in time, so you get an in-depth understanding of the most important people.  I would recommend this to everybody based on how much I enjoyed it, but I think that it might feel too "slow" for some people.  Personally, I thought it was a really nice change from what I normally read.  If you don't mind a book that isn't action-packed (at least in the usual sense) and moves at a relaxed pace, you should definitely read The Night Circus.  It was all kinds of awesome!

Rating: 5/5
Completed: July 18, 2012