Bookworm Wednesday

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 

Since the ending of Harry Potter and sadly the Twilight Saga the literary world has been desperate to find the "next big thing".  The buzz around The Night Circus promised a magical 'must read'.  I finished it yesterday.

Two illusionists are pitted against each other in a competition and the venue is the night circus.  This novel has everything that I should love.  There is the mysterious circus itself swathed in black and white and containing tents and performers each more fantastical then the last.  There is forbidden love.  There is magic.  There are illusionists, contortionists, fortune-tellers, magical white fire, clock-makers, 'ghosts', midnight dinners and an odd set of twins.   All of these things make it a novel I should adore however it falls flat on all accounts.

The plot is boring.  Two men choose contestants to compete in an undefined competition, of an unspecific nature, with undefined rules and neither competitor is aware of the other or the rules or the outcomes.  As such they care very little about this competition which in turn leads the reader to care very little as well.  No details are ever revealed as to why or how this competition exists.  The two 'master minds' have been setting up competitions of this nature for a very long time, though there is never a reason why, or who these two men really are.  We aren't even sure how one could win the competition. The plot is 'slow-burning' and the plot points seem to happen randomly with no intensity or intrigue.  and then it is over.

The characters are flat.   It is hard to care for any of them, they lack character or interest and are completely interchangeable.  They have no fears or hopes and I found it very hard to be interested in anything they do.  The great love shared by Celia and Marco seems to come out of nowhere, they don't even  meet until 150 pages in, and when they do their encounters are brief and emotionally lacking, yet we are to believe they care deeply for each other.  The characters are hollow and lack definition or purpose. 

The majority of the prose is dedicated to describing the scenery, which while lush, takes up so much time and does not further the plot or the characters that it seems more as filler then story.  To further befuddle the reader the writing style is wordy, and often changes perspective and sometimes tenses within a sentence.  Each chapter switches between characters, places, and sometimes times that are not always consequential, which makes it hard to become absorbed in any of the storylines. 

I honestly was really looking forward to reading this book, and sadly my high hopes were not met.  Overall the book left me feeling cold.