Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus

Have you ever come across anyone, let’s say in a classroom at university or in high school or even in a conference at your job or a fellow writer in a peer-review session, who has some really, really good ideas – ideas that are, in fact, much better than your own – and yet, because of that person’s inability to fully develop, present and manipulate those ideas into something palatable and necessary, those ideas ultimately crumble and end up being much less than what they could have been?

(Harvill Secker, 2011)
(Harvill Secker, 2011)

If you have, then congratulations; you have felt exactly how I felt when I read The Night Circus.
The book is filled with good ideas. We don’t even have to go into the book to see everything the book has going for it. First, let us check out the snazzy concept art on the cover; take in the coolness of its title: The Night Circus.
Now let us go into the book and observe what appears to be the premise of an intriguing fantasy drama. Most of the action takes place in a mysterious and spectacular circus, which also serves as an arena for a centuries-long secret battle between two rival magicians. The rules of the game are that each magician must select and train a protégé and then, when the time is right, pit them against each other in a battle of illusions and spells until one of the protégés are dead.
Celia and Marco are the two young magicians chosen to compete in the battle at the circus and, of course, after years of training, eventually fall in love with each other, complicating the game with the rule that only a death can end the game still looming large in front of them both.
The concept of the play is absolutely brilliant as it contains all the ingredients that can help to bring a wonderful fantasy novel to life; it is one that has the potential to lend itself to great dramatic moments, characters that the reader could have rooted for, characters that the readers could have hated, ample tension could have been built up from the rules of the game at the center of the novel and, of course, on account of it being fantasy, there was the potential for many moments that can be gained from the fantasy elements of the book. Remember what including magic in their work did for J. K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman?
Sadly, however, the book falls short on almost every level and never really manages to live up to its potential. The pacing is slow and the writer drags out the battle between the magicians for years and years so the tension is loose and not as taut as it should be. The battle turns out to be one of based solely on ingenuity, as the protégés compete by seeing who could outdo each other in coming up with fantastic attractions for the circus rather than an actual duel, which is a bit of a disappointment and is not nearly as dramatic as the fight that was expected. The list goes on and on and even though the book has a brilliant concept and many great ideas, none of it ever comes together and works. Read it as a lesson on how great ideas do not always equal great writing.

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