The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This book is: a disappointment.
Other elements: circuses, vagueness, mist, confusion, mysteries, stripes, clocks, incorporeal fathers.
Read it: if your love of description outweighs your desire for a coherent story.
Overall rating: 5/10

This book has a great title, a beautiful cover, an intriguing description, and volumes of positive press. It has a a 3.99/5 rating on Goodreads, with 127,824 reviews. That’s largely why I decided to read it, despite the lukewarm review of a friend of mine whose literary opinions I usually agree with.

I’m not saying I hated this book. There were elements that I enjoyed – specifically, the description of the different elements of the fantastical titular circus. The author has an incredible imagination and, when she chooses to focus, can describe things marvelously.

There were a number of these moments in the book, when I would sit up and think “oh, there’s what everyone’s so excited about, I guess it must be time for this to get good!”. It never happened, though. There was no glue holding the bright moments together.

The story is murky. I think it’s possible that the author was trying to make the experience of reading the story mirror the experience of wandering through the mysterious circus – which I can understand as a goal, but it did not work in practice. There was too much mystery and too much distance. I didn’t feel as though I were gazing at something magical and appreciating it for the enigma that it was, I felt as though the movie I was watching was out of focus and I couldn’t change the TV settings. The story wanders around through both time and location, jumping back and forth until you have no clue as to when and where you are except for the chapter titles (which I stopped reading because I was so annoyed that I needed to depend on them).

Every character in the novel is an enigma. The reader is never let inside any of their heads enough to really understand or bond with them. Actually, it was worse than that. There were two different points in this novel when I realized that two characters who I’d thought were the same person were actually two different people. Such an error really shouldn’t be possible once, let alone twice.

There is a spoiler of sorts in the next paragraphs. If you don’t want to risk knowing what happens, stop reading now.

My #1 complaint about this book is this: despite all of the mystery in the details, the plot at the center of this book was so predictable that I was almost surprised when there was no twist. The fate of the two main characters was precisely what I expected it to be from the first chapter – no, from when I read the summary of the book at the library. Girl and boy in opposition to each other fall in love. For either to win, the other must die. Almost 400 pages of mysteriousness and it’s all wasted on another incarnation of the Romeo and Juliet double-suicide story.

The story is also rife with details that didn’t make any sense. For example: Why does Marco hide his true face if nobody knows what he looks like, anyway? Why does Bailey get to the circus so late that he misses it if he genuinely intends to join it and is so familiar with its routines? How can a boy who knows nothing about magic anchor a series of illusions so complex that they were going to end up killing an accomplished practitioner of magic? And what was the deal with Celia’s mother?

I like things to make sense, and I need to care about the characters in a story to care about the story. This book didn’t make sense and it didn’t make me care. By the end, my main motivation for picking this up was to finish it so that I could move on.

Has anyone else read this? Did you like it more than I did? I know it was pretty popular for a while.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.

This book is: a love story with several different love stories happening around it.
Other elements: old Hollywood glamor, scenic Italian coastlines, curses, Richard Burton.
Read it: if you’re in a romantic mood (or a bubble bath. I read most of this in a bubble bath.).
Overall rating: 7.75/10

An isolated Italian village; a provincial, idealistic young businessman; a stunning American actress with a dark secret, an ex-soldier turned aspiring writer/drunk…are you getting a feel for this story already? This novel is set party in the past and partly in the present (and several times in between). It’s similar to the genre of movie that came into existence after the success of Love, Actually – it follows several plot lines which turn out to be interwoven. The plot lines in this book are not all equal, however. There’s a definite hero and heroine who are the center of the action.

After the funeral, he begged his elderly mother to return to Florence, but the very idea scandalized her. “What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he is dead?” – Page 4

It’s not innovative or life-changing, but it is thoroughly enjoyable. I mean…romance, intrigue, and surprise appearances by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor? Sign me up.

Bender pondered the wine in his hand. “A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.”
“That’s only three.”
Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.” – Page 62

I could see myself rereading this mood again if I was in the mood for something exactly like this book. It really is the prefect book to read in the bubble bath – it’s warm, simple, it makes you feel good, it’s pretty to look at, it doesn’t take a lot of effort. The writing is pleasantly engaging and easy to read, and the characters are vibrant and interesting.

He had a gone-to-seed superhero look, with blocky, side-parted hair and a square jaw, and an athletic body just starting to swell with middle age. Men have a half-life, she thought, like uranium. – Page 208

The only part I actively disliked was near the end, when the author interrupts a dramatic moment to give a summary of dramatic things that happened to all of the peripheral characters – I was irritated to be taken away from the scene at hand, which I had been really enjoying, and the recap felt rushed and cheesy. It also went on way too long. I was interested to hear what had happened to the other characters, especially the ones I’d particularly liked, but I didn’t want to hear it in what was effectively a pages-long list. That part took a lot of the momentum out of the ending for me. From there on out, it felt like I was reading a summary of the end of the book rather than the actual end of the book.

It’s still worth reading, though, especially if the summary sounds fun to you. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book to anyone with an affection for grand romance and the glamor of the golden age of Hollywood.

Against the Light by Dave Duncan

This book is: mediocre.
Other elements: cliches.
Read it: if you’re bored and it’s already in your hand.
Overall rating: 4.5/10

Dave Duncan has written some splendid novels. This is not one of them.

The characters are flat incarnations of cliches and plot is no better (hate-mongering new church persecuting followers of old, Goddess-centered, magical faith). The daughter is beautiful, the sons are brave, and the evil characters are irredeemable. None of the characters, good or evil, are individual or dynamic enough to be endearing.  I finished this book less than 10 minutes ago and I’d be hard-pressed to tell you even one of the character’s names.

I didn’t love or hate anything about this book. I never laughed, gasped, or cried. I also never worried, rejoiced, feared, or emoted much at all.

There are definitely worse books out there than this one, but I’m afraid that’s the best thing I can say about it. If you have nothing better to do and this is the only book you have, you might as well read it for a while.

You’d be better off reading the King’s Blades series instead, and then you’ll see how good Dave Duncan can be when he’s on his game.