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|| C O M P L E T E D || Nɪɴᴀ and Woolfie || The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
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Nina {ᴡᴏʀᴅs ᴀɴᴅ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀ}
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Oct 20, 2015 08:34PM
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Omg.....I don't know where to begin on how I feel about this.
Also. It sounded like the Prestige, but I can't actually remember the Prestige much!
So far it's a lot of set up which is fine but the one thing that bothers me is how Marco and Celia seem to accept anything their mentors say so readily. Like I get that the answers are held back for plot purposes, but as a character there's only so much evasiveness and not answering that you should be able to take. Also magic here seems mostly reality manipulation rather than any arcane knowledge which I don't mind but it does feel a little too simple. The writing is smooth and easy to read though which is both a good and bad thing for me.
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I like the writing style though that may only be because it fits this particular book (since I think if it were another book and not this one I might think otherwise). And true, it is quite smooth and easy to read.
I find the flashbacks and alternating povs a bit of a pain. Don't like it much to be honest. But I do like that each alternating adds to the build up of the story. It just doesn't really feel smooth - timewise. I have to keep checking and wondering when. YET in saying that for it to be written like this and for me to wonder about time reflects on the timeless nature and quality of the night circus that i think Erin M is conveying.
I agree on the reality manipulation - feel like it's more of a device to give the main characters more mystery than to do anything else.
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I feel like someone will die. Someone will definitely be hurt!
Hmm not sure I get that vibe but right now if it did I doubt I'd care, such has been the sparseness of detail that I've yet to be attached to anyone but I do like how it's shaping big up so far.
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I think I'm attached to the circus....^^' Lol.
So far reading this is like looking at an amazingly detailed cake. It looks great, every detail is rendered beautifully, but at nearing 200 pages I've yet to taste anything delicious apart from a few nibbles of icing that fades before one can savour it!
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Everything so far is based on the promise of a reveal later. In that way the story is itself is magic trick a circus of pages where the author teases you from beyond the next chapter but I fit one find the trick old and irksome. Everything is one dimensional, the characters are unremarkable, the pretext for the contest is simple and petty and the promised romance is obvious and tedious. Nobody speaks the way these characters do and nobody is that accepting and oblivious. Sincerely hope the time I've invested will not be wasted because thus far this novel gets 5 stars for word count and 1 for relevance.
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I think with this book, it's easy to get lost in the prose. It's simple, yet....whimsical.
The unfolding of the story attracts me, I think at this present moment (state of mind mostly), I'm appreciating the simple complexity. The flow and slow reveal kind of balances how busy I am haha. But I do dislike the alternating narrative, and don't at all like how it sometimes jumps. And I'm still wondering about the existence of half the characters, undoubtedly, it might all be explained to me at the end, but still.
(I don't love the way the characters speak! And mostly get annoyed when Celia is conversing at the dinners. There's something unreal about her way of speaking, like she's mysterious one moment, then she's witty the next. Which is plausible, but I don't feel it's done well for her.)
^^' haha I hope you haven't wasted time reading it!
I think I'll enjoy this book at the end, if the build up is worth it. And I think, right now, I am mostly fascinated by the circus. Not because it's special or different, but rather, it is, like...the main character of the whole story, where Celia and Marco don't really matter to me, but the circus does. Hmm, I don't know how to explain how I feel, but I'll find the words for it when I actually focus lol. It's probably the whole point of the book, but I like that part the most.
Where I see an underwhelming maze you are a smiling hypnotised victim of this magical kaa of a book that is half benevolent boa half coalescing trickster cat. Right now I'm trying hard to blink through the fog of singular facetedness lest I miss an inversion in the pattern of deceptive unremarkableness. The further I proceed into this powder puff labyrinth the tapestry once so quaint is slowly evanescing to reveal an intoxicating cage and I dislike such structures with a mirror smashing prejudice.
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Everything okay? :)/:/
Oh everything's fine, I guess it's more a combination of hype and glowing reviews for this book that has me automatically seeking every little annoyance I kind find. For me when a book gets 5 star reviews it had best be flawless or else I call BS. Add to that the infernal reading target I feel I have to adhere to each year and how a meandering book does not help me reaching said target. I mean it is not a bad book, but at almost 200 pages it had better have more than easy to read paragraphs and vapid characterization and inexplicable stilted, unrealistic characters that have the integrity of a wet tissue. Yeah I notice I tend to wax lyrical when I'm either inspired or annoyed, guess you know which one this is ;p
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Haha yeah! I can guess which!
There are things I like about the Night Circus at the moment, and things I don't. Who knows what I'll think at the end of it :P. Though I feel like I know which direction you'll go!
I hate to do this but at the point where I am, I feel completely confident that leaving this book and perhaps coming back to it later will not impair my understanding of where the plot is or where the characters are, and as such I'm postponing finishing this until a time yet to be specified if ever. You have my complete and utter permission to taunt me with hints and spoilers if and when it does get good. If you consider it good enough to finish then I will, but right now my bookshelf calls with the promise of less tedious and pretentious tales.
Getting to this point in books is a rare and difficult thing for me, because I want to like it, I want to stick with it for the admirable aspects of it. It is beautifully written but that's pretty much it and the longer it ambles on the more irked I get that I'm getting nowhere with the plot, such as it is. Maybe it's to do with the multiple other forms of media vying for my attention but I feel like now I lack the patience I did when it came to books, which I feel is not really a good thing. In a weird juxtaposition of feelings I want to grit my teeth and defy that scornful voice in me and finish and like the book or toss it down a bottomless ravine somewhere secure and happy in the knowledge I will never find it ever again. It's hard to go back to it now that I have compelling reasons to not care about it anymore but since I am not reading this just for myself, I have decided, in the spirit of buddy reads to see it through. Yes I am that fickle!
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Pros - the writing. Loved that.
Cons - pretty much everything else (characters, interactions, etc)
The ending was both satisfactory and also disappointing. It did hit a high but it also felt a little anticlimatic.
The long and short of it is that neither Marco or Celia wanted to lose each other. Marco begins with sacrificing himself but in the end Celia throws herself at him and with her abilities she throws them into another plane of existence so that they exist like her father and Alexander. Bailey takes over the Circus becoming the owner along with Poppet and Widget. They take it from Celia whom had been carrying/well linked to most of the circus. So if she gave up, then it would have collapsed. I like the story, the writing was the burning flame for me. But it losts stars for the fact that if I wasn't so interest in the circus, I wouldn't have cared a drop for any of the characters. I also found the alternating povs done annoyingly. And I wish the game had been more intense....
Anyway those are my thoughts after finishing it ^^
Ahh so it doesn't get any better, pitiful. Might as well claim to have finished it to save time. It's lucky it gets one star biggest waste of time since Gross Levman's The Magicians.
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But yes that's how it ends! And the circus moves on.
I had a feeling that the so called conflict was less of an actual thing but rather bait to lure readers in. I think if anything it makes me despise Celia's father and the colourless grey bastard all the more because to them magic is just some reality altering elitist claptrap that they use to entertain themselves by toying with ignorant Muggles. Pretty sure if this was set in Rowling's world they'd likely both be in Slytherin as they don't seem to care about anyone other than themselves. I mean which self-respecting father places his own daughter in a life or death chess match? As for the side characters do they amount to anything other than filler?
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Thiessen (I think that's how his last name was spelt), Isobel, and Chandresh all play a role too towards the end. During the most intense (not really that intense but more intense than any other part of the book) part, their actions unravel a chain of events that come crashing down on Celia and Marco. I think if the alternation of chapters were not so choppy, the effect would have been better/intense but it became a bit confusing and difficult to follow. So many things happened in that moment. Isobel broke a charm she'd made, then Chandresh threw a knife at the grey man, but Thiessen took the blow and died. It was something that shouldn't have happened. If Celia was strong and looking after the whole circus,then it shouldn't have but the game is a game of endurance and every tent she added for the game, to show off her skill, linked one more to her, and becuase she was weakening, things happened that shouldn't have. I wouldn't say that thet were just filler but they do play a role in events. It's just that the book overall is slow, unravelling, coasting that everything ties up at the end. Well? I don't think so. Too choppy and chaotic and since the pacing increased and some things aren't really explained, the ending was a bit confusing. All I know is that Marco and Celia are 'like' ghosts in the circus, existing in it forever but not really dead.
The competition/duel/game lured readers. And also the romance (not that there was much that I actually cared for.)
The thing that I don't get is why didn't they just stop playing? Were they bound to compete until only one of them remained? Seemed rather sadistic in that way as neither Marco or Celia had any invested motivation to compete unlike Angier and Borden whose rivalry was more a massive ego-off than anything else. I felt both Marco and Celia lacked individuality and were too subservient which I understand would have stemmed from their upbringing but not to at least defy their emotionless taskmasters, that lost them any interest I may have had in them as I knew that they would fall in love and find a way to bugger up the competition, which was precisely what happened. A good book for me is one in which I can't see the unfolding of the plot, and if I do, there has to be at least something of interest in the getting there. For me this had neither and page after page just reiterated that with oodles of superfluous detail that did not matter at all other than to fill paper. I also felt sorry for Isobel since she was initially set up as a love interest for Marco but quickly just seemed to b a pawn for him to use, compassion and humanity must be something these magic types lack, which I'm fine with, it just makes it all the more delicious when they fail, or in this case, fade into irrelevance.
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The ring that both Celia and Marco wear bind them to the game for life, so yes they're bound until one of them gives in and in essence, sacrifices themselves.
I think this story would have had more depth if Morgenstern explored both Celia and Marco's feelings from their perspectives rather than the way in which the book is written, but the way the book is written is also explained atthe end - since it turns out that the whole story is a recount by Widget, who is able to read a person's past,and thus possess enough knowledge to build a history, and yet also lack the emotions for each party to the story. Hence the constant glazing over why Celia did that or why didn't she do it. Same with Marco.
For some of their actions, I guess I'd attribute it to childhood ignorance, loneliness and isolation, and a desire to be praised, hence why they never rebelled. And when they found the one thing that they would give the world up for, it's also the one thing they shouldn't really have. Which of course lead them to finding the loophole (though Celia didn't know if it'd work.)
But what you said above, kind of hit on most of th main points about the instructors, Celia and Marco.
Isobel though, I think she was always supposed to be the love interest that was never supposed to be the love interest - Marco meeting her was a case of timing, a theme that reoccurs over and over in the story (and most notably at the end).
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They're the rival magicians from The Prestige ;p
Yeah I figured those rings might have had something to do with their inextricable yet ignorant playing of the game which is still 'arsehole chess' since it's a game of magical competitive entrapment played by two arseholes who enslave children into their snobbish world of magic for egos sake. They'd have fit in well at Slytherin for sure, maybe even outdouched the Malfoys. Often when reading I do like a character to side with or about whom I'm invested but there were none in this book hence the loss of interest, for which I blame the author completely. Pretty words and character sabotage seem to be her forte.
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Hmm yeah. The best aspect in my opinion was the writing, for its whimsical simplicity, but the story and characters were underdeveloped (though at the same time, the story was well done, if I looked at it from far back, she managed to wind it all together and tie it with a them. But....still...it wasn't that brilliant.)
Wait, did I read that correctly, you acted in The Prestige????I'm half tempted to read it to it's conclusion now that my expectations have been significantly lowered, perhaps that may alter the complexion of the experience, but the main issue is the remaining length and whether it might not be a better use of my time turning to more engaging, less elaborately ineffectual texts.
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How far have you got to go?
If it was me and a book I wasn't all that into....I would probably have put it down for weeks until I had more time. I would finish it for the sake of finishing it, but I'd probably skim through the rest lol.
I think I'm on page 235 or somewhere thereabouts. I just didn't have the spur to read it till the end since it seemed in no hurry to get there. I have a bad habit of not reading a book once I know the story, hence why I haven't read the likes of Peter Pan, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and Gulliver's Travels along with some classics because I only care about the story, which in hindsight probably makes this book largely unsuitable and destined to fail :p
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Yeah there is that appeal as well :) I'm up for another buddy read if you want to. Hopefully we'll find a better book this time :p
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Yaay! I was thinking how about A Darker Shade of Magic keeping our theme of magic but revisiting a writer whose previous book we both loved. Or anything that catches your eye, I'm easy :)
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Well in that case, let's see what you either can easily get or have waiting on the shelf. Chances are I might have it and then we can be on our merry way :)
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If not, we could always do a Harry Potter reread ;) with the new book coming out this year, it's certainly worth a reread!
A book? Mistress has given Woolfie a book?????????? Woolfie is FREEEEEEEE!!!!!!! Ahem I mean yes to a Harry Potter reread ;p
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Well HP is always a go to, so if you have a hankering to try something else off your shelf, by all means let's give that a go :) Do you have The Search for WondLa or The Invention of Hugo Cabret by any chance? Or even something like The Girl Who Could Fly? Feeling a tad whimsical :p
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Illuminae
Queen of Shadows
Red Queen
Etc which I do want to read eventually, but not right this moment.
Sadly, I do not have any of those three books on my shelf! -- would have to either drop by the library or purchase (whichever comes first lol). I'm always open for a read I haven't considered before :))
Well of those three, Illuminae is by far the most interesting choice. I'd rather do a hundred million other things before I ever read another tepid yawnfest from the likes of Aveyard or Maas mostly because I was bored to tears with the second book in Maas series and have abandoned Aveyard's series after a laughable conclusion to her rather trite tale.
I'll have to see if I can get that one. I recently got a few Star Wars books from Amazon but not that one. (After an hour and 53 minutes) Hey yeah I can get a copy of that from my usual bookshop. I can wing by after work, wahey!
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Sweet sounds good! Then let's do that one? I've been itching for some star wars.
Ok got Lost Stars. Ready to begin when you are. ;)
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