Caraval (Stephanie Garber) - 2.75 stars

[Flo]

2.75 stars rounded to 3 stars.

This book was pretty highly anticipated, so it was a disappointment that it ended up being so eh. The characters were fairly bland without enough development or depth, and the world was not really well explored or explained. I never really understood anything about Legend the character and his magic even at the end, (view spoiler)[since we never actually got to meet him (hide spoiler)]. The circus was ~interesting, but it seemed like a pale cheap copy of the magic from The Night Circus, which was really well done and much better than this. I just found it a little intriguing enough for me to keep reading to the end, which is why I didn't give this a full 2 stars instead.

Anyway, my recommendation is that if you like characterization and development and good world-building, you should just walk on by this book. I don't even know if I care to read the sequel even if this one ended on a bit of a cliffy. I might just look up a summary somewhere at some point.

Now I'm going to go back and reread The Night Circus instead for a better experience.

[KateNZ]

Good tip, thanks Flo - will avoid :)

I've just bought The Night Circus and am looking forward to reading it - yay!

[JoLene]

Hum.. I didn’t love the Night Circus, so I will pass on this one.

Caveat, I think one reason I didn’t like it was I listened to audio book so I wasn’t always paying full attention. With the jumping around in time and location, I think I wasn’t as engaged due to the format.