Book Review: The Night Circus

The most recent book I read was called The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. In some review circles it may be described as casting a "spell" on the reader, being that the plot revolves around a pair of magicians, pitted against each other by their guardians from a very young age, culminating in a magical circus that is to be their final dueling stage.

Sounds glamorous, doesn't it? I read this book in .epub format during the beginning of Holy Week. My family is protestant so we don't really participate in the usual Catholic traditions, and having a homebased job with my own hours doesn't exactly have me hankering for a "leave", but I enjoyed getting in the spirit of things and took some quiet time off to catch up on my reading.

I'm pretty disappointed by this book, especially since the synopsis sounded so interesting, prompting me to get the ebook, but like most glamorous things it turned to be a little bit dull after all. The narrative is meant to be hypnotic and full of drama, but the plot is weak, sketchy, and the ending stretched out over 3 or 4 more characters than it was supposed to. After a long buildup to a rather boring ending, I give this book the following scores:

Plot: 5/10
Presentation/writing: 6/10
Chatacters: 8/10
Entertainment value: 7/10

It's not bad, and there are some chapters in which I genuinely thought something interesting would occur, but for something so often alluded to in this book, interesting things are quite rare. You get lines such as "the air was magical", without ever reading what exactly it was that was so magical about it.

It's a shame, really, since the characters themselves are so interestingly constructed, but remain flat and undeveloped, even after 400 pages. Tsk.

All in all I wouldn't say my time was wasted, but I only recommend this book if you don't plan on being terribly invested in the plot or characters. And we always plan to be!

In any case, I have a better review coming up for another book, called Ms. Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children. Check it out soon!

posted from Bloggeroid

Testing Bloggeroid

Just downloaded an app called bloggeroid from the play store, so I'm using it right now to post.

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On Starting a Pop Culture Blog

Growing up surrounded by books and in a family of voracious readers, I always thought putting up a book blog would be a little redundant. Everyone already knows I'm a complete bookworm, I even got bullied for it when I was a kid. So what's the point of putting up a blog about it?

Well, that was then, this is now. Reading is so much a part of my daily life that it is just not possible for me to imagine my life NOT surrounded by books. I read so much that on a normal day I'm in the middle of about 3 comic titles, 2 manga, and about 3 novels. And I love this, being carried away by stories. It also helps that my husband wants a book every single time I ask him, "so what gift would you like for your birthday/christmas/our anniversary/this random special occasion?"

Our house is overflowing with them!

So I've decided to put down everything related to books, movies, comics, and tv series that my husband and I are currently into, in this blog. Here's hoping I have the time to update this little pet project of mine!