The Night Circus

Title: The Night Circus

Author: Erin Morgenstern

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Historical, Fantasy

Number of Pages: 490

Publisher: Vintage Books

Publication Date: 2011

Summary: The Circus arrives without warning

No announcement proceeds it...

It is simply there, when 

yesterday it was not

Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements, and it's only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

In part one of The Night Circus we meet the main characters of the story over the expanse of several years. We get brief glances of our main characters from the age of 5 in 1873 till their late teens 1886. The story starts off with introducing lots of intriguing ideas and establishes much of the story. Usually these long wind up stories will bore me and I give up but this book has such an enchanting feel to it, that even if there was no plot line for the entire book I probably would have kept reading. Never have I read a book that the writing and story dazzle in perfect synchronicity.

In is in part two that we are introduced to the Circus...and what a Circus it is. The entire circus is a work or art and incredible imagination. Le Cirque des Reves, the Circus of Dreams,  is only open at night and is entirely decked out in black and white and the best performers. But this is no ordinary circus, hiding in plain site , the circus is the platform of extraordinary magic not the illusions that the audience believes it is seeing. Marco and Celia are pitted in a game where they don't know the rules or how to win, all they know is that they must out do each other in feats of breathtaking imagination.

But as the years go by Celia and Marco find that they no longer compete against each other but instead build their magical creations for each other. But the competition must come to an end and Celia and Marco must find a way to end the competition without the drastic consequences that threaten the circus and their love.

But Celia and Marco aren't the only characters to tell a story, born under the strange and unique circumstances of the circus' magical opening night, the Murray twins, Poppet and Widget are two key players in the survival of the circus with their unique abilities and the help of a farm boy, Bailey with big dreams.

In short, I loved this book! It was magical and enchanting and was a world that I would love to see come to life. The book doesn't have the most compelling story line but it is written beautifully and I couldn't put it down.

March Wrap Up

For the month of March I didn't get as many books read as I would have liked due to the fact that I was moving house and many of my books ended up in boxes, boxes which I was only just about to unpack last weekend. And because I was moving I had no internet for two weeks, so rather than going back and trying to write full in detail reviews of the books I have read I will instead wrap them all up in one post.

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare and others.

In the beginning of march I finished reading the last five books from the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy. I didn't enjoy these short stories as much as I do enjoy her novels. I did, however, find that they gave a really interesting insight in the inner working of the Shadowhunter world as it was set in Idris as opposed to an Institute. I also loved that we got to learn so much about Simon, because who doesn't love Simon in all his dorkiness.

5/5 Stars

Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare

March was very much a Cassandra Clare month. I continued with my Shadowhunter fix by re-reading Clockwork Prince, the second book in the Infernal Devices Series. As this is a re-read it not really surprising that I give this book a 5/5 stars. My favourite thing about this particular book in the series is how much we learn about Jem as he quite often gets overshadowed by Will as a character.

5/5 Stars

The Aeneid by Virgil

My TBR Challenge for February was to read a poem but in February I was in a reading slump so it just didn't happen. Granted the Aeneid isn't a poem in the traditional sense that most people would call a poem, especially once it has been translated from Latin to English. But an epic poem is still a poem.

This book is a well loved classic for a reason as it tells the story of Aeneas fleeing Troy after it has been destroyed by the Greeks and follows his journey to establish a new kingdom and race that would go on to become the Roman Empire. This book is filled with propaganda for Augustus and the greatness of Rome,

5/5 Stars

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I have been wanting to read this book for a really long time but after watching the movie and becoming a sobbing mess I have also been putting it off. This book is very unique in how it is told as first of all, death narrates the story which gives a very airy feeling of how true some of the events in this book are. Secondly the book is broken up into multiple parts and within each of these parts there are a number of short stories which all amalgamate into the over all plot of the book. I loved this book as it made me laugh, smile and cry and cry some more. If you do plan to read this book, have a box of tissues ready, especially at the end

5/5 Stars - easily

I did read a few other books in March but I was able to write reviews for those so feel free to check them out.

Ink and Bone

Title: Ink and Bone

Series: The Great Library - book 1

Author: Rachel Caine

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Young Adult, Steam Punk, Historical Fiction

Number of Pages: 410

Publisher: Allison and Busby

Publication Date: 2015

Summary: In a world where the ancient Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed, knowledge now rules the world: freely available, but strictly controlled. Owning privates books is a crime.

Jess Brightwell is the son of a black market book smuggler, sent to the Library to compete for a position as a scholar...but even as he forms friendships and finds his true gifts, he begins to unearth the dark secrets of the greatest, most revered institution in the world.

Those that controll the Great Library believe that knowledge is more valuable than any human life - and soon both heretics and books will burn....

This book brings a whole new meaning to knowledge is power and a world run by books. If you love books, at some point you have probably seriously considered a world that was run by librarians and books lovers as some kind of paradise and perfect world. Well...maybe not. In a world where books are the most precious things, owning them makes you powerful and only the powerful can obtain them. So naturally no one is actually allowed to own books. Yeah doesn't really sound like paradise any more. And when knowledge is power, well everyone else sort of just has to accept that they lack both.

I didn't find the characters in this book to book to be particularly interesting, aside from the characters that we never really got to meet. Between every chapter we got snippets of written correspondence between some of the most powerful people in this world of books but it is only right at the end that we actually get to meet these scarily powerful men and women. In many ways, however, the characters in this story were overshadowed by the much more enthralling world that was created.

Rachel Caine created a world that was mix of history, steam punk, science fiction in a world that is so like our own yet at the same time so very far a way. This world ruled by the Great Library of Alexandria means we get a setting that is a mix of the luxurious life style of the Egyptians, mechanical inventions of the industrial age with a dash of technology that far exceeds our own and throw in a smidgen of magic. The librarians are a mix of tyrannical and almost god like revered leaders who are the most intelligent people around and impossible to out play.

I was hoping that this book would be a little more fast paced and action packed but at certain points I found myself really forcing myself to keep reading. Ink and Bone was filled with lots of little story line moments which all came together at the end but sometimes I found them difficult to read as they didn't quite fit nicely together. This was also not helped by the fact that at some points Caine created such intense and action packed moments you felt like you were sitting in an action movie. Yet despite these shifts from extreme actions to lapses in events, I really enjoyed the book.

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Title: The Clan of the Cave Bear

Series: Earth's Children - book 1

Author: Jean M. Auel

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Historical Fiction

Number of Pages: 502

Publication Date: 1980

Publisher: Hodder

TBR Challenge: Read a book that was recommended to you

Summary (from the back of the book): Orphaned by an earthquake at the age of five, Ayla is left without a family or people. Until she is adopted by the Clan, a group of Neanderthal. Ayla inspires first surprise, then wariness and finally acceptance by the Clan. She is cared for by its medicine women Iza and its wise holy man Creb. Only their future leader, Broud, is not willing to accept this strange women. Consumed with hatred, he does all he can to destroy her. But Ayla bears the marks and the spirit of her totem, the Cave Lion. She is a survivor.

I used to see this book series in the library all the time but never picked it up. However, in my second year of university, one of my lecturers mentioned how the Earth's Children was one of her favourite book series. When I realised that the books I kept seeing everywhere were the same as the one's she had recommended, I figured I should probably pick up The Clan of the Cave Bear and give them ago. I was pretty excited when I got my TBR challenge this month because it gave me an excuse to move this book up to the top of my TBR pile.

This book did take a while to get into. One of the things that I struggled with was the way that the characters communicated. Rather than speaking with words to one another, the Clan (aka the Neanderthals) talk in a series of hand gestures and a few spoken words to help emphasis certain points. To portray this as well as what she did, would have been no small feat and shows just how incredible a writer Jean is. It does, however, take a while to wrap your head around, especially in the beginning but soon you find yourself getting use to reading someone gesturing a sentence as opposed to speaking it.

In line with this idea of a different communication style was the incredibly different cultural portrayals that Jean created. For example, because the Clan speaks with hand gestures, it is considered rude to look at others, especially when they are 'speaking', much in the same way that we consider eavesdropping to be rude. But I really enjoyed learning these social customs of the Clan through Ayla, who as an outsider or other, struggles to learn the new social customs. This was particularly obvious in how the Clan originally viewed Ayla's smiles as signs of hostility which they saw as bearing her teeth, like an angry animal would and Ayla crying when she was overly emotional which they saw as her having weak eyes.

Jean also created interesting parallels between the Clan and the Others. In particular the idea that the Neanderthal relied on memory and as a result were a stagnant people, unable to let go of their traditions and move forward, never creating. While Ayla's people, the Other, were forward thinkers, able to create and think ahead, as opposed to constantly seeing the past. Yet despite creating this parallel, at no point did she ever diminish the Neanderthal by giving them an unjust stereotypical unintelligent persona.

Through doing an archaeology degree I have both indirectly and directly looked at human evolution and I am amazed at the world Jean created 30 odd years ago. A lot of the ideas that Jean has presented in this book surrounding Neanderthal are ideas that have only recently been accepted as true. Sure there are some points that are questionable, but considering when The Clan of the Cave Bear was published, Jean must have done a lot of research.

Outlander

Title: Outlander

Series: Outlander - book 1

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Historical Fiction

Number of Pages: 863

Publication Date: 1991

Publisher: Arrow Books

Summary: In 1945, Claire Randall is back from war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon in Scotland. She walks through a stone circle in the Highlands, and finds herself in a violent skirmish taking place in 1743. Suddenly she is a Sassenach, an outlander, in a country ravaged by war and by clan feuds.

Marooned amid the passion and violence, the superstition, the shifting allegiances and the fervent loyalties, Claire is in danger from Jacobites and Redcoats - and from the shock of her own desire for James Fraser, a gallant and courageous young Scots warrior.

Jamie shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire, and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon is one of the most beautifully rich stories I have ever read. This book easily deserves 5 stars.

The story follows Claire Beauchamp, a combat nurse during WWII as she shares a second honeymoon with her husband Frank in Scotland to reconnect after years of separation. While visiting the standing stones of Craigh na Dun (think stone henge) she is transported 200 years back in time to 1743. Now Claire as a sassenach must use her wits and what she knows of history to navigate through the volatile world of the English vs the Scots. But through the her relationship with Jamie, Claire begins to see that being sent through time might be a gift and not a curse.

This book was originally published under the name of Cross Stitch so don't be surprised if the story line sounds really familiar but not the title.

The thing I loved the most about this book is the complete realism it holds; not just in the characters  but the time period as well. Surprisingly most of the negative comments I have read about this book seem to be on its realism. This book is not a 'they all live happily ever after story', it a book that is filled with the violence, sex, rape and mistreatment that is found throughout the history of the world. So if you don't want a taste of how some people really lived in the 1700's, I would suggest picking up a different book. However, if you are like me and history is one of your passions, it is the truth of the story that makes it so incredibly beautiful.

The relationship that forms between Claire and Jamie is told in an amazing way by Gabaldon. They face the challenges of meeting and getting to know someone all the while fighting for the relationship you want to have. Claire and Jamie do not just struggle through the challenges of living in 1743 Scotland but also face the challenge of coming from two very different worlds.

As for the writing itself, like all books it has it highs and lows. Some parts I felt could have used more detail and others could have gotten to the point far quicker. The writing style, however, is easy to loose yourself in and the charm of the Scottish accent is easily found throughout the book.

Outlander is no small read but a huge 850 pages and totally worth it. This book is the first in a series of 8 books but could also be read as a stand alone if the idea of reading a series of such large books is rather daunting. I myself cannot wait to pick up the next book.

Outlander has also been made into a TV series which is an incredible adaption. The TV show brings the story to life without compromising the book in any way. It also gives you the added bonus of seeing how the story further unfolds by exploring the story lines of Frank and Jamie that we do not get through Claire's perspective in the book.