The Night Circus Review

Step right up to the magical, mystical world of Le Cirque des Reves as written by Erin Morgenstern in The Night Circus.  The circus is only open from dusk to dawn, so get your fill of this book with magical prose before the sun rises!
The Night Circus follows the story of two magicians who have been trained since childhood to participate in a challenge that has very few and very vague rules.  Their masters are powerful magicians in their own right who have no care for their subjects, only that their student becomes the victor.
While this sounds like an amazing concept for a book, the book could have been so much more.  Firstly, there are so many characters in the circus that none are fully developed.  We only scratch the surface of the characters and what motivates them.  Since there are so many characters, it can be hard to remember sometimes which character is which and how we know them.  This is complicated by the fact that the time in the book is not linear.  The "action" spans over 15 years and goes back and forth between each chapter.  Another item that got distracting is that this was set in the late 1800's/early 1900's and the social norms weren't quite up to what they should have been for that period of time. 
I have to say, Erin Morgenstern did an amazing job with the descriptions of the circus and the magic that inhabits it.  Her descriptions are so vivid you can imagine that the tents are in your reading space.  She has a lot of imagination to come up with the illusions in this book!
This book is somewhat slow on the action, but I'm happy that I didn't put it down because the ending was very bittersweet and almost made up for the lack of character depth and slow pace.  I'm not sure I would recommend this book, but if you want vivid descriptions of magical places, give it a try.