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Erin Morgenstern
Harvell Secker (Random
House UK)
15 September 2011 /ISBN: 9781846555237
Fantasy / 1873-1903 / Various Locations
Amazon
US
|| UK
Reviewed
by Rachel A Hyde
Two magicians
arrange a magical contest to take place between the daughter of
one and the apprentice of the other. All of this is arranged when
both are young children, and does not achieve fruition for many
years. The venue for this trial is a circus, but not an ordinary
one. This circus only opens at night and everything in it is black
and white. It travels all over the place and garners many aficionados,
who form themselves into a club called the rêveurs. But are
the two young contestants doomed to be adversaries, or will they
actually form a very different type of relationship?
If you want to really stylish read, you are reading the right review.
Even the cover of the book is stylish, all black and white with
black page edges and a scarlet bookmark. You can be seen in public
with pride reading this! The tale is replete with lush descriptive
passages of dinner parties, clothes, magical performances and more,
and set in a decadent fin de siècle world that never quite
existed. Fans of Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Stroud and Steve Cockaigne
ought to enjoy this one, as also might readers of steampunk, as
although the magic in here is the opposite, it contains the same
feeling of an alternative 19th century. While lacking nothing in
style or elegance, this is one book that tends to appeal to the
head rather than the heart, as it is also a chilly tale where the
characters never quite come to full-blooded life. To its detriment,
it is hard to care as much about them as the story demands, but
this aside, there probably won’t be a more elegant, stylish,
class act of a novel out this year.
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