Writing style
Atmospheric · Descriptive · Lyrical · Poetic
Apple Books- First published
- 2011
- Print length
- 533 pagesAnchor Books, 2012
Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2012
Description
The Circus of Dreams arrives without warning, opens only after sunset, and fills its black-and-white tents with impossible attractions created through real magic. Beneath the spectacle, rival magicians have bound their protégés, Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair, to a secret contest whose rules and endpoint remain obscure even to the contestants. Each answers the other’s creations with more elaborate wonders, turning the circus itself into their shared arena. As Celia and Marco fall in love, their competition threatens the performers, devoted visitors, and intricate magical world sustained around them. Told through shifting viewpoints and a nonlinear chronology, the novel combines romance and fairy tale with an atmospheric meditation on imagination, rivalry, and the human cost of treating lives as pieces in a game.
Reading profile
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Pace
Measured
Tone
Atmospheric · Eerie · Romantic · Wistful
Structure
Multiple timelines · Nonlinear
Focus
Atmosphere · Relationships · World
Emotional intensity
3 / 5
Reading complexity
1–5 · higher means more demanding- Writing
- 3 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 4 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
Themes
What to read next
Book details
For the print edition listed above.
- Publisher
- Anchor Books
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780345803542
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