I adored The Starless Sea, and after hearing rave reviews for The Night Circus for years, I was confident I would love it. However, I was surprised to find it slightly missed the mark for me.

There were many things about this book I did enjoy: Morgenstern’s prose is richly beautiful, and her occasional incorporation of second person was very effective.

I struggled, however, with the characters in The Night Circus. Celia and Marco’s relationship, so central to the plot, simply didn’t compel me, which is a shame, because I feel with a few more moments between them it could’ve been something truly special. They spend so much of the narrative separate, however, they’re not convincing. Additionally, with such a large cast to follow, a few were bound to fade into the background, and it was often frustrating to be shunted to a chapter with a character I didn’t connect with whatsoever– many were extremely forgettable. I don’t feel like the main players really had much in the way of development or arcs: which can be fine, when there are enough other factors at play– but that brings me onto my next point.

There’s a lack of stakes that permeates this book. For a while, that didn’t matter for me, I was contentedly enjoying the aesthetics and the feel of the book enough to continue, despite a lack of investment in the characters. However, as the book wore on, my patience wore thin, and by the final act, I grew incredibly eager to finish. The climax didn’t have any emotional impact on me whatsoever.

I was surprised to discover that the “thesis statement,” of The Night Circus, emphasising the importance of stories and storytelling, was extremely similar to that of The Starless Sea, and I found it to be much more successfully communicated, thematically, in the latter. For all Morgenstern’s beautiful prose, there’s a lot of “tell,” in The Night Circus- most important twists and developments are spelled out by characters through dialogue, and even the message Morgenstern wishes to impart on the reader is communicated explicitly- all the more frustrating, knowing that Morgenstern can fold this information into her prose more naturally: she just doesn’t. I know I’m in the slight minority here, but I would recommend The Starless Sea over The Night Circus to anyone interested in Morgenstern’s work. These two books are trying to say the same thing, but while this books tell you, the former shows you.