The Night Circus
3.0 Stars
1-1-2015

A decent book that unfortunately collides with many of my hang-ups. I'm not much of a foodie, and this book spends endless words describing all the delicacies that people eat. As far as I can tell, no one ever eats any fiber in this book, but then again they are magicians so maybe they have ways of dealing with that. Then there is the issue that one of the main characters is a sort of mind-mage, who can silently reach in and Create/Read/Update/Delete parts of another person's psyche. Long ago I had an argument about (nerd alert!) Ars Magica and its similar mind mages, and how you could never have a society of such people since they are all basically pointing mental guns at each other all the time. So I always had problems with that character, and how people don't treat his mere presence as an existential threat, and how his use of magic to turn people into slaves is somehow not considered evil. I had other quibbles with the plot, but you get the idea.

On the plus side, this book does have a great deal of inventiveness and lays out some beautiful physical scenes and images.