When this book finally comes out I'll be really interested in whether professional reviewers toe the party line and declare The Night Circus ~THE~ book of the fall, heir to The Time Traveler's Wife blah blah blah ... or whether someone has the guts to say the emperor has no clothes. 
 This not a bad book, but the hype it has received is completely undeserved. 
 What's truly sad is that I understand why people seem to think this book is going to sell well. It combines elements from several things that have sold well-- Victorian era (The Prestige and The Illusionist), star-crossed teen lovers forced into a large public productions for the sake of a duel (Hunger Games), magic (Harry Potter)-- it seems like it should be popular. 
 But the book never moves beyond a poor stew of popular concepts. There's nothing really original here and virtually no world building. The characters talk like modern day Americans. They think and behave like modern day Americans. Things are forever being described as so amazing they can't be properly described which is made doubly annoying by the fact that these "non-descriptions" then go on for paragraphs ... telling you nothing. 
 I really don't understand why the author chose to set this book in the time period she did if she was not going to include any of the interesting details of the period. Victorian society was intricate, filled with all kinds of rules and secret languages. Circuses and fairs of the period offered protection and a livelihood to people with all kinds of birth defects and disabilities before social security. There's so much here that could be used to create a really interesting and rich story and yet none of it is employed. 
 All of this would be forgivable if the book was fast paced and short ... but it isn't.