The Night Circus is easily one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. I'm not sure what drew me to pick this up in the book shop, maybe the magical cover? - the fact that it just has that look about it that lets you know you're about to step into a whole new world.
It is set in the late 19th to early 20th Century, beginning with the father and the future teacher of Marco and Celia deciding to start a new game. From the outset, it is unclear what exactly the 'game' is, and it never really gets revealed. Even the contestants do not understand it.
The only things we know about this game are that Marco and Celia are competitors, and one must die in order for the other to win. The Night Circus is the game's arena.
The circus itself is described wonderfully. Morgenstern perfected the image of everybody's dream circus without us even knowing we had one. The ideas for tents inside the circus were so stunning and magical that I found myself wanting more and more to attend this circus.
Marco and Celia become aware that they are one another's competitor in the middle of the book. Marco is the first to realise it, and it takes Celia some time to figure it out. I feel like most of the plot was focused more around finding this information out, and coming up with conspiracies rather than the actual game itself. They are told that they must take it in turn to make moves, but they rarely do. When we finally reach a battle, (and I say finally because it seemed to go on forever) it shouldn't even be classed as a battle because of course the two fell in love - (that was so obvious) - and so Celia somehow found a way out of the one of them dying for one of them to win situation that the game seemed to end with them both continuing to exist together - which makes me wonder how none of the previous contestants in previous games had figured out how to do something like that.
Sporadically throughout the story, we skip forward a few years to another character, Bailey, who isn't a part of the circus, but admires it so much that he waits and waits for it to return to his city. His first visit was where he met Poppet, a young girl who performs acts with her twin brother, and the three develop a friendship that takes us right to the end as the story of the circus catches up. I thought that Marco and Celia handing over the circus to Bailey was ridiculous. He was completely unaware of everything that happened behind the scenes and was not a part of the circus in any way other than a member of its audience. He was not able to perform any of the tricks, illusions or contortions that the performers were, so why him? Because he was in the right place at the right time and Celia had nobody else to ask is not a legitimate reason for handing over that many years worth of work to somebody completely ignorant.
The game's finish and handing over the responsibility of the circus to Bailey wasn't the ending I'd hoped for. In all honesty I'd hoped that the battle was more focused on and that Marco or Celia had won and the other had died, like the game was intended to end.
Despite my wishes of how the novel had ended, I enjoyed reading it. I hope to see some more from Morgenstern in the future and I hope that she continues to write as beautifully as she did with The Night Circus.
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