The Night Circus Review

I have to say when I first received this book, I didn’t think much of it. However, once I started to read it, I fell in love with the way the author manages to string together the words that set the stage for her story. It made reading it somewhat poetic and mystical. You feel a sense of childish wonder when you read about the feats the characters accomplish and the way the scenes are described.

The story itself revolves around a circus, Le Cirque des Rêves. It has a reputation for arriving with no warning or fanfare. It comes and is set up and unlike a normal circus with colors and lights, this one is predominantly black and white and never opens during the day, appearing almost abandoned only to come alive at night. The tents are of various sizes and are set up in a maze-like way and the acts performed in them are incomparable to any other of its kind.

Our story is not set in a singular timeline but jumps between the present and the past. The history of how the circus was formed and the two titular members that made it all happen.

It starts with a famous magician who goes by Prospero the enchanter on stage but is known as Hector Brown behind the curtain. What his audience is unaware of is that his acts of magic are all real. One day as he goes back to his dressing room, he finds a five-year-old girl waiting with a letter. The contents of it reveal her identity as his daughter Celia Brown. He shows little to no care for the fact that she is his progeny and would have discarded her if she had not made the teacups move with her mind. He realizes that she is like him and starts to train her.

While he does train her, he still does not care for her as a person. His methods are sometimes abusive and even traumatizing. The reason he trains her is revealed when he arranges a meeting with another magician known as Mr. A.H. He introduces Celia as his apprentice and the next competitor. We learn that these two magicians are rivals who use their apprentices over centuries to fight their battles. We learn that Mr. A.H hates illusions and mixing it with magic, which was Hector’s ballpark. Hector preferred to leave his audience mystified but still believing that everything that occurred was only clever tricks and sleight of hand. This was the source of their disagreement for Mr. A.H probably saw this method as a sign of disrespect to his way of performing magic.

Thus, Mr. A.H marks Celia as a player by burning a ring into her finger. He then sets off to find an apprentice of his own. Eventually, he finds a boy in an orphanage and trains him as well. The boy is kept isolated and is only let out to further his training by watching other magicians. Mr.A.H might not be physically cruel like Hector but he is emotionally neglectful of the boy. It is apparent that he doesn’t bother creating an emotional connection with him, and doesn’t even name him.

Over the years the apprentices train and eventually are left to find out their competition. The boy is given an apartment at the age of 19 and is left to his own devices. He decides, with his newfound freedom of sorts, to be called Marco henceforth. During the course where he conducts himself as he pleases he meets Isobel, and the two have an infatuation which leads to her moving in with him.

Marco through a series of events finds himself an assistant to Chandresh Christophe Lefevre, a man who plans to make a circus that none have ever seen before. He decides to hold auditions and it is here that Marco firsts meet his competitor, Celia Brown. She is unaware and goes about preforming feats of amazing magic that lead to her being hired. Marco informs Isobel, who decides to join the circus as a fortune teller and to keep Marco informed of Celia’s movements by letter.

Throughout the story many strange and fantastical things take place. Eventually, everyone who works there except the owner is aware that the circus is magical and that as time goes by that they are not aging. The circus itself changes from normal into something mystical and wonderful. As for our competitors, Marco is aware of Celia being his while she remains unaware for some years. They continue to try and best each other by performing feats of enchanting magic and over the course, they fall in love and Celia is distressed that the competition can only end with one left standing. What’s fascinating is how they both decide to tackle the obstacles that they inevitably face and how it ties in with a circus untouched by time and the people who live in it.

I won’t spoil what happens after that. You should discover the beauty and how charming the story is. The author makes the whole experience of reading it captivating and you should experience that for yourself. I will say that this book is unique in how the story makes you feel like you’re in a daydream where anything is possible and the world is magical. So don’t hesitate to grab a copy of this book if you ever see it!