The Night Circus

Author: Erin Morgenstern
My rating: *****
When I first started to read The Night Circus, I very nearly put it straight back on the book shelf. I do not generally like books that are written second person, because part of the fun of reading for me is becoming someone else. I do not pick up books to stay myself; I want to be “her” or “him”. I persevered however, and I am so glad I did.

The entire book was not written in second person and Morgenstern has created a world full of characters; there is no one within the circus who I as the reader did not get to know and become. I knew their names, I knew their loves and I knew their pains.

Le Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams) is a magical arena, in which two unwilling competitors are forced to do battle, with no knowledge as to when, or how, a winner will be chosen. Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair do not know what they are competing for, or how to compete with each other; all they know is that they do not have a choice.

While Marco and Celia are at the centre of the story, they are far from the only interesting characters. Each character stood out clearly from the next, and I think with the amount of care and detail Morgenstern put in, they would be able to carry a book of their own. I do wish that it had been made clearer what became of some characters, but that wasn’t a major issue. The book is set in the early 1900’s, and occasionally the formality of the language got a bit tiresome. I wouldn’t recommend this book for those with a short attention span, but I would recommend it to anyone who wants to believe in magic for a whole 490 pages.