“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazement. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.”
The book “The Night Circus” was one of the most amazing novels I have ever read. Many asked me what it was about and I was able to give them a rough description, but I was not able to say because you only know as much as the two main characters, Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair, knew while I progressed through their “competition.”
“But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.”
They were competitors in a game, pawns in a between a teacher, Marco’s instructor, and his student, Celia’s father and instructor, as to prove which style of learning and practicing magic is better. Their battlefield was Le Cirque des Rêves and their challenge was to add to and run the circus with magic until eventually one of them was left standing, the other dying from the sheer stress, exhaustion, and pain of running to many aspects of the circus. She was born of magic, and he adopted into it. He was chosen to be her contrast and her compliment. He was chosen to well as it led to them falling madly in love.
“True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.”
When they learn that they are to compete till one of them dies they become very morbid, and even though they were able to love each other, and be with each other, and even though they were both in love with each other, Celia couldn’t help but want to stay away from Marco until she could find a way to not be permanently separated from him.
In the end she was going to sacrifice herself, but two of her friends who were knee deep in magic wouldn’t allow her to do it so they told Marco and he was prepared to sacrifice himself. As he was beginning to sacrifice himself, she grabbed hold of him and cast a spell that would leave them both in a state of neither being dead or alive, but rather as a force that lives within the circus, every together, ever one, it the Circus of Dreams.
“Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.”
There is more to this book than what I have shared here, and also more than just the love story of Celia and Marco. You should definitely read this book, it is amazing.
