Vivid in Black and White

57. The Night Circus

 

The circus appears and disappears as if by magic, and the whole thing is magical.  The descriptions of the circus are quite amazing.  I wanted to be there, to wander the tents, and stand in front of the clock (I LOVED the clock!).  To eat the food, all the food!  It is a place that can only exist in the pages of a book, and I hope it remains safely there.  Although I think the movie rights are already sold, ugh.

There are many characters, too many for the author to handle them all well, and they are all more than meets the eye, and that is one of the aspects I loved most about the book.  It highlights the idea that we humans love to be cynical about things instead of believing in the possibility.  The circus is wonderful and yet it is believable because people don’t question it.

But the circus is also an arena for a duel.  A duel between two magicians selected, groomed, and educated solely to compete.  And this is where the plot lost me.  I don’t know why they were selected, what the duel is really about, or even how it is played.  The two characters dueling, Marco and Celia, are the most flat characters in the book and I had zero investment in their love or their fight.  Oddly, I still don’t understand the outcome of the duel, how it happened or why.  This is a problem.

So the circus totally works, but the dueling totally does not, leaving me to say that this is a fun, quick, beach-y read; but I think in the end this amazing circus will become forgettable and that is too bad.