Roll up, roll up: the circus is in town and ready to welcome you!

This was the debut novel from Erin Morgenstern, published in 2011. I picked this up with eager anticipation because I’d loved her second novel, The Starless Sea (2019), which I read last year. Would The Night Circus be just as good?

Listed by Time as one of the best fantasy novels of all time, The Night Circus is a dazzling debut, and it is easy to see how this talented writer went on to create The Starless Sea, as her distinct style arrives already fully formed.

This is a circus unlike any other, where the magic, illusions and dazzling delights are not quite as they first appear: there is a dark, dreamlike undercurrent, waiting to whisk you away.

Here’s the blurb on the back:

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 amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

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.

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.

In short, this is a magical masterpiece, although my heart will always belong to Morgenstern’s other masterpiece, The Starless Sea.