Final Thoughts

[A Long Story]

It is the end of the month and everyone should be wrapping up with The Night Circus if you haven't already! So what was your overall impression? Did you like how it ended? Would you have wanted a different ending? Did your views about particular characters change at all? Would you recommend this novel?

[Katelyn]

Overall, this novel wasn't exactly what I was expecting. The pace of the book is much slower than what I maybe would have preferred. I did not realize at first how long a piece of time that the story was spanning and I sometimes had difficulty discerning where in time I was within the story because it jumped around so much.

I will say that I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than I did the first. I suppose it was the author's intent to kind of keep you in the dark along with the characters, but sometimes I felt I was given so little information that I wasn't sure what was even happening and would therefore lose interest for a day or two.

I disliked how quickly in the beginning you were introduced to so many characters, I had trouble discerning exactly who the Burgess twins, Mr. Barris, or Madam Padva even were. and what roles they even played for the circus other than perhaps investors? I am especially confused as to why AH was involved other than obviously to keep an eye on Marco's progress, but through the eyes of the other proprietors, what was his purpose? Im not sure it ever says.

The Competition - I hated that you did not know ANYTHING about the competition at all. We get a little bit of the purpose from AH in the end talking to Widget, but I feel like we had so much missing backstory! What was the disagreement between AH and Prospero, they allude to it, but never really explain it. They never explain how you actually win the competition. All we know is that the last competition ended because one person committed suicide. Is that always the answer though? What happened in other competitions? Is there any other way to win. Also, in the end AH ends up calling it a stalemate... Does that mean it actually could have been stopped at any time if they had chosen? I suppose that's where the subject of good vs evil really comes in? Were the teachers really evil because they didn't care who died as long as they were proven right?

All in all I didn't feel like all that much happened. They took turns molding the circus, but you find out that the reason it has been so balanced without anything happening is actually because of Isobel? I thought it was a rule in the competition that no one could intervene on their work. Wouldn't this safety net count as intervening? I also disliked how unclear Isobel was over the fate of Bailey's tarot reading. She implies that he could have made it all ok and made it able for both Marco and Celia to both live and the competition could end, but that time was off so it wasn't meant to be. What could have happened had Bailey not missed the train? It still kind of worked out in the end even though he was late, but what would have happened? What was the point of mentioning it other than maybe trying to support the thought that you can't control time, even though they had been all along.

Tara's death kind of bugged me because you never really understand if it is because she figures out she can't age, or because she figures out they are all pawns in a game, or if she was murdered for asking too many questions. It was just left really open and never had closure.

Parts I did really like... As I talked about during first impression posts, I really like how there are excerpts putting you in first person to kind of give you a better vision of the circus. At first, I assumed they were ust there to serve as imagery, but in the end it is to actually show you how much time has passed. It shows the dates on the clock from when this story was actually taking place and it is mentioned that a long time has passed, but then when you receive your special ticket, you see that Bailey's contact info is actually an email address which means you are experiencing this circus and the characters now in present day. I just loved that and the message that magic and love can still give you that same feeling and exist in this day and time if you just pay attention and look for it.

I also really enjoyed the love story between Celia and Marco. It was a timeless Romeo and Juliet scenario, but you could really feel the electric between them. I only wish there had been more of it. In reality they only really crossed paths like 4 times!

I also really enjoyed all of the wonderful and magical imagery that the author creates. I loved the description and detail that's given to all of the tents. The author did a wonderful job of making you feel like you have really been to this fantasy world that she has created.

Just to touch on something I had mentioned on the discussion post...
I think the subject of free will is interesting in this novel because everyone had free will to some degree. Even Marco and Celia had the free will to decide HOW they were going to end the competition. Instead of there being a winner and loser, they forced a stalemate, so that they did not have to lose each other. The only thing I couldn't understand was the technique of existing on an ethereal plane? I don't think it was given enough detail to fully explain what exactly this meant. I just wanted to touch more on that in this post because I didn't want to spoil anything in the other post lol.

In the end, I liked this book ok... I think a 3 would be too small a number to rate it because I did enjoy it, but a 4 is a little high because I did also have some problems with it in that I wasn't hooked and I felt it too slow and too vague in areas. If I could say a 3.5 that would be perfect ha.

[J]

I would give it a 4 bc I really liked it better at near the end. I liked the magic of the first person story telling but Didn’t care for the darker parts murders,fortune telling ect. I suppose Prospero wanted to prove to his teacher that he was better by winning and his ego got in the way. I agree it was slow at times but made up for it in the second half.