Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus is a wonderful, mysterious, enchanting novel, as magical as the circus it tells the story of. Two wizards challenge each other to a contest, pitting their two students, a boy called Marco and a girl named Celia, against each other, with a surreal, avant garde circus, Le Cirque de Rêves, as the battleground. As it goes on, the game gets more and more complicated, drawing more and more people into a web of magic, love and loss. But The Night Circus is more than just a story of a contest. It's a story about love, sacrifice, family, the nature games and stories, time and destiny and free will, dreams and imagination, mystery and wonder, and the interplay between performer and audience. There is much more to the tale than is set down in the pages of the book; there are frequent jumps between time periods, and the ending is vague and poetic enough that I can imagine people being dissatisfied with it. However, I loved this book. I found all of the characters endearing in one way or another, the prose as delicious as a slice of cake and a glass of wine, and all of the little touches, flourishes and digressions a sheer delight. If you love fairy tales, romance, magic and poetry, The Night Circus will draw you in and never let you go.