The circus of dreams I THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern I

In 1886 a circus arrives in London: Le Cirque des Rêves (the Circus of Dreams). A notice at its entrance announces "Opens at Nightfall, Closes at dawn". On the night of October 13, the gates of the circus are thrown open. One steps into a world of wonder. Everything in the circus follows a pattern of black and white colours. As people move from tent to tent, they admire the curiosities. From painfully slow-moving human statues to a giant clock that turns itself inside out, everything in this circus touches the point of bizarre. Nothing is out of step, everything is too perfect. As the clock strikes midnight, a giant bonfire is lit by 12 archers. As each of their barbs produces a different colour at the bonfire, two people in the circus realize the "game" had begun.
The "game" is a challenge between two magicians Hector Bowen and AH, who swore their students into a battle of magic. The rules of the game are not clear perhaps because there are no rules. The students Celia and Marco, are mere kids when their "preparation" for the challenge beings. While Marco spends cold, comfortless days in intense study, Celia is subject to painful exercise like her fingers being cut up so she can repair them "magically".  
The Night Circus is Erin Morgenstern’s first novel. Morgenstern, who lives in Massachusetts and is also multimedia artiste, describes all her work as "fairy tales in one way or another". Morgenstern’s peculiar brand of imagination works on details: frill and cut of dresses, smells that bring back memories, rain seeping slowly into clothes. The details present themselves through the magical world of the novel.  
The night circus is the stage where the challenge of wizards is played out. Celia is the illusionist in the circus and Marco is the owner’s assistant.  While, the bonfire lit by Marco powers the circus, Celia is the one who transports and "holds the circus together". The other members of the circus, including its owner Chandresh, have little clue about the real magic in action. The challenge involves a series of move with the two players adding their own magical tents to the circus and trying to gain control of it. Both Marco and Celia find themselves increasingly in awe of each other’s skills. By now the circus has tents like cloud maze, pool of tears, wishing tree, ice garden, desert world, to name a few. A steady group of fans known as rêveurs, follow the circus around. They dress in the trademark black and white of the circus but with a flourish of red. Meanwhile, the members of the circus don’t seem to age and begin to suspect something is wrong.
The admiration between Celia and Marco blooms into love soon, followed by the realization that the challenge would never end as long as both of them are alive.    
There is nothing ingenious about the story, given the rush of fantasy fiction in the last decade. While the magical challenge of Marco and Celia is played out in the world of muggles it is not clear how the two worlds interact.
This book would have been an ordinary work of fiction but for its stylized narrative. The story beings with the declaration: "The circus arrives without a warning." As you read the first chapter, you know Morgenstern is not in a hurry to tell her story. She lets the story breathe, slowly. Though, at 387 pages, it means a lot of breathing, but her prose has a lilt to it that accounts for more magic than all the charms in the book put together. She commits her blunders too, losing her rhythm to adjectives but pulls herself together.
Love between Marco and Celia is not something you see coming, given their detached rivalry. It does not sprout at the spur of the moment but evolves gradually, culminating to the point where both create breathtaking illusions for each other. A particularly interesting scene is the one where the two meet face to face as opponents for the first time. There are no pretences and secrets as the two wizards share details of how each controls the circus and what they are capable of. There is no love interest, but a
compulsion of having been unwillingly bound together by fate. While Celia stabs her hand with a dagger and heals it, Marco recreates a garden: What had been little more than a stack of rough stones moments before is now set and carved into ornate arches and pathways, covered in crawling vines and speckled with bright, tiny lanterns.
Contrived, yet compelling.