I feel like this book was more about the wonders of magic than it was about anything else. Magic is portrayed here as not just a tool people use, or a gift people have. It's more the other way around - magic has the gift of people in The Night Circus and uses people to bring it to life. And to that thought, Morgenstern does an excellent job of painting the world with magic and making it gleam and glow and fizzle. Ultimately, however, I wanted more from this book than what I got. Most of the characters sort of dither about for most of the book, content with maybes and possibilities, and only (finally!) choosing to affect their own lives only in the last hundred pages. If you want to bask in the ethereal light of wonderment for 400 pages, read this book.