Windy Van Hooten’s Circus of the Fantasticals—more casually known as the Spark Circus—is not like any other circus you’ve heard of. Yes, including that other very famous literary magic circus. An echoing first line aside, The First Bright Thing is not an homage to The Night Circus any more than it’s a book about Ringling Bros. A circus, like anything with a history, exists in a continuum. And if it’s a really good circus, it also stands on its own.
But not alone. The Spark Circus belong to three women: Rin, short for Ringmaster, whose old name no one uses; Odette, her trapeze-artist wife; and Mauve, their beloved friend. The circus is their life’s work; the circus is their home. And it, like everything, is facing a nearly unimaginable threat.
The First Bright Thing is set largely but not entirely in 1926, which is key for a few reasons. One of those is that it’s between the two World Wars. The other, less plot-centric reason, is that the circus—or at least, this specific circus—is an excellent place to run away to when you don’t fit in. Maybe it’s your gender presentation, your sexuality, the color of your skin—or maybe it’s that you have a Spark.
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The First Bright Thing
Sparks, here, don’t exist just in the sense of a spark of ambition or talent, but an honest-to-goodness spark of magic. At some point during WWI, some people got Sparks. Rin can move through the world in place and time. Odette can heal or otherwise change a body. Mauve can see all of time—history, present, future.
You can probably see how these talents might combine into one hell of a circus—and that’s not yet taking into account the shapechangers and illusionists and unkillable kids. All of it real, none of it illusion. And all of it in service of showing one special person each night that the world is full of magic. The circus is a creation of hope, and change, and of doing the right thing in a difficult world.
Not everyone with a Spark sees their power as a way to heal and bring hope. Trailing in the dark beyond the big top’s glow is another circus, one with black tents and red details. One that trades in darkness, terror, fear, and misery. And one run by a man who searches for Rin.
Dawson tells this story in flashes back and forwards. One story begins on a beach in the war, when a girl appears and saves a terrified soldier without thinking about it. Another begins when Rin starts the circus. How these two tales are connected is never quite in question, but Dawson brings the threads together slowly and gently, showing how the Circus King and the Ringmaster mirror each other, and depicting with powerful honesty and empathy how an abusive relationship can undo a person. The young man named Edward can literally make people do what he says, but the worst of what he does turns a woman against herself. When the mean, cutting voice in your head is your own, how do you recover from that?
A lot is packed into this debut novel, which swings between the intimate relationships among Odette, Rin, and Mauve—and the kid Sparks they pick up along the way—and the bigger picture of the world outside Rin’s perfect caboose home. Dawson is at their strongest with the relationships the women have, build, and struggle with, especially when it comes to Rin and Jo, a headstrong, incredibly talented teenager who joins the circus along with her brother. Jo questions everything, for better or worse—and it is for better and for worse, especially as the Circus King draws near.
But there’s a bigger-picture story too, about the looming war, which the three women see in a trip to the future. They see what happens, and they see who dies, and they want desperately to stop it, especially as they begin to understand just how unstoppable it is. Rin, who was parted from her mother against her wishes, struggles to remember her Jewish heritage, which rises to the surface as the story reaches its final confrontation. Traditions matter to her, and to the story she’s telling her circus and their audience. And, of course, to herself.
At times, the scope of the war can get a bit lost in the circus’s story; at times, Dawson leans a bit too far into an earnest style that over-explains emotional beats already made clear through the characters’ actions and dialogue. But at its best, The First Bright Thing feels as if it’s creating a circus folklore for itself—a world where all kinds of outcasts can hide themselves in plain sight, where family is what you choose and who you love; and where telling stories is an important part of hope. It’s a wandering cousin to GennaRose Nethercott’s Thistlefoot, which also sets a story about memory, love, and perseverance aboard a magically traveling home.
When asked in a recent interview to describe her book in five words, Dawson said, “Magic circus attempts tikkun olam.” In my limited understanding, tikkun olam is a Jewish concept about trying to repair or make the world better. The First Bright Thing beautifully explores this idea, but the book’s greatest strength is the way Dawson shows how this is necessary but difficult work. Some things can’t be changed, and changing one life is not the same thing as changing the whole future. But that one gift is still important.
The First Bright Thing is published by Tor Books.
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
