Beautiful, creepy, and strange. The characters here are so much a reflection of their world, and their world is a wreck of a place -- Boss calls them "the circus that survives," and they do, but it costs so much. In a lot of ways I'd call it more magical realism than "fantasy" as that term is used for a genre; the power that sustains the circus is inexplicable and simply present, and the characters outside of the circus spotlights are never named, never brought clearly into focus, even the most important of them. 
 I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the ending, the fact that (view spoiler)[so many of the characters feel like they've progressed so little; the circus will go on, and they will go on being in it, but the changes wrought by the fight with the government man are too briefly glossed for me to really feel their impact. In a way it's fitting for the theme, the final act of survival despite the merciless world around them, but it feels like a piece of music that ends without resolving into a final primary chord -- deliberately unresolved. (hide spoiler)]