The Starless Sea: A Novel Paperback – August 4, 2020

Hey guys👋🏾 I'm finally back from my long adventure with The Starless Sea & here is my book review!🍯This was a wild, fascinating, artistic, bizarre, eccentric adventure and I had a BLAST. I absolutely loved this book. First read of 2020 and let's just say I started this year off with a bang💥 by reading this book.🦉Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a young boy, is walking home from school one day and finds a door in the alleyway by his house, he's never seen the door there before, he wonders who painted it? He goes up and observes the door, wonders if it is real? Where would it take him? Is this a fantasy? Or is it just a regular painted door? He decides that it is just a painted door and continues home, an opportunity missed...🐝Years later while Zachary is in grad school he discovers a book at the library called Sweet Sorrows, this story sweeps Zachary off his feet. He investigates the story behind Sweet Sorrows and what he discovers will forever alter his future. He discovers doors that takes his story into unforseen places, he goes on many quests to see where his fate will lead him.🌜This fantastical, whimsical, adventurous novel will take you places that your intellectual brain can't even wrap around. Oh, this book gets deep, I found myself reading and rereading pages to make sure I understand the storyline correctly but I LOVED that. Time traveling, fairytales, doors that lead to the unknown, multidimensional worlds that I'm still trying to understand, and on top of that romance that'll make your heart go numb 🖤🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘The best part about this complex book is the character development and all of the whimsical storytelling. I did a poll on my story a few days ago to see who all has read this book and surprisingly not many of you have and I am hoping this review will change your mind. If you are looking for a warm adventure during this cold winter then go buy/rent this book and give it a try.🐝🗝🗡

It's been a while since I vacillated as much on how to review a book as I am with Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea, her follow-up to the much-beloved (myself included) The Night Circus. I spent so much of The Starless Sea absolutely in love with the world that Morgenstern created here - a series of nesting stories that combine in unexpected ways, revolving around a college student who discovers a volume of disjointed tales and realizes that he appears to be in one of them - and that maybe all of them connect to each other? From there, The Starless Sea keeps evolving and changing in front of you, becoming a fairy tale - no, a tale of a magical world - no, an allegory with shifting meanings - no, a beautiful piece of magical realism - no, maybe a love story - and just keeps changing, all while revolving around a love of books, stories, storytelling, and imagination that's undeniably intoxicating. But the problem with a story like this is that, as Morgenstern continually lets it become something new and evolve, it starts to feel like some of the pieces just don't work as well as others, including a villain role that feels a little shoehorned in (and abruptly discarded), layers of reality that seem to be known by the characters but thrust upon us without warning, and a final act that moves beyond cryptic into actively befuddling. Mind you, it's hard to do an ending about an intangible, magical world beyond human understanding; by the very definition of it all, it would be a cheat to make that too clear, but there's a difference between feeling like the meaning is just out of reach (think Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell) and just being a bit confusing, and The Starless Sea ultimately falls a little too far into the latter. And yet, did I spend almost every page enthralled by the beautiful visions Morgenstern was creating? I did. Did I love every moment and every detail of this world? Undeniably. Does it all work? No, definitely not...but none of that means it's any less magical or beautiful, either.

The Starless Sea is a love story. First to books, and then a place, and then a person. The novel unfolds itself to reveal stories within stories, worlds within worlds, meanings within meanings. Everything is exactly as it appears and nothing is as it seems. Metaphors exist in their own right, and yet represent something greater than themselves. Morgenstern wields the power to reignite the childlike wonder of believing that there really is magic in the world, just beyond what your eyes can see. You find yourself searching for signs of your own magical door; an invitation to another world that you never quite noticed but always knew was there. As in the Night Circus, Morgenstern masterfully creates a setting, a place, that is itself alive and becomes a driving and integral character in the story. Rather than unfolding in linear time, The Starless Sea takes you on a journey through layered myths and tales that circle and turn back into one another. Time takes on a new shape; a new meaning.If the story itself were not enough to entice you, the prose is worth the read on its own. Enchantingly written, it at once draws you deep (deep) into the story while also delighting you with surprising turns of phrase and singular descriptors. As Morgenstern takes you on a winding path into a world nested within hidden passage ways and protected secrets, where everything is alive with stories, you find that there is another story being added to the depths and layers.Your own.