by Erin Morgenstern
Synopsis —
Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in plain sight. But those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is searching for his door, though he does not know it. He follows a silent siren song, an inexplicable knowledge that he is meant for another place. When he discovers a mysterious book in the stacks of his campus library he begins to read, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities, and nameless acolytes. Suddenly a turn of the page brings Zachary to a story from his own childhood impossibly written in this book that is older than he is.
A bee, a key, and a sword emblazoned on the book lead Zachary to two people who will change the course of his life: Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired painter, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances. These strangers guide Zachary through masquerade party dances and whispered back room stories to the headquarters of a secret society where doorknobs hang from ribbons, and finally through a door conjured from paint to the place he has always yearned for. Amid twisting tunnels filled with books, gilded ballrooms, and wine-dark shores Zachary falls into an intoxicating world soaked in romance and mystery. But a battle is raging over the fate of this place and though there are those who would willingly sacrifice everything to protect it, there are just as many intent on its destruction. As Zachary, Mirabel, and Dorian venture deeper into the space and its histories and myths, searching for answers and each other, a timeless love story unspools, casting a spell of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a Starless Sea.
Have you ever felt a longing for a place that you've never been or maybe has never existed outside of our imaginations? That's the Starless Sea.
The Starless Sea is truly a love letter to storytelling and all that stories and the telling of them, are. The book follows Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a 25-year-old gay brown man who is studying for his masters in video games and Emerging Media. He happens upon an old book in the university library called Sweet Sorrows, which has no barcode and no author and when he reads it, he finds a chapter that outlines an event in his life. It startles him and he goes upon a journey to find out more about this book and where it comes from. Through this, he stumbles into a "Harbor" of the Starless Sea and he finds it a shadow of its former glory and goes on a journey with Mirabel and Dorian to travel this underground archive of stories and ballrooms and abandoned cities.
A lot of this book alternates between various books that once sat in the archives of the Harbor and also the main storyline. Slowly, you learn that all of these stories are connected and vital to the main story. I really love this and books about books, books within books, are one of my favourite things to read. This book really must have taken such a long time to write due to just how vital these fairytales are to the plot and the story.
One of the overarching themes of this book is change. "What is a story, if not change?" is one of the questions constantly being proposed by the book and one of the struggles that Zachary faces throughout the book -- in changes to his life and also in how to face the change that he has chosen. How does a story end and a new one begin if there is no change to be had?
There's more to this story than I've outlined in the first paragraph, but I really just don't want to give anything away. It's a layered story with lots of metaphors and characters who are something but are also not really. It's beautiful and massive in scope, yet somehow feels intimate. One of the hallmarks of a great book for me is when it makes me long to experience a place that has never existed. I think the last time I felt this was reading about Weep in Strange the Dreamer.
The Starless Sea has easily become one of my all-time favourite books and is a gorgeous entry into a subsector of books that invites the readers to embrace the magic hidden in the world. I think the honeyed sea of stories will be sticking with me for a long time.
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