Review: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Are you lost or are you exploring?

When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a strange book hidden in his university library it leads him on a quest unlike any other. Its pages entrance him with their tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities and nameless acolytes, but they also contain something impossible: a recollection from his own childhood.

Determined to solve the puzzle of the book, Zachary follows the clues he finds on the cover – a bee, a key and a sword. They guide him to a masquerade ball, to a dangerous secret club, and finally through a magical doorway created by the fierce and mysterious Mirabel. This door leads to a subterranean labyrinth filled with stories, hidden far beneath the surface of the earth.

When the labyrinth is threatened, Zachary must race with Mirabel, and Dorian, a handsome barefoot man with shifting alliances, through its twisting tunnels and crowded ballrooms, searching for the end of his story.

You are invited to join Zachary on the starless sea: the home of storytellers, story-lovers and those who will protect our stories at all costs.


Review
This. This is what reading is all about. Pure, indulgent escapism. A sort of bookish Alice in Wonderland, a land of stories just below our feet. A book lovers dream or a book lovers nightmare. Either way it's the kind of story only someone who truly loves books could ever write.

This book is a commitment. It's no beach-holiday-read but a sit-down-and-pay-attention-to-every-word-because-otherwise-you'll-miss-something-important-read. Full and undivided attention is what it requires, what it commands, what it deserves. It's a feat of engineering - between each chapter of the main story are fairytales, fables, histories, poems, taken from the books that Zachary reads along his journey. They are all important in their own way, and all come into play throughout the course of the novel. So don't skip them, however tempting it might be to get back to Zachary!

The world-building here is simply masterful. If you like quick reads this clearly isn't one for you, but the attention to detail and description is what makes this book for me. Everything is so clear, so vivid that it fires the imagination- from the subterranean tunnels crammed with books to The Starless Sea itself. Zachary is a video games student, and as much as this is a book about books, the main plot could easily be imagined as a video game - collecting items, asking questions, quests and clues appearing as you navigate your way through. Morgenstern can be entirely forgiven for making us wait so long for her second novel. Nine(!)  years ago she stunned us with The Night Circus, and she's done it again here with The Starless Sea. In fact I think I actually enjoyed it even more! Bold statement I know.

Someone asked me what this book was about and I had no idea how to respond. It's a love letter to the art of storytelling, to books, to literature. It's magical, beautiful, spellbinding.