NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood.
Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction.
Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.
I read The Night Circus several years ago, so I had a little bit of an idea what to expect to this new book from Morgenstern. Basically, it would have beautiful descriptive language, but would meander and probably jump around. And I wasn't wrong!
The Starless Sea is basically the story of Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a college student who happens upon a strange old book in the library that ends up containing a story perfectly describing an incident in his youth. As he tries to figure out where this book comes from and how he ended up in it, he gets sucked into a much larger story, and eventually into a world beneath the world, where stories live and the Starless Sea reigns.
This is not a fast read. In between Zachary's story you get excerpts from his book and others, short stories that you don't quite know the nature of. Are they metaphors? Allegories? History? The future? And because of this jumping around and the descriptive language, this is not a book you can rush through. You also can't expect to understand what's going on most of the time. I think I finally grasped it by the end, but it's not a simple story. Oftentimes the story has a bit of a fever dream quality, and you're not quite sure if what you're reading is really happening.
This brand of fantasy/magical realism isn't usually my thing, but I enjoy the rhythm feel of Morgenstern's writing. This book probably isn't for everyone, but if you liked The Night Circus, I think you'll like this one.
