The Starless sea

Locations
Call Number: Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin, Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-23-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-04-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-20-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 05-15-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Morgenstern, Erin	4-week checkout	Due 04-21-2024

"Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a rare 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 a subterranean 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 of honey, 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 those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a beautiful 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 rare book and in his own life"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Complex Fantasy Tale submitted by sbombery on June 14, 2020, 9:08am Very descriptive fantasy world that lives below our feet. This is a complex tale that weaves multiple stories together from the distant past to the present.

Too much aesthetic, too little story submitted by terpsichore17 on June 14, 2020, 12:01pm I wanted to love it as much as I’d loved The Night Circus. Sadly, where The Night Circus is timeless and evocative, The Starless Sea is self-conscious, wed to a very specific point in time (which will feel dated in 5 years), and generally hammers where it meant to tap (and/or, taps a spot so many times that it bruises).

Playing spot-the-allusion is kind of fun, but in the end, using books/stories as an *aesthetic* distracts from the actual narrative. Likewise I think the bees, owls, and cats were present to capture something, but never knew what. The cats especially seemed peculiar – too silent, nowhere near chaotic or destructive enough to read as *real* cats.

By the time I got to her, Kat’s search was such a relief from whatever was going on around the floods of honey.
By the time it all got resolved, I had the impression I’d been playing Monument Valley for 5 days straight.
By the time I finished it, I was fully on board with Stories Wanting An End. Lots of window dressing, but not much depth.

I am completely, utterly, and thoroughly enraptured by this book submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 20, 2020, 3:14pm I am completely, utterly, and thoroughly enraptured by this book. I honestly wasn't completely taken at the beginning, because I do not enjoy short stories, and at first it seemed to be a longer story with interspersed short stories wound in between. But I trust Morgenstern because of the brilliant characters and writing and plot that was _The Night Circus_ (which I have read at least four times and listened to at least 3), so I suspended by hesitancy and read on.

_The Starless Sea_ has a dreamy quality to the novel as a whole. There were individual sentences that I read and reread, just for the beauty of the sentence itself. The "short stories" were brilliantly meaningful, and once I started to understand that, they no longer felt like interruptions, but rather mysteries to place and solve. There were other mysteries of character and story that came together across time, and I will absolutely, without a doubt, reread this for the additional enjoyment of knowing the meanings of things. The main characters each had histories and grew in reaction to events, and so were a pleasure to meet and spend time with. The story was complex, but still well defined enough to follow (though a few times I had to stop and think about how a character played two roles, and put things together, but that was part of the journey).

I think that the dreamy quality will not work for a few people, and that's fine. It is a book where a reader will need to pay close attention or the stories will not come together, and then the whole will not be enjoyable. But I was drawn in by the mix of current and timelessness, the love of stories, and the brilliance of the mechanism of the novel. 5 stars, my absolute recommendation, and I can't wait till I can start it over again.

r submitted by Keith Phillips on July 31, 2020, 3:43pm r

Awful compared to her other work! submitted by clk.9123 on August 21, 2022, 3:06pm One of the biggest across-the-board complaints for Morgenstern's debut novel, <i> The Night Circus </i> was that it was lacking a plot. So, I would have imagined that her sophomore novel would have had some discernible direction in the way of plot. However, Morgenstern seems to have had a bit of a "hold my beer" moment with this one - and really took it off the rails.

If books could be rated on imagination and creativity, this could have been a quality 5 stars - but it takes much more than that to make a solid, whole book. <i> The Starless Sea </i> is a collection of unfinished and sometimes rather pointless, bits and pieces that don't seem to tie together. It's disappointing because so many parts were lovely or at the very least, interesting, and could have been so much more if connected together or connected to the overall "theme" (can't say plot, because it didn't exist!). There is a huge amount of missed opportunity and I wonder what is going on in her brain and what the publishers thought when they read this - did they not, for the life of them, wonder what in the hell was happening 99% of the time? There is no real driving force, just a vague mystery and the notion that "change" is on the horizon, but very abstract - I was waiting up until the ending page, nearly 500, for an explanation and it never arrived. Furthermore, this book pretends that it has a love story. This was not a love story. There was hardly any effort put into building a relationship between Zachary and Dorian, they just happened to have mutual attraction as they barely spent any time together to forge what real love is. So, it felt kind of insulting that we were being told that this is what love is when 2 seconds of time together is nothing but wishing and hoping and fantasy. And thats what this book is, wishing and hoping something will come out of it but it's really just a bunch of fantasy.