The Starless Sea: A Novel

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.

Ich fand "The Starless Sea" mindestens so toll wie den "Night Circus" - aber das ist kein Buch zum häppchenweise in der Bahn lesen; man muss echt dranbleiben, damit man das filigrane Geflecht zwischen den Erzählebenen und Personen nicht verliert und man immer noch weiß, wer wann was erlebt hat (ein Dank an die Suchfunktion beim Kindle!); erst dann erschließt sich der "große Zusammenhang" und bemerkt die tollen kleinen Feinheiten, wenn sich Erzählfäden kreuzen. Die Protagonisten sind durchweg interessant entwickelt, ich mochte die "Märchen" sehr und die Geschichte nimmt viele unerwartete Wendungen - von Anfang bis Ende ein absolutes Lesevergnügen!

この本の日本語版をもう7回読み、電子辞書で英語版を購入し、英語のハードカバー版を手に入れ、いまはAudibleで一番初めから聞いている途中です。 1冊の本にこれほど時間をかけたことはまず無いし、1冊の本が私をこんなにも素晴らしい変化へと導くのは初めてです。 私の心にかぎ針を食い込ませた最初のシーンはキャットが主催する自主的な学生ミーティングでの議題です。人はなぜゲームをプレイし本を読み、変化を求めるのか。私はゲームが大好きで本も大好きなのでこの起承転結の「起」に惹き込まれてしまいました。 この本は「ありとあらゆるものになぜと思うこと｣それを探求としており、その答えを求める者だけを読者とします。まるで星のない海の〈港〉へ導く扉のように。 この本をどれだけ愛しているか、心から愛しているか言葉にするのが本当に難しいです。 私は現実と物語を結びつける物語が好きで、この本もそうでした。 この本を読み終えたあと私に起こったことはまるで扉を潜ったあとのザカリーのようで、他の人には大したことに思えないかもしれないけど私にとってはこの本が私の世界を広げてくれたように感じています。 ゲームにはオマージュ、リスペクトという文化があり、本には引用、文献という文化があります。そして人生にも同じことができると信じています。 この物語を探求して私の人生が彩られたようにこの本を手に取ろうとしている他の誰かにとっても、そうであって欲しいと願わずには居られません。 きっとあなたは扉を探している。だからここに居る。これを読んでくれたのなら、騙されたと思って信じてみて。私たちが居る扉の向こうを一緒に探求してくれたら嬉しいです。

Just read the book without knowing anything, you'll thank me later

Que missão escrever uma resenha para este livro. Para começar, Erin Morgenstern escreveu um livro de fantasia e mistério diferente de qualquer outro que já li. Sua narrativa é contemplativa. Me parece que ela colocou em páginas tudo que já quis escrever na vida, então as lias e admirava. The Starless Sea conta a história de Zachary, um jovem rapaz que encontra na biblioteca da faculdade um livro que conta sua própria história. Ele descreve não apenas seu presente, como seu passado e algum futuro. Zachary entra em uma jornada muito louca (peço desculpas pelo termo, mas é o mais perto da realidade que posso chegar) envolvendo organizações secretas e ambientes fantásticos, incluindo o misterioso Mar Sem Estrelas. “Alguém estava tentando impedir a história de terminar, eu acho. Mas a história queria um final.” Toda narrativa é embasada por mistérios. Quando temos respostas, elas nunca são evidentes, sendo ditas por metáforas, por exemplo. Zachary caminha à procura de sentido, em um universo de diversas histórias que se intercalam por trajetórias e personagens. Pode ser confuso? Sim! Mas não deixa de ser incrível! Há contos, páginas de diários, fábulas, histórias que explicam o universo, histórias anteriores de outros personagens, e até histórias que ficam difíceis até achar conexão com Zachary diretamente. Quem ama a escrita, narrativa e leituras desafiadoras pensa: Meu Deus, Erin Morgenstern é um gênio! FATO! “Nem todas as histórias falam com todos os leitores, mas todos os leitores encontram histórias que falam com eles de algum jeito e em algum momento.” Se você gosta de narrativas que te indicam “segura na minha mão e só confia”, você vai amar O Mar Sem Estrelas. Se não, talvez este não seja o livro ideal neste momento. Ou talvez, este seja só o início de sua história, mas você precisará abrir uma porta para entrar e descobrir. “Um menino no início de sua história nunca sabe que sua história está começando” Mesmo o foco sendo nos eventos e nos universos criados, O Mar sem Estrelas tem uma linda representação LGBT e de personagens não brancos. Eu li a versão em inglês, mas a Editora Morro Branco está lançando agora a edição brasileira!

I’ve just finished reading “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern. While I don’t completely understand the whole story yet, so many of the parts are so beautifully written that I wore out my highlighter making notes. While reading, I sometimes thought “The Starless Sea for Dummies” would be helpful, but one of the quotes I highlighted was: “Symbols are for interpretation, not definition”, so what good would a companion guide to understand the interpretation of someone else really be? But the idea of a companion book stuck with me. Do you remember when everyone was reading “The DaVinci Code”? They eventually came out with an illustrated version of that book and it was very beautiful. Can you imagine an illustrated version of The Starless Sea, with pictures of Mirabel dressed as Max at the ball, Eleanor with her rabbit mask, Eleanor’s pirate ship, the tattoo on Dorian’s back, the painting in the room behind the office of Zachary and Dorian, the Owl King … There are so many to choose from. AND - this is a story about the son of a fortune teller. The illustrations in the Starless Sea companion book should be in the form of tarot cards! I recently had the pleasure of seeing a number of artists create very beautiful and varied tarot cards all from the same prompts provided by the spectacular artist Jenny Manno. It made me think, with regard to different interpretations, that they should not hire one artist to illustrate the companion book, rather they should hold a competition or challenge and include a variety of artists’ visions and interpretations of the images. Wouldn’t that be spectacular! What do you think, Erin Morgenstern and Doubleday? 😃