Love this book! Having read The Night Circus I fell in love with Erin Morgenstern’s writing. I was ecstatic to find a new book available as an eARC through NetGalley.

The Starless Sea is a beautiful story of love and adventure. To me, it had a mythical dream-like quality that made me want to read very slowly so I could stay in the story as long as possible. And that is exactly what Morgenstern does, pulls me into stories that surround and cocoon for a delightfully delicious read.

I really loved this book and I didn’t want it to end. There were stories within stories and you could smell, feel, and taste everything the characters were going through.

Lots and lots of literary references, so fans of naming just a few, Harry Potter, the Goldfinch, Where the wild things are, Alice and wonderland, the list goes on.

I was intrigued by the author’s writing she had really pretty way of making words flow together that didn’t always make sense but somehow it fit perfectly. The only criticism is that I would love for there to be a sequel or even a prequel! There seems to be much more to explore in this particular world and I’m not sure if I want this to be the ending.

I am still speechless. I don’t know how Morgenstern does it, but just like in The Night Circus, The Starless Sea reads like a painting, a symphony, a perfect cocktail. And I DON’T GET HOW SHE DOES IT. It’s such an immersive experience in her work, I have yet to find another author who transports you in such a luscious way.

The story was entrancing, the characters were believable while fully being metaphors, fairytales, heroes. The sheer notion of an underground library doesn’t even TOUCH what you’re about to read. I cannot wait to read this again, as I am confident I will find a beautiful new nugget I missed in prior readings, over and over and over.

Thank you SO much to NetGalley and Doubleday for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This was a 2019 highlight.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a grad student studying video games at a perpetually snow-bound university somewhere in Vermont. (Since it’s in Vermont, I figure it’s OK to imagine everyone there has a Bernie Sanders accent). One day during the bleak January term, Zachary is in the library searching for something good to read. He comes across an odd, authorless book in the stacks called Sweet Sorrows.

Sweet Sorrows is a bit of a library mystery: a it’s only ever been scanned into the system once, when it was added to the collection. It has never been checked out. For some reason, the librarians haven’t noticed this and weeded it out of the collection. Anyway, Zachary is drawn to it so he checks it out. Once back in his dorm he starts to read it and is shocked to find that, among some disjointed fairy tales about pirates and tongueless acolytes, is a story recounting, in great detail, like, even down to details concerning his shoelaces, an incident from his own childhood. Something he’s never told anyone about, and had kind of half-forgotten. All laid out in a book that is clearly much, much older than he is.

When Zachary was a kid he found a painted door in an alleyway near his mom’s house. The door was so detailed it almost seemed real. In fact, when he reached out to touch it, the painted door had an actual doorknob. Zachary almost, but ultimately didn’t, open the door. All this is recounted in Sweet Sorrows. Zachary, of course, is freaked out and wants some answers, but the book has no copyright page or publication information in it. However, when Zachary peels off the bar code sticker (my inner librarian winced at that) he finds a clue: three symbols, a bee, a key and a sword.

One Google image search later, Zachary finds a photo of a woman at an annual, literary-themed masquerade party thrown by the Algonquin Hotel. She’s wearing a necklace with, you guessed it, a bee, a key, and a sword. It’s all Zachary has to go with, so he snags a ticket to the upcoming masquerade.

Then things get weird, but in a good way. Zachary is brought into this weird underground library/world/place that is full of stories. It sounds like an introvert’s paradise, full of books and cats and a kitchen that make anything you ask if you just send a note down on the dumbwaiter...but this place isn’t entirely safe. There are people intent on keeping others away from it. In fact, those people have a whole secret society with a headquarters and everything where they hang doorknobs everywhere.

Plus, there’s an ocean made of honey, which sounds super sticky.

I told you, things get weird.

Anyway, Zachary finds himself teaming up with a pink-haired woman called Mirabel, who was born in this underground introvert’s paradise and is determined to protect it. Then there’s the guy whose name may-or-may-not-be Dorian - a gorgeous storyteller to whom Zachary is immediately drawn, but who knows what Dorian’s actual agenda (or name) truly is?

Reading The Starless Sea is like reading a transcript of a memory of a dream you had once that may or may not have been a hallucination from that time you had a 103 degree fever from pneumonia or it could’ve been a memory of a thing you actually did, you have no idea...but all in a good way. Plus a book of strange/relevant fairy tales and myths sprinkled in between. It is definitely a bit confusing at first, but if you stick to it, all the weirdness does eventually coalesce into a cohesive story. It does make sense! Eventually.The Starless Sea is definitely one of those books that would make more sense when read twice, and probably all at once. Not over the course of like, two weeks the way I did.

The whole novel does have a dreamy, video-game-esque quality to it - there’s a lot of wandering around, acquiring objects, going on quests, that sort of thing. The imagery Morgenstern features throughout the book would certainly make a gorgeous, kickass video game, definitely something I’d stand over one of my gamer friend’s shoulders and watch them play. Morgenstern is quite good at giving us a whole picture of what the world of the underground library/introvert’s paradise is like - utilizing not just descriptions of what’s there, but descriptions of all the different smells, textures and tastes - plus she manages to do it without making the writing sound clunky or interrupting the flow of the story itself. You can almost feel the stickiness that underground honey sea.

Anyway, if you were a fan of Ms. Morgenstern’s previous novel, The Night Circus, it goes without saying that you’ll definitely love The Starless Sea as well.

I absolutely loved The Night Circus, so when I heard that another book was coming out by Erin Morgenstern I was elated. I am happy to say that The Starless Sea not only met but exceeded my expectations. Morgenstern once again proves to be an amazing writer in this beautiful story. Similar to the Night Circus, this story isn't told in chronological order, and is told from the pov of a range of colorful characters. As the mystery of the story unravels, the reader will find themselves itching to learn more about the secrets of the Starless Sea. 5/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I loved the "Night Circus"! When people ask me what my favorite book is, that is my answer. I have reread it multiple times, so I was definitely excited when I heard Morgenstern was releasing a new book!
"The Starless Sea" is full of beautiful descriptions, and is twisting and turning with magical imagery. This novel keeps you guessing with changing chapters and snippets of each story as the momentum builds. I liked following Zachary through these enchanted tales and finding where it all leads him, and us. Morgenstern's detail and imagery craft another amazing story.
Hard to put into words all the emotions that I felt while reading this.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins remembers a door painted into a brick wall a long time ago. A door that looked so real, as if he could turn the knob and walk right through it. He never turned the knob, but often wondered what would happen if he had. Years later as a graduate student, Zachary finds a strange book in the university library, one that has no author, no copyright information, and no dates. When checking out, the book scans improperly, further perplexing Zachary. He finds the strange book, titled Sweet Sorrows, interesting. Zachary becomes alarmed when he reads the third story in the book—about a young boy who doesn’t open a door painted on a brick wall.

Zachary follows the mystery presented by Sweet Sorrows, meeting a variety of characters during his quest. He finds himself in the midst of a war between opposing factions who are somehow involved in the mystery of Sweet Sorrows and The Starless Sea.

Morgenstern paints such a vivid portrait of the Harbor near the Starless Sea. I could imagine every part of it and felt as if it was my ultimate book heaven. To recreate even parts of it would be magical and fantastical.

The Starless Sea is about stories inside of stories inside of stories. The characters are intriguing and full of dimension. Each story relates to another story. Full of adventure, folklore, magic, and mystery, The Starless Sea is a must-read for everyone, but especially for any book lover!

DNF - This one's not for me, as I don't really like the story-in-a-story device. Plus I never read Night Circus so I didn't know what to expect with the writing style, and I think it's a little flowery for my tastes.

"The Starless Sea" is full of beautiful descriptions, twisting and turning with magical imagery and glimpses of the story. Like Morgenstern's first novel, "The Night Circus," this novel keeps you guessing and moving through the story with changing chapters and snippets of story. Morgenstern's detail and imagery craft an amazing story.

Brilliant and exciting. Be prepared to dive into a world that only books can take you. Erin Morgenstern is a master of taking you down a rabbit that you never want to leave.

This was a weird literary fever dream. I have no idea how to describe it or even explain what happened, but I really enjoyed it. Usually I race through books, desperate to swallow the whole plot at once, but this I read slowly and leisurely, dipping in and dipping out, and I was always engrossed and surprised by the connections and images.

Morgenstern is a delight. I have rarely seen so much creativity in my life. The book is an expertly woven tale linking past to present and beyond. The tale begins with a lonely university scholar who is whisked into an adventure on the Starless Sea when he finds a book in the library about himself. This is a story of self discovery, love, and how infinite our universe is. Readers who expect this to be the same as The Night Circus might be disappointed; those who come in with an open mind and a desire to be carried away by a tale will be delighted.

This is a tough one for me. I confess, I did not love this book. I *liked* it well enough, but found the structure disconcerting and the story a bit confusing. Occasionally, I have a hard time focusing on books that alternate stories with each chapter, which is what I think made this a less satisfying read than I expected. I kept wanting to read the Zachary Ezra Rawlins narrative and got really annoyed that it kept being interrupted by the alternating fairytale chapters. I know they all come together in the end, but the format kept me feeling disconnected throughout and made the narrative drag. It didn't help that I was reading this in e-format. If I'd hard a print copy, I would have totally skipped around the chapters to satisfy my curiosity.

At the same time, this is a book filled with gorgeous language and description, the fairyland of my childhood dreams where one can get lost for centuries among all the stories in the world. Could there be a better place? I think not. I did enjoy the DungeonMaster/RPG approach to telling Zachary's story, which at times made me feel as those I was inside the story, and I really enjoyed the characters.

I am 100% certain that fans of The Night Circus will eat this up. Morgenstern's writing gets ALL the adjectives - lovely, luminous, lyrical, etc. and I predict this will appear on all the Best of 2019 lists.

Dreamy and fantastical but ultimately not as compelling as you’d think it would be. I enjoyed it while actually reading it but often chose to do something other than pick it up to continue reading.

ETA: I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The plot was interesting, the details intriguing, but the characters just... flat.

I wanted to love this novel so, so much. I loved Morgenstern’s previous book and magical realism/fantasy is a genre I adore. I got about 60% through this and was loving it. However, right around this point I felt that it started to get really slow. Generally I don’t have an issue with longer books, but with this one I was bothered. It seemed like a lot of the same things kept happening, instead of the plot moving like a river. Which again, is something I can be cool with depending on how it’s done. In this case, I don’t like how it was done. It’s beautifully written and so interesting. But for me it fell kinda flat... which I feel bad saying because it is such beautiful writing. I might revisit this one in the future, but for now it is what it is.

If you had fun at The Night Circus-
you want to sail on the The Starless Sea!!

Time is a River (with inlets)
A book is an interpretation, only words
a place where you go in your imagination.
Sometimes life gets weird
Open the door and escape to an
Underground Library World

I want to be on the Starless Sea Shores
I want to walk a labyrinthine of candlelit tunnels
and rooms filled with stories

I truly enjoyed The Night Circus- excited to see a new book coming
and to have the opportunity to preview it. Completely recommend!