The Starless Sea: Erin Morgenstern

Pages: 512

ISBN: 978-1910701454

Genre: Historical fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Romantic Fantasy

Quote: “Everyone is a part of a story, what they want is to be part of something worth recording. It’s that fear of mortality, ‘I Was Here and I Mattered’ mind-set”

Hola to all the readers. Can I tell you that I didn’t pick this book up out of the blue? Yes, I can because it was one of my most anticipated book. One of the reason being that “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern is one of my favourite book from years.

Second reason being that I was in a great mood to read books about books. So let’s dive into the overview of the story first and than my review below it.

A little overview of the story: So here our protagonist is Zachary Ezra Rawlins who occurs to be an avid gamer and reader, stumbles upon a book in the library. This book (as all books are) is very much different, but is that it? While reading the strange book , he comes to a part where the story resembles his own life. And this book with an unknown author, no copyright pages, no library records starts to make Zachary curious and skeptical. It just has a bee, a key and a sword on its worn back.

Zachary decides to track down each and every detail about the book and ends up in a party with Dorian, a man with a mysterious fake name that he carries (It refers to Dorian from The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde) and Mirabel – a girl who paints doors to the starless sea. So let’s get into my review.

My review: First of all, if you have not read it, I would love to tell you that this book needs all your patience or you will end up confusing many things going on. So go slow with it to the readers who like to complete books in one sitting.

Now, it is an absolute wild read when it comes to read books about books. It has mystery, love, loss, adventure and what not! It’s gripping from the very beginning. And how can I tell you how out of the world it feels when you get references related to Harry potter, Narnia and classics while you read! It’s just feels amazing.

I never went into this book expecting a lot because I would have been left heartbroken if it didn’t exceed my expectations. And I guess it worked!The ambience was great, it was lyrical as I would expect from a Erin Morgenstern book. She succeeded to make me feel the world of the Starless Sea. It is a whole new level of dark fairytales(if that exists, I mean dark and fairytale!) At a point in the story, way too many things were going on which actually kept me going. I wanted to see how all of it comes together in the end.

But what it lacked was a perfect way to ending. First of all, Zachary was an immature character for his age. Ok, I know everyone can make bad decisions at any age. But our character here was doing literally everything on impulse from the beginning. Also in a way the ends meet but not all of them, which is disappointing. The Night Circus also had an unexpected ending but I was satisfied as everything was explained at last.

But on that note when I look upon the complexities this story has. It turns out to be an appropriate ending (but still I am not satisfied with many things not explained) But her writing style is different and not for everyone. So I give this book a three out of five stars. Because only good narration can’t save this one for me.

“We’re here to wander through other people’s stories, searching for our story,To Seeking”

~Kashish~

Photo credit: I, Me and myself