'The Starless Sea' Review: why it's my favourite stand-alone
- Ella Edwards
- Oct 4, 2022
- 4 min read
As an experienced bookworm I can 100% say my least favourite question in the world is "What's your favourite book?" I mean what kind of a question is that? Do you know how many books I've read since words became little more than wonky scribbles? But, that being said, we all have that one book that's just so perfect, words cannot possibly describe how much we're in love with it, whether it be (by some miracle) a stand-alone or a series, there's always a book out there that's just *the one*
Well I'm here to share my *the one* book:
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.
The Blurb
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.
My Review
I don't think I have ever read any one book more than once a year, it feels like some kind of unspoken rule that if you've more books to read you read them first before re-reads. Well I guess I can say that that philosophy is overrated and I promptly broke that rule after 3 months of pining for a re-read of The Starless Sea.
Here is where I say I am glad for random universe-driven occurrences, because I do not honestly think that I would have even read, let alone found, this book if it had not been spontaneously given to me by a relative who just couldn't get into it. Here is also where I say that the blurb of this book does it no justice whatsoever. I was fully not expecting the story that I got, I was expecting teenagers and magical adventures, and I got college-aged+ people and stories and myth and mystery and lore and love (beautiful love) and everything.
"This person is a place Zachary could lose himself in, and never wish to be found."
The Starless Sea follows the story of Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a uni student who finds a mysterious book with an event from his past written within its pages, a fact that greatly disturbs and intrigues Zachary (never Zach). The finding of 'Sweet Sorrows' sets off a magical train of events in Zachary's life, winding him through tale upon tale upon tale, each connecting back to the Starless Sea. He attends a literary ball and meets the elusive and mysterious Dorian (not to say handsome!), and the enigmatic Mirabel. Together the three of them elude the 'bad guys' and make their way to a Harbor on the shore of the Starless Sea, where Zachary and Dorian uncover the secrets of the Sea, piecing together the entwining stories as they read together.
The book is split into 6 different parts, each part is a new collection of stories that relates to what the boys are doing in real-time, with every second (ish) chapter belonging to the respective book and the others fitting into the story's progress, entwining Zachary's story with character backstories, and notes from the past, and fairy tale and myth, but at the very centre of it all is Zachary, trying to learn his fate and stop thinking about kissing Dorian.
"A paper star that has been unfolded and refolded into a tiny unicorn but the unicorn remembers the time that it was a star and earlier a time when it was part of a book and sometimes the unicorn dreams of the time before it was a book when it was a tree and the time even longer before that when it was a different sort of star."
The Starless Sea is a wonder in and of its own, and I want nothing more than to just splash into words what this book does to me. Every. Damn. Day. It is never far from my thoughts, and i find myself wanting to just live in this world, to be with these characters that i feel, and know. Erin Morgenstern is a wordsmith of the highest degree and it's so beautiful that it kind of hurts when I'm not in their world all the time. It's beautiful and glorious and that is why The Starless Sea is my *the one* book, and I don't know if anything I ever read will top this as my favourite stand-alone novel.
"'How're you feeling?' Zachary asks. 'Like I'm losing my mind, but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way.'"
I think The Starless Sea makes me feel what Dorian is describing: beginning *the one* is like finding a piece of your soul, a piece of yourself you never knew was missing until you found it, but when it ends it makes you lose your mind in that slow, achingly beautiful kind of way.
"... a voice whispers in his ear. 'Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate.'"
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