Argh, this book was so close to almost-perfect but just missed the mark for me with its ending. Worth reading for its beautiful descriptive writing and quip-laden prose - yet this comes at the expense of slightly underdeveloped characters, motivations and plot. A wonderful showcase of aesthetic with a frustrating lack of resolution. 

This is definitely a modern epic! It is slow to start and picks up at the middle of the book…it took me three weeks to read 50% and then three days to finish it. It is a winding adventure that centers around the concepts of storytelling, reality, destiny, and companionship. Now that I’m done I find myself wanting to go back to read parts again. A sign of a compelling and well written novel! 

Absolutely brilliant. 
There's a bit where it starts to feel long, but stick with it! It's worth it!

Writing a story about the power of stories is a brave thing for an author to take on, and Erin Morgenstern shows she’s a master storyteller in The Starless Sea. 

I should have been prepared by reading The Night Circus, but I forgot how the author creates a world for the reader to fall in love with before breaking it apart… and resolving the story in the most beautiful and satisfying way. I enjoyed spending so much time at the beginning of the book getting to know the main character and the beginnings of the many threads that later weave into the narrative. Then the second half became an un-put-down-able roller-coater ride! 

Morgenstern’s talent for world-building I think comes from the sensory descriptions - the texture of a jumper, the taste of a drink, the richness of a voice, the sense of a space and the smell of a perfume are all given importance. But things are rarely over-described, making it feel like the storytelling is working with the reader’s own imagination. 

Overall I think the diversity of the cast of characters was well done, bar a few missed opportunities for trans/nonbinary and better disability representation. Something I particularly noticed was that the main character’s mother is given a significant voice in the narrative, which is unusual in stories like this, and I appreciated it. 

I’m really glad I listened to the audiobook; the cast is brilliant, and having different voices read different sections helps follow the flicks between times, people, places and books within books. 

The Starless Sea is an ode to stories; it is about why stories and storytelling are important, as much as it is about those who love stories and why they do. And while it points out the whys and wherefores of storytelling, it also shows you the how of storytelling; this book is quite meta. You, dear reader, are reading a book, about a character who is also reading a book, in which there is a story about himself. As you continue reading, you also get to read all the stories in the book that he is reading, while reading about him reading them, and while he is trying to solve the mystery that connects all these stories to the larger mystery surrounding his current predicament, you are too. Morgenstern isn’t afraid to show her authorial fingerprints upon the story— and that’s part of the point here: a book is someone telling you a story—there is a storyteller always present that is not just the protagonist. 

As far as plot goes, it certainly doesn’t unfold in a linear fashion—I would probably describe it as almost labyrinthine, or maybe not unlike nesting dolls; stories within stories. I could even call it kaleidoscopic—fragments of seemingly disparate stories that come together at the end to form a pattern that we can behold for a beautiful moment, before it all changes. And change it does, as we are reminded throughout the book, what is a story, if not change?


This book also shows off Morgenstern’s greatest strengths: her world-building and her prose. Morgenstern can write; her prose is simply gorgeous. It is in turns whimsical, magical, dreamlike and playful. The images she conjures on these pages are nothing short of being frankly, almost tangible—sort of like waking up with your last dream still dancing around in your head before it softly fades with the intrusion of the morning light. There’s a definite fairy-tale vibe to the entire book, that again, goes along with the greater themes about storytelling. I think anyone who is a lover of books has dreamed, at least once, of stumbling across a doorway that leads to a magical library, and reading this book certainly makes me daydream about that scenario all the more. 


If I had a quibble with anything, I would say the character work in this book isn’t the strongest, but I do think it’s still purposeful. The characters aren’t super fleshed out, instead, they have the same quality that characters in a fairy-tale do—they are there to serve the story, to supply metaphor and archetypes and literal anthropomorphic personifications of concepts, more than give us in-depth character studies, or feel like real people. This is okay to a certain extent, but it does mean that if your entry point into a story is through character, this might not be the book for you. There were moments towards the end of the story that didn’t hit quite as hard as I wished they would have, had the characters and their relationships to each other had a chance to be more drawn out. 



It took me the better part of a week to read through it, but this book is a book that rewards you with slowing down and taking your time to read it, to really savour the stories within, and soak in all of its beautiful magic. It’s also, as I have now discovered, very wonderfully re-readable, where you can pick up on threads and clues you missed the first time around. 



On the whole, my re-read of this book has cemented it as a forever favourite of mine. In fact, I have a quote from the book I would love to have a tattoo of one day, and there are ungodly things I would do for a ttrpg of The Starless Sea; there’s so much you could do with the Harbour alone—book themed dungeon crawls for daaaaaaays.

This book was really good and so different from any other book I’ve read. I enjoyed the beautiful quotes and lyrical writing, however, I would’ve loved to see a bit more plot. I also found myself getting bored and confused at some parts. As well as that, it sent me into a tiny existential crisis…

😭😭😭