The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern comes out next month (November 2019).
I love this book. It is fabulous and fantastic. I was completely immersed in its world, and I did not want to pass along the ARC---alas, I had to.
I love The Starless Sea because, first, it’s a story about stories, and I’m a bit of a collector when it comes to stories about stories. The Harbor on the Starless Sea is an immense, subterranean story haven. Not just books, of which there are many, but poetry, paintings, and plays; stories in statues and song, in smoke and sand; stories in any and every medium. Zachary, our main protagonist, is a grad student studying gaming. Dorian, the Redemption-Arc-er, is a master storyteller---as in, tells them orally. And the titular Starless Sea is conceptually similar to the Well of Lost Plots from Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels: a physical manifestation of where stories come from, a fount of narrative (although the Starless Sea is more like honey. Bees are involved).
Second, the book (naturally) has stories within stories. The third chapter may be the story the second chapter is telling, which may itself be the story the first chapter is telling; or they may all three be individual threads of the larger tapestry. Zachary and Dorian each get an existential pang when they find themselves written into a book. Each section of The Starless Sea is based around someone’s story---for example, the first section is the book Zachary (randomly?) finds on a shelf in the library. These stories are redolent with imagination and fable (I said The Starless Sea is fabulous), stories where an abdicated princess seeks the Owl King, a mouse protects the heart of Fate, and an innkeeper falls in love with the moon.
Third, I genuinely, proactively rooted for the romance between Zachary and Dorian. Not that I hate romances (though I dislike the romance genre)---and I do have shipping habits, which are equal-opportunity---but in the grand scope of my story consumption, be it movies, books, or TV shows, I seldom latch onto a romance. Sexual tension between Zachary and Dorian is quite obvious, and wonderfully balances the sweet and the hot.
Fourth, the novel is skillfully-written.
I want to re-read this book. It quickly became one of my favorite books of the year, and just a favorite book in general. I wish I could draw so I could do fan art of this thing.
