Those of us who read Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus were stunned by the epic nature of the adventure, and the intricately detailed, colourful world she created. This makes her latest novel, The Starless Sea eagerly awaited. And the fact that it is about books makes us all just that little bit more excited.
Most of this I loved – when the main character Zachary Rawlins becomes drawn into the mysterious world of book stories and murder and mayhem after finding a book called Sweet Sorrows in his library and finally opening a door to a magical book land that was first presented to him in his childhood. Most of it is magical, mysterious and wonderful, a land run by the symbols of bees, swords, feathers and more. There are fascinating characters like Mirabel the doormaker and Dorian the eventual love interest who are already in this strange world Zach has just entered There are even multiple storylines running, and extracts from key texts spread throughout.
And then it all went a little strange – when Zachary goes fully into this strange bookish landscape, and on audio I found some of these more surreal elements hard to follow. The purpose of the book and the mystery itself became more and more murky. I am wondering if there were some missed opportunities here to take the story in a clearer direction – but then again, perhaps that is not at all what Morgenstern was going for.
This is surely worth a look to readers and fans of The Night Circus – and maybe one too detailed for me to have attacked on audio. I’d be keen to start a conversation with someone who really loved it to see if the written work was the missing component here.
Welloflostplots 