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The Starless Sea

A Book Review

By Dani AshPublished 3 years ago 2 min read
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My New Years Resolution this year was to read more books, and because of that I've found a lot of neat and entertaining books. I also unexpectedly discovered my new favorite book of all time. I don't think anything could ever top the experience this new book gave me. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern is a masterpiece. I stumbled upon it on Amazon and chose it because of the cover, but truly this book surpassed my expectations. It is 494 pages of glorious fantasy.

Morgenstern is the author of the well-known The Night Circus, another incredible book. Although, in my opinion, The Starless Sea is better. The Starless takes place in modern day New York and we meet our main character Zachary Ezra Rawlins. Zachary is a mid-twenties grad student who is studying video games, so in his free time he prefers to read books to relax. He heads to the library to pick out some new books to read.

There he finds a book titled Sweet Sorrows. It looks old, it's missing a bar code, and he finds it interesting. He checks out the book with the full expectation to enjoy it, but turns out it fills him with anxiety. Why? Because he is in the book. An experience from his childhood is written in the book like another vignette, but it's old. It doesn't make any sense. He never told anyone about this experience, but there it was. And his search to find out why he is in Sweet Sorrows leads him to a fantastical wold of the Starless Sea.

I want to avoid any spoilers, so I'll stop with the plot there, but the incredible plot is not the only reason I love this book. The characters are well written, and on top of that Morgenstern wrote the books within the book. The stories Zachary reads, you read along with him. Everything is folded in perfectly like an intricate piece of origami. Everything within the book as meaning, but it doesn't hinder the enjoyment of the story.

Another reason I enjoy this book so much is because Zachary, the main character, is gay. Often, when something has a gay character or a gay main character all we hear about is how they're gay and "wow representation." I did not know that Zachary was gay until I was four chapters into the book. Morgenstern wrote Zachary as gay because that is who the character is. She didn't market it as queer literature. Queer literature is great, but honestly it meant everything to me to just read a spectacular fantasy book, with a spectacular main character who was gay.

Honestly? JK Rowling could never.

You can tell that Morgenstern created this story for us to just fully immerse ourselves in it and get lost in it. She put all of her love into this story. She wanted to teach us a lesson with this book, and that lesson was that the point of the point of the story is to love it. That includes our own story. "We are all stardust and stories" really resonates with you. The Starless Sea is everything you need in a magical fantasy story and then some.

If you are looking for an escape during these cold winter, quarantine months please check out The Starless Sea. I haven't experienced a book like this since I was a child reading Harry Potter. If you are still chasing that feeling too, The Starless Sea will make you feel that way.

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Dani Ash

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