The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

BOOK REVIEW: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Release Date: November 5th, 2019

Genre: Fantasy/Fiction/Adult

Published by DoubleDay Books

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ My Goodreads Rating 

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:
“Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate. This, as you might imagine, proved problematic. Their romance disrupted the flow of time. It tangled the strings of fortune into knots.  The stars watched from the heavens nervously, worrying what might occur. What might happen to the days and nights were time to suffer a broken heart? What catastrophes might result if the same fate awaited Fate itself? The stars conspired and separated the two. For a while they breathed easier in the heavens. Time continued to flow as it always had, or perhaps imperceptibly slower. Fate weaved together the paths that were meant to intertwine, though perhaps a string was missed here and there. But eventually, Fate and Time found each other again... And so time goes as it should and events that were once fated to happen are left instead to chance, and Chance never falls in love with anything for long. But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings no matter how the stars might wish it so.  Occasionally Fate can pull itself together again.  And Time is always waiting.”


MY THOUGHTS:
Let me start by stating that I do believe The Starless Sea is a literary MASTERPIECE.  The reason why I feel the need to state this first is that just in case I'm unable to do this book all the justice that it deserves, you'll only need to remember my first phrase!
Got it?
Keep that in mind!
♥
The Starless Sea is entirely different from anything you ever read.  It's an intricate labyrinth of stories within stories and even though they might not seem connected as you read them, the pieces of this ginormous puzzle will all come together in the end.

To describe how I felt as I was midway through it, I have to borrow a line from the book:

“Like I’m losing my mind but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way.”

Erin Morgenstern delivers such powerful imagery through her words that at times I felt like I, (or our main character, Zachary) was inside a video game.  Zachary finds a book in the university library and somehow one of stories in the book is from his own childhood.  Zachary is a gamer and this book sparks his curiosity.  The book tells him there are 3 things lost in time: a book, a sword and a man.  Find the items. Solve the puzzle.  Which is pretty much how Zachary ends up inside the NYC Public Library, falls into the rabbit hole, or more specifically, the hidden underground library that leads to The Starless Sea.
Part Mystery.
Part Fairy Tale.
Part Myth.
Part Love Story.
Part choose your own adventure type of game.

My conclusion:

1. This is a book that needs to be read more than once (I'm actually craving to do so)!
2. If you didn't like The Night Circus, it's pretty safe to assume you won't like The Starless Sea.
3. As a reader, you need to allow yourself to get lost within the stories, in order to appreciate them.  Don't try to make sense of them.   
4. I'll wait another 8 years to read whatever Erin Morgenstern comes up with next!!!

“Strange, isn’t it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are. It’s nice to finally have someone read stories I know so intimately.”