There are some books that make me ache for a place I can never go, or a person I can never be. This happened often when I was a child. I once longed to be a witch and study in the Ravenclaw tower. I still want to be a demigod, to fight alongside my Demeter siblings. As I have grown older, fewer books called to me in the same way. When I dropped out of college and was unsure about my career path, I dreamed about being a paper magician, to study only origami and hoe to bring it to life. Now there is nothing I desire so completely as to live in a harbor and sail the starless sea. I wish to live in a world where my neighbors love stories as much as me. I want to surround myself with books and cats and underground mysteries. I would walk through that door and never return.
The Starless Sea is a love letter to stories of all kind. Books, movies, and games are equally revered and enjoyed. Dorian and Zachary are the kind of couple I am most fond of; it is a story of longing thoughts and too much distance. Kat is an extroverted version of myself, or perhaps the sister I wish I had. The Starless Sea is beautiful in my favorite poetic way, and I wish I had a door. I would not live in a harbor, but I would always come back.
Fans of The Night Circus rejoice! Imagineer Erin Morgenstern has released her second magical journey into the world of storytelling. The Starless Sea is a book lover’s dream, a storyteller’s story and a reader’s safe harbor. It is a riddle wrapped in an enigma encased in a mystery shrouded in layers and layers of well-crafted narrative.
Morgenstern is such a skilled storyteller that she is of the ilk of wordsmiths I actually resent for not having more published books. Upon reading her literary theatrics, though, it’s easy to see why she doesn’t. These meticulously crafted tales must take years of careful attention and thoughtful planning. This book isn’t one story. It is a whole library. A body of work disguised as a single book.
At its heart, The Starless Sea is a story about a boy who finds a door etched into a wall as a child and wrought with uncertainty, does not reach to open its chalked knob. He spends his life lamenting his tentativeness, always feeling like his story is missing a piece. That is, until he discovers a book. A book with a story in it. A story about a boy, wrought with uncertainty, who does not turn a doorknob. But that is just one facet in this tapestry of a tale.
This is also a story about a pirate sentenced to death and the maiden who rescues him. It’s a story about Fate and Time, about owl kings and forgotten princesses. It’s a story about an orphan boy and a girl who is also a bunny who consummate a relationship outside time. It’s about a secret society and an underground library. It’s a story about the sun and the moon, about broken-hearted knights, a burned dollhouse, about bees and swords and keys, oh, my.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins in the son of a fortune teller. Aforementioned boy at a magical door, he is now a literary graduate student studying media and gaming at a Vermont college. At the school library, he happens upon an unmarked book with no author called Sweet Sorrows. As he reads, he blinks incomprehensibly at its pages as they recount not only the story of a pirate telling a story, but a story that happens to recount his past.
Unseated by this mystery, he starts to investigate the origins of the curious book and discovers that it was part of a much larger donation by an untraceable foundation. He also deciphers a series of symbols from the book: a bee, a sword and a key that lead him down a rabbit hole to a NYC literary ball, happening, as luck would have it, just a few days from now.
So, Zachary Ezra Rawlins, son of the fortune teller, traipses off in the snow, a strapping young man in a suit, on nothing but a hunch.
At the literary ball, a bibliophile costume party cum Sleep No More theatrical experience, Zachary Ezra Rawlins dances with Max, King - or Queen - of the Wild Things. In his quest to find a necklace with a bee, sword and key, he finds himself back in the closet, but this time, with a whiskey handsome storyteller, who whispers the story of Fate and Time, a story that unbeknownst to him, Zachary Ezra Rawlins, is already a part.
Erin Morgenstern’s book is heavily layered and each story subtly shifts the others, expertly interweaving in an intricate tapestry of a tale. Like a document with a dozen carbon copies - each copy bears the ghosted impression of the original though a different color entirely. It is a story about stories, but it’s simultaneously a thesis on how we tell them.
A door to the fantastical and dangerous is waiting behind this cover. Are you daring enough to open it?
“be brave,” she says. “be bold. be loud. never change for anyone but yourself. any soul worth their star-stuff will take the whole package as is and however it grows. don’t waste your time on anyone who doesn’t believe you when you tell them how you feel.”
Remember when Bailey’s sister told him to grow up and he replied with
“That is precisely what I’m doing,” Bailey says. “I don’t care if you don’t understand that. Staying here won’t make me happy. It will make you happy because you are insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It’s not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I’m leaving.”
@booksourceevent 01: get to know the members — the starless sea
i think the best stories feel like they’re still going, somewhere, out in story space. i remember wondering if this story was an analogy about people who stay in places or relationships or whatever situations longer than they should because they’re afraid of letting go or moving on or the unknown, or how people hold on to things because they miss what the thing was even if that isn’t what that same thing is now.
@booksourceevent 01: get to know the members — the starless sea
i think the best stories feel like they’re still going, somewhere, out in story space. i remember wondering if this story was an analogy about people who stay in places or relationships or whatever situations longer than they should because they’re afraid of letting go or moving on or the unknown, or how people hold on to things because they miss what the thing was even if that isn’t what that same thing is now.
Hello guys. I’m happy I can finally share this artwork I did for @booksknownoage for dust jacket. Characters are Dorian, Mirabel and Ezra from The Starless Sea By @erinmorgenstern hope you guys will like it also I was wondering if you guys want to see certain characters drawn by me. Drop some names in the comments
“The son of the fortune-teller knows only that the door feels important
In a way he cannot quite explain, even to himself.
A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun.
In this significant moment, if the boy turns the painted knob
and opens the impossible door, everything will change.
But he does not.
And so the son of the fortune-teller does not find his way to the Starless Sea.
Not yet.”
– From “To deceive the eye.” in Sweet Sorrows
Welcome to our magical tarot card countdown to Erin Morgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA, featuring art by the amazing Erica Williams. Follow @doubledaybooksand@erinmorgenstern to keep up with the day’s themes.
THE STARLESS SEA TAROT CARD COUNTDOWN: The Bee and the Key
“Thebee on her chest flutters.
Once her tongue has been taken and burned and turned to ash,
Once the ceremony is complete and her servitude as an acolyte officially begins,
Once her voice has been muted, then her ears awaken.
Then the stories begin to come.”
– From “There are three paths. This is one of them.” in Sweet Sorrows
&
“The keeper will ask the potential keeper to choose akey from the wall.
Any key they please.
The keys are not labeled.
The choice is made by feel, by instinct, or by fancy.
They are made keepers because they understand why we are here.
Why it matters.
Because they understand stories.
They feel the buzzing of the bees in their veins.
But that was before.
Now there is only one.”
– From “There are three paths. This is one of them.” in Sweet Sorrows
Welcome to our magical tarot card countdown to Erin Morgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA, featuring art by the amazing Erica Williams. Follow @doubledaybooksand@erinmorgenstern to keep up with the day’s themes.
THE STARLESS SEA TAROT CARD COUNTDOWN: The Crown and the Sword
“The owl who consumed Fate’s eyes gained great sight
And was crowned the Owl King.
The stars rested, smugly, in their heavens.
They watched as Time passed in broken-hearted despair
And eventually they questioned all that they once thought indisputable truth.
They saw thecrownof the Owl King
Passed one to another like a blessing or curse,
As no mortal creature should have such sight.”
– Told to a star merchant by a traveler
&
“They may not seem to be in servitude to anything, but they are.
They know what they serve.
What they protect.
They understand what they are and that it all matters.
They understand that what it is to be a guardian
Is to be prepared to die, always.
To be a guardian is to wear death on your chest.”
– Sweet Sorrows: There are three paths. This is one of them.
Welcome to our magical tarot card countdown to Erin Morgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA, featuring art by the amazing Erica Williams. Follow @doubledaybooksand@erinmorgenstern to keep up with the day’s themes.
THE STARLESS SEA TAROT CARD COUNTDOWN: The Heart and the Feather
“No one dared to intervene
Save for a small brave mouse
Who snuck into the fray,
Creeping unnoticed
Through the blood and bone and feathers,
And took Fate’s heartand kept it safe.”
– From a story whispered by Dorian to Zachary
&
“The girl spends one night, and then another.
By the end of the second night she can see the ghosts again.
By the third she has no desire to leave,
For who would leave their home
Once they had found it?
She is there still.”
– From “The Girl and the Feather” in Fortunes & Fables
Welcome to our magical tarot card countdown to Erin Morgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA, featuring art by the amazing Erica Williams. Follow @doubledaybooksand@erinmorgenstern to keep up with the day’s themes.
THE STARLESS SEA TAROT CARD COUNTDOWN: THE OWL AND THE STARS
“The Starless Sea is rising.
Theowls watch as the tides shift, slowly at first.
They fly over waves that break upon long-abandoned shores.
They call out warnings and exaltations.
The time has come. They have waited so long.
They screech and celebrate until the sea is so high that they too much seek shelter.
The Starless Sea continues to rise.
Now it floods the Harbor, pulling the books from their shelves and claiming the Heart for itself.
The end has come.
Here now is the Owl King bringing the future on his wings.”
- Written on a paper star splattered with gold paint
&
“We are thestars.
We are all stardust and stories.”
– Told to Zachary by a man lost in time
Welcome to our magical tarot card countdown to Erin Morgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA, featuring art by the amazing Erica Williams. Follow @doubledaybooksand@erinmorgenstern to keep up with the day’s themes.
THE STARLESS SEA TAROT CARD COUNTDOWN: The Mouse & The Moon
“No one dared to intervene
Save for a small brave mouse
Who snuck into the fray,
Creeping unnoticed
Through the blood and bone and feathers,
And took Fate’s heart and kept it safe.”
– From a story whispered by Dorian to Zachary
&
“TheMoon had never asked a boon of Death or Time
But there was something that she wished, that she wanted,
That she desired more than she had ever desired anything before.
A place had become precious to her, and a person within it more so.
The moon returned to this place as often as she could,
In stolen moments of borrowed time.
She had found an impossible love.
She resolved to find a way to keep it.”
– Found by Zachary in handwritten text on a folded piece of paper
Welcome to our magical tarot card countdown to Erin Morgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA, featuring art by the amazing Erica Williams. Follow @doubledaybooksand@erinmorgenstern to keep up with the day’s themes.
“Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate.
Their romance disrupted the flow of time.
It tangled the strings of fortune into knots.
The stars conspired and separated the two.
For a while they breathed easier in the heavens.
Time continued so flow as it always had,
Or perhaps imperceptibly slower.
Fate wove together the paths that were meant to intertwine,
Though perhaps a string was missed here and there.
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.”
– From a story whispered by Dorian to Zachary
Welcome to our magical tarot card countdown to Erin Morgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA, featuring art by the amazing Erica Williams. Follow @doubledaybooksand@erinmorgenstern to keep up with the day’s themes.
Everyone wants the stars. Everyone wishes to grasp that which exists out of reach. To hold the extraordinary in their hands and keep the remarkable in their pockets.
