Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I loved the "Night Circus"! When people ask me what my favorite book is, that is my answer. I have reread it multiple times, so I was definitely excited when I heard Morgenstern was releasing a new book!
"The Starless Sea" is full of beautiful descriptions, and is twisting and turning with magical imagery. This novel keeps you guessing with changing chapters and snippets of each story as the momentum builds. I liked following Zachary through these enchanted tales and finding where it all leads him, and us. Morgenstern's detail and imagery craft another amazing story.
Hard to put into words all the emotions that I felt while reading this.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins remembers a door painted into a brick wall a long time ago. A door that looked so real, as if he could turn the knob and walk right through it. He never turned the knob, but often wondered what would happen if he had. Years later as a graduate student, Zachary finds a strange book in the university library, one that has no author, no copyright information, and no dates. When checking out, the book scans improperly, further perplexing Zachary. He finds the strange book, titled Sweet Sorrows, interesting. Zachary becomes alarmed when he reads the third story in the book—about a young boy who doesn’t open a door painted on a brick wall.

Zachary follows the mystery presented by Sweet Sorrows, meeting a variety of characters during his quest. He finds himself in the midst of a war between opposing factions who are somehow involved in the mystery of Sweet Sorrows and The Starless Sea.

Morgenstern paints such a vivid portrait of the Harbor near the Starless Sea. I could imagine every part of it and felt as if it was my ultimate book heaven. To recreate even parts of it would be magical and fantastical.

The Starless Sea is about stories inside of stories inside of stories. The characters are intriguing and full of dimension. Each story relates to another story. Full of adventure, folklore, magic, and mystery, The Starless Sea is a must-read for everyone, but especially for any book lover!

DNF - This one's not for me, as I don't really like the story-in-a-story device. Plus I never read Night Circus so I didn't know what to expect with the writing style, and I think it's a little flowery for my tastes.

"The Starless Sea" is full of beautiful descriptions, twisting and turning with magical imagery and glimpses of the story. Like Morgenstern's first novel, "The Night Circus," this novel keeps you guessing and moving through the story with changing chapters and snippets of story. Morgenstern's detail and imagery craft an amazing story.

This was a weird literary fever dream. I have no idea how to describe it or even explain what happened, but I really enjoyed it. Usually I race through books, desperate to swallow the whole plot at once, but this I read slowly and leisurely, dipping in and dipping out, and I was always engrossed and surprised by the connections and images.

Morgenstern is a delight. I have rarely seen so much creativity in my life. The book is an expertly woven tale linking past to present and beyond. The tale begins with a lonely university scholar who is whisked into an adventure on the Starless Sea when he finds a book in the library about himself. This is a story of self discovery, love, and how infinite our universe is. Readers who expect this to be the same as The Night Circus might be disappointed; those who come in with an open mind and a desire to be carried away by a tale will be delighted.

This is a tough one for me. I confess, I did not love this book. I *liked* it well enough, but found the structure disconcerting and the story a bit confusing. Occasionally, I have a hard time focusing on books that alternate stories with each chapter, which is what I think made this a less satisfying read than I expected. I kept wanting to read the Zachary Ezra Rawlins narrative and got really annoyed that it kept being interrupted by the alternating fairytale chapters. I know they all come together in the end, but the format kept me feeling disconnected throughout and made the narrative drag. It didn't help that I was reading this in e-format. If I'd hard a print copy, I would have totally skipped around the chapters to satisfy my curiosity.

At the same time, this is a book filled with gorgeous language and description, the fairyland of my childhood dreams where one can get lost for centuries among all the stories in the world. Could there be a better place? I think not. I did enjoy the DungeonMaster/RPG approach to telling Zachary's story, which at times made me feel as those I was inside the story, and I really enjoyed the characters.

I am 100% certain that fans of The Night Circus will eat this up. Morgenstern's writing gets ALL the adjectives - lovely, luminous, lyrical, etc. and I predict this will appear on all the Best of 2019 lists.

Dreamy and fantastical but ultimately not as compelling as you’d think it would be. I enjoyed it while actually reading it but often chose to do something other than pick it up to continue reading.

ETA: I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The plot was interesting, the details intriguing, but the characters just... flat.

I wanted to love this novel so, so much. I loved Morgenstern’s previous book and magical realism/fantasy is a genre I adore. I got about 60% through this and was loving it. However, right around this point I felt that it started to get really slow. Generally I don’t have an issue with longer books, but with this one I was bothered. It seemed like a lot of the same things kept happening, instead of the plot moving like a river. Which again, is something I can be cool with depending on how it’s done. In this case, I don’t like how it was done. It’s beautifully written and so interesting. But for me it fell kinda flat... which I feel bad saying because it is such beautiful writing. I might revisit this one in the future, but for now it is what it is.

If you had fun at The Night Circus-
you want to sail on the The Starless Sea!!

Time is a River (with inlets)
A book is an interpretation, only words
a place where you go in your imagination.
Sometimes life gets weird
Open the door and escape to an
Underground Library World

I want to be on the Starless Sea Shores
I want to walk a labyrinthine of candlelit tunnels
and rooms filled with stories

I truly enjoyed The Night Circus- excited to see a new book coming
and to have the opportunity to preview it. Completely recommend!