Too many twists and turns. Takes way to long to see plot development. Reader has to wade through too much detail to get there! Loved "The Night Circus" but couldn't not say the same for this title.

This is going to be a quick review! I didn't love The Night Circus, but was excited to try Morgenstern's sophomore effort. It wasn't for me. For everything I liked about it, there was something I didn't much care for. I like whimsical writing (and I did my fair share of highlighting) but I did an equal amount of eye-rolling as there were quite a few overwrought metaphors. I liked the plot and side stories at first, but after awhile, I lost interest in both - it was overlong and repetitive. The protagonist was easy to root for, but was the only other character (aside from Kat) that got any sort of development. The book was extremely creative, until it came to a very obvious conclusion.

All that said, the Night Circus is a hugely popular book and this will be too. Fans of The Night Circus will love it. The things I didn't care for about The Starless Sea were the exact things I didn't like about The Night Circus (although I listened to that one, and Jim Dale's narration did help). I'd also recommend it to folks who like Neil Gaiman, especially Neverwhere.

This thing'll circ like hotcakes, but it's not for me. As I'll definitely be recommending it, it's 4 stars on Netgalley. 2 on Goodreads - it was ok.

ARC/Netgalley

I don't think I've ever tried so hard to like a book but I just could not. I adored The Night Circus and I thought I would love this. There are glimpses of a great story in there but nothing comes together. It just rambles on and on and the plot is almost incoherent.

I'm generally not a fan of fantasy but I enjoyed Night Circus so much I was very excited to read the newest by Erin Morgenstern. I would say if you love atmospheric, sweeping , mysterious tales then you will enjoy this. I have to admit it was confusing for me. I felt a bit impatient reading it because I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I will say I look forward to talking to friends after they have read The Starless Sea to hear what they think. I would say if you aren't a fan of fantasy you might not enjoy this. Also, like Night Circus I found the story completely accessible to teens as well as adults.

Some books are for devouring and others for savoring. The books that make you want to do both are more rare. This is one of them. It has been seven long years since Erin Morgenstern published The Night Circus, but let me tell you: it was worth the wait. This is a masterpiece.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins discovers a mysterious book hidden in the library. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues--a bee, a key, and a sword--that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library, hidden far below the surface of the earth.

What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians--it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also those who are intent on its destruction.

Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly-soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose--in both the mysterious book and in his own life.

Although it is only September I feel confident in proclaiming that this is the best book I'll have read in 2019. I read past my bedtime and picked it up again upon waking. When I wasn't reading, I was thinking about the story. It has everything you'd want in a novel: mystery, suspense, quests, romance, thoughtful prose, metaphors, and unique magical places. Morgenstern is a master at weaving short seemingly unconnected stories into a creative and unpredictable yet cohesive tale. It is beautiful, dreamy, mystical, thoughtful, and magical. The sea may be starless, but this novel deserves all of the stars.

This book was just beautiful. Short stories intermixed with the main plotline and they all start to merge and it is just magical. I really enjoyed reading this book. I found fascinating and could not wait to find out what happened next. Lyrical, mystical, fabulous.

I received an advanced reader's copy of this book from Doubleday via Netgalley.

If you love to read--no, truly feel as though you were put on earth to read--Morgenstern has created a fantasy world that you'll deeply wish you could find a portal into, perhaps more than you ever wanted to hop a train to Hogwarts or crawl through a wardrobe to Narnia. If avid readers and librarians were Tolkien's elves, their Further Shore would be the harbor of the Starless Sea, with its innumerable books, cozy reading nooks, gigantic ballroom, and endless possibilities for world-building and perusing.

With sympathetic nerdy characters and engrossing (if sometimes perplexing) interpolated chapters from the three books within the book, the novel spins toward a satisfying ending. Our hero is Zachary Ezra Rawlings, gamer and graduate student in Emerging Media Studies. Our other hero, conceived outside of time in the Harbor so that no rules really apply to her, is Mirabel. Romance abounds: Mirabel and Zachary each have a love interest in the Harbor, and there is also an epic love story along the lines of "Somewhere in Time" or "The Time Traveler's Wife." Zachary also has a feisty buddy named Kat in Emerging Media Studies who turns detective when he goes missing.

As for villains, some guardians of the Harbor have gone rogue in the attempt to keep the riffraff away from the books out of fear of pedestrian traffic and (shudder) hashtags. They are armed with paintbrushes and firearms and they aren't messing around.

If the novel has a weakness, it's that there are so many characters, symbols, and subplots that it's easy to get lost if you stop reading, or even if you don't: I'm still not clear about how some mythical elements relate to the overall story. "The Starless Sea" is a worthy follow-up to the masterful bestseller "The Night Circus" and should delight librarians, gamers, and bibliophiles everywhere.

This book was pure magic! The most beautiful metaphors and language. It was lyrical and totally engrossing. I can't wait to read it again!

I have never read The Night Circus, but after reading The Starless Sea, I will definitely add it to my tbr pile.

It honestly took several chapters for my head to truly wrap around this story and figure out that I was completely hooked. Like nothing I've read before.

Morgenstern is a master at pushing the narrative to new places. Lyrical and exciting. Deep and thought provoking. Everything you want in a great book!

Every once in a while, you read a book that feels like it was written just for you. When I was eight, I genuinely thought that Lucy Maud Montgomery had written Emily of New Moon just for me, it was so completely the book I needed in the moment that I read it. It doesn’t happen very often. There are books we love and books that we connect to but on the rare occasion that a book seems purpose-written for us, it’s magical. That’s how The Starless Sea was for me. The Night Circus remains one of my all time favorite books, so I was equally nervous and vibrating with excitement to receive the ARC for Erin Morgenstern’s new book. How would it compare?

One of Morgenstern’s gifts is her ability to weave seemingly unconnected stories together in complicated, unexpected ways and she excels at that here. Every time I felt like I was just about to loose the thread, when the stories were getting too tangled, a connection was made or a story was wrapped up or redirected, and I was sucked in even deeper to the tapestry of the book.

As with The Night Circus, it’s hard to say definitively who the main character is, but it all starts with a little boy who doesn’t open a magical door and a grad student in a library in Vermont who finds a very old book with no author and himself (literally) written in the pages of the book- setting in motion the hunt for The Starless Sea-a world built of stories. Except there are already people looking for it, and others trying to keep them from looking, and then there are the stories of those who have already found The Starless Sea. Their stories overlap and interlock in a love story about the love of stories. I haven’t longed to jump into a book world this much since the first time I read Harry Potter. It felt like a world built just for me.

The Starless Sea is a fantastical suspension of belief or, does it require fantastical belief? Thank you for Zachary and Dorian.

From the author of The Night Circus, Morgenstern is has written a fantasy of many things I love...the sea, ships, books, libraries, adventure, and, most importantly

I really wanted to like this book. I loved The Night Circus, but this book I just couldn't get into. I'm not even really sure what the plot is. The writing is lovely, but the plot is very slow with a number of side stories that I'm sure connect together at some point. I wasn't interested enough to finish the book, so the pace may have picked up later on in the story.

This book had me from the start with a mysterious book, clues, and a secret library. A pure delight, a magic-soaked fairy tale that traverses through underground tunnels and discovery of secrets and love. I would recommend this book to readers who love mystery, magic, and discovering new worlds. It's amazing!

The Starless Sea
By Erin Morgenstern


Zachary Ezra Rawlins was a regular college student until one day he stumbles upon a mystifying book… featuring him as one of the main characters. Determined to discover how this could be, he quickly gets caught in between the plots of a secret organization, a subterranean library, and many, many stories.

Erin Morgenstern, previously known for her best selling work, The Night Circus, captures our imaginations once again in The Starless Sea. She seamlessly weaves short stories, poems, and myths throughout the novel, each one laying a seed that adds substance and richness to an already riveting plot. The reader is both engrossed in the plot while also awaiting the next fantastical interlude. The book combines romance, magic and mystery in a way that feels fresh, and Morgenstern transports you in a way that will have you hungry for more long after you’ve turned the final page, making it the perfect choice for any library collection.

Release date: November 5, 2019
Rating:
Review by: Thomas Beheler, Maker Associate, Arlington Public Libraries

This book is beautiful and extraordinary and unlike anything else I've ever read, aside from The Night Circus, of course. The author has a masterful way of creating such a magical ambiance that a plot is almost unnecessary. Just drop me in the middle of an Erin Morgenstern novel and let me float in it like a lazy river.

It's difficult and almost unfair to try and write a review of this book and judge it like any other novel. The Starless Sea is more of an immersive experience. The reader reads the book along side the protagonist, Zachary, occasionally separating from him to watch from afar as he interacts with the book and the adventure it catapults him into. The book-with-the-book is full of fairy tales, adventures, romance, and loss, all elements that invade Zachary's story, too.

If you're not reading Erin Morgenstern's novels, you are seriously cheating yourself.

For fans of / you may also like:
The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

arc received from the publisher

Another dreamy, mystical book from the pen of a master. The story was more complex than her previous book, which felt like a natural progression for the author and for the reader. There was a side character that was underused, but that is a minor complaint. Overall, I very much loved this story.

This is the perfect follow up to Morgenstern's 2011 beloved The Night Circus. Fans of her previous work and fans of reading, in general, will enjoy this book. I don't know how to begin to describe the plot, and honestly, I think that this is one of those stories that it is better to enter into with as little known about the plot as possible. I was fortunate enough to avoid reading any synopses before I dove in, and I am so glad for that experience. I will say that the book links a modern-day story with several shorter linked fairy tales/myths/legends that all tie together. These stories contain cherished and familiar tropes like castles with intimidating moats, pirates, star-crossed lovers, a looming king, and a striking setting.
This book requires patience. Clocking in at over 500 pages, I found myself sometimes getting a little exasperated with the story, but I realized that it was all worth it. Each word is meaningful and each description adds to the overall ambiance that this story invokes. The described imagery was ideal and the elements of magic and fantasy will be perfect for reading this book in the fall and winter, cozied up by a fire with a warm beverage. This is that book that readers search for when they search for the all-encompassing cold-weather cuddle-up read. It's daydreamy, otherworldly, and velvety and it is such a lovely reading experience.
This is a book meant to be read by readers. This was a wonderful reading experience, and the only negative thing I can say is that I have now read it and I can't un-read it, and read it again for the first time.

Terrible syntax, first of all. Second, I was unaware this was going to be obnoxiously meta. I hate stories within stories. This book was also obvious and convoluted, and an ode to awkward nerds. I hate awkward nerds. I couldn't deal with it after 50 pages. Such a letdown.

This book was a slow read but only because I wanted to savor every second of it. OH MY GOSH the stories within this novel are beautiful and heartbreaking and joyous and melancholy and special and unique and touched my heart. I am in awe of Erin Morgenstern and the worlds that she creates. Night Circus is my all time favorite book so I was incredibly excited but also very nervous to read her newest novel. She did not disappoint! There is no one out there writing like Erin Morgenstern. I feel privileged to be among the first people to read this book. I can't even fathom how she created this world and made it all split apart and then come back together again in the end. Read this book! It will exhaust you, break you down, and uplift you all at once. There is an air of mystery throughout much of the first half that strangely reminded me of Night Film by Marisha Pesl. The mystery along with all the symbols as clues and even the writing really made them feel reminiscent of each other. If you are a reader and love stories, I cannot imagine you not loving this novel with all that you have. The writing is exquisite. The prose are their own form of magic within the story. I want to immediately start reading it all over again. Absolutely amazing!

Erin Morgenstern has such a unique way of describing whimsical scenes with fantastic characters. I was enthralled from the start. The Starless Sea is a world i'm sure many people wish was real. The last time I wanted a place to be real this badly was when I first read Harry Potter. My only gripe is that I think the plot got away from itself toward the end of the story.