Review: The Starless Sea

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

3.5 Stars

Have you ever read a book with shimmering, poetic prose where you just didn't care about anyone in the story? This is my problem with The Starless Sea. The story of Zachary Ezra Rawlins, and a bunch of collateral characters who are interrelated in mysterious (for a time) ways, The Starless Sea is a story about stories and stories within stories. It's basically a Möbius strip of stories. I was literally at 56% of my ARC before I figured out relationship connections between two of the fairy tale figures. Zachary's story is nested between fairy tales and we're not even talking alternating tales, we're talking sometimes three fairy tales to one chapter driving forward Zachary's narrative. I was frustrated by progress in my review copy so I started all over again when Doubleday gave me the audiobook ARC through Libro.fm. And though I am impressed with the quality of the audio production (full cast, which makes a lot of sense because it allows you to separate the fairy tale narration from Zachary's voice, that of his friend Kat, and then some of the characters like Mirabel, Dorian, Eleanor, and the Pirate, who come alive within Zachary's story in the Starless Sea), it didn't really make me like the book any better.

I really wanted to care more about Zachary. I enjoyed Kat. As for the fairy tale cast of characters, I didn't really feel much affinity for any of them, other than perhaps Eleanor. I love the idea of a book about books, libraries, and fairy tales, and I really wanted to feel more vested in these characters. I may try to reread, splitting my reading into first either all the fairy tales or all of Zachary's chapters (up to the point it all merges) to see if it enhances my feeling for the book.

I strongly recommend the audiobook. It will make the going easier, as I realized first hand.

I received a paper review copy from the publisher, along with an audiobook ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

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