Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them.
I was surprised by how enchanting I found The Night Circus; not really within my regular wheelhouse, I was, nonetheless, thoroughly charmed by Erin Morgenstern's whimsical, magical world. When I started The Starless Sea and discovered that it had a similar vibe but centered on books and storytelling (with a dollop of magic; bibliomancy, as Morgenstern writes), I thought, “So much the better. What's not to like?” But here's the thing: what felt effortless and bewitching in Morgenstern's first novel now seems too deliberate and laboured; Morgenstern attempted to recapture lightning in a bottle, but all I ended up seeing was the bottle itself. Looking at the quotes “liked” over on Goodreads, one can't deny that Morgenstern writes beautiful sentences, but this time, they don't add up to much at all. Call me disappointed.
This is what his mother would call a moment with meaning. A moment that changes the moments that follow. 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.It all begins so well: After a brief introduction to a pirate (whom, we are assured, may be thought of as a metaphor), we meet the son of a fortune-teller (also known as Zachary Ezra Rawlins; always referred to by his full name, which grows irksome) when he is a young boy. On his way home from school, the boy discovers an impressively painted door on the rear wall of a building, and although the doorknob looks real enough to turn, the boy decides against testing it; a hesitancy he will regret for years. When, as a grad student, Zachary Ezra Rawlins finds a mysterious book in his college library – a book which describes his childhood experience with the painted door, down to referring to the main character as “the son of a fortune-teller”, as he is himself – Zachary is set on a quest to discover the origin of the book, the truth about a shadowy Collectors Club, and maybe even find love along the way. Interspersed with the narrative of Zachary's quest are snippets of fairytales, excerpts from longer mysterious books, and descriptions of the phantasmagorical Starless Sea. The beginning is so intriguing, the mysteries so provocative, that I thought I was in for another surprisingly rewarding read. But nothing really happens in this book; it's all sizzle, no steak; no plot, no growth, no meaning.
“We are the stars,” he answers, as though it is the most obvious of facts afloat in a sea of metaphors and misdirections. “We are all stardust and stories.”Admittedly, the imagery is gorgeous; stardust and stories. I was instantly hooked by the swords and keys, the rabbits, feathers, doorknobs, and eggs. I wanted to know more about the Owl King, and the Innkeeper who met the Sun and Moon, and the lovers trapped outside of time. I want to navigate a river of honey, place amber bees in the open palms of an alabaster statue, and wander the papered halls of a human-sized dollhouse. The background is lovely, but it's peopled with flat and unbelievable characters (I was touched more by the brief love stories in the fairytales than anything that passes between the "real" characters).
To rewind to the beginning, Zachary is studying emerging media (with a focus on the storytelling of video games) and there was a scene with an informal seminar on the subject that provided for some interesting dialogue around what a consumer wants from a video game vs what one wants from a book; especially regarding how a gamer wants the impression of exploring by dint of her own decisions, while knowing that there's a predetermined ending that she's working towards; so different from a novel, where one is forced to follow the author in a straight line. This theme is picked up near the end of The Starless Sea, when Zachary has been missing for quite some time and one of his classmates tries to follow his trail. Helpfully, Kat keeps a journal of her detective work, excerpted in the book:
I got to thinking all of this might be a halfway decent game if it were a game. Part spy movie, part fairy tale, part choose your own adventure. Epic branching story that doesn't stick to a single genre or one set path and turns into different stories but it's all the same story. I'm trying to play with the things you can do in a game that you can't do in a book. Trying to capture more story. A book is made of paper but a story is a tree.And, ultimately, I believe that this was Morgenstern's overarching goal: to write a book that experiences like a video game, branching off into side quests and backstories, creating a tree instead of a path. Unfortunately, as much as I admire an author striving for the new, I don't think this really worked.
