By Melissa Khan
I picked up The Starless Sea with great expectations, thinking that a story about stories was one I couldn’t not enjoy. The story follows Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a graduate student studying video game narratives, just shy of his 25th birthday. While browsing the fiction section of his campus library, Zachary finds a “cloth-covered, wine-coloured volume” called Sweet Sorrows, with no author listed. When Zachary takes the book home and begins to read, he finds a story from his childhood told within the pages. This spurs Zachary on his quest to discover where the book came from and how he came to be in it.
His journey takes him to Manhattan and a mysterious costume party where he meets a man, Dorian, and a woman, Mirabel, and discovers the existence of a secret society that knows a suspicious amount about him. Zachary doesn’t know what is going on and soon finds himself in an underground library that feels like a dream. Doors are opened, keys turn hands, and there’s a low buzzing throughout it all.
After having read and reread certain passages, I’m not entirely sure what, in a story about stories, the plot of this book was. I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole, except there was no satisfaction or method in the madness. Zachary’s story felt oddly unfinished, and the characters underdeveloped. The story flipped between the main storyline and excerpts from various books, which left little time to get to know the characters enough to feel invested in their struggles. When romance was introduced between the characters, I felt blindsided with no build-up. I would’ve loved to understand why Zachary’s story was in Sweet Sorrows or why he was prophesized to sail the Starless Sea, but unfortunately, it felt like things were just happening.
Towards the end of the novel, we get to hear from one of Zachary’s friends who notices him missing and goes on her own journey to find him. Although it was introduced late in the novel, I think this storyline was the most interesting.
I did sink into the lyricism of the prose. I let it flow over me like honey, sticky sweet and indulgent. Any lover of literature would enjoy the mystique of the language, the literary references, and the worldbuilding. The Starless Sea itself seems like a magical and twisted place.
Eleanor, in the novel, says it best, “Books are always better when read rather than explained.” This book was complicated and difficult to describe, and although disappointed with the plot and some of the characters, I still found myself unable to put it down. Whether that was because I was hoping and searching for something to satisfy what I felt it was lacking, or because the writing was so beautiful, I’m not sure. But I don’t regret sailing across The Starless Sea, and I hope if you give it a chance, you won’t either.