BookBrowse Reviews The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

BookBrowse:

Erin Morgenstern's eagerly anticipated second novel is a beguiling modern-day fantasy set in an enchanted subterranean story world brimming with magical symbolism and arcane mythologies.

Erin Morgenstern's 2011 debut, The Night Circus, a period romance set at the commencement of the 20th century that recounts the tale of a circus and its enchanted inhabitants, was a publishing sensation. It developed a devoted readership enraptured by its magical imagery and the captivating central love story played out between two competing magicians.

Eight years on, Morgenstern's The Starless Sea, an exuberant mystery that revels in narrative eccentricity, returns to the realms of fantasy, albeit this time a fantasy world set partially in modern-day New York.

The novel begins with a succession of loosely connected tales that feature between them a pirate romance, an acolyte's initiation ceremony, a fortune teller and a magical doorway. The tales utilize a shared symbology: that of a sword, a key and a bee. They are also linked by their inclusion in an anthology titled Sweet Sorrows, which becomes relevant later in the book.

Eventually, the action shifts to a young media student named Zachary Ezra Rawlins in 2015. Zachary is a socially anxious introvert obsessed with fiction, both the complex narratives of contemporary video games and the predefined topography of novels, which he likens to "playing a game where all the choices have been made for you."

On discovering a mysterious book secreted in a library, which turns out to be the anthology Sweet Sorrows, he is immediately drawn to it. He commences reading only to come across a story about his childhood that nobody else could have known. Subsequently, Zachary embarks on an investigation to unlock the book's secrets and finds himself cast in a romantic fantasy quest to a subterranean story world.

Primarily, The Starless Sea is a magical romance (or series of romances) played out against the backdrop of an intricately realized fantasy land that utilizes the tropes of traditional quest-fantasies to recount Zachary's journey of self-discovery. Along the way, he encounters mythical beings and villains, chances upon true love and experiences betrayal before finding the hero within himself and making difficult choices with world-changing consequences.

However, the novel deviates from traditional fantasy blueprints in a way that flouts convention and subverts expectation. Uniquely calibrated to house innumerable tangential fictions, Morgenstern's novel is a meticulously constructed conundrum. Fairy tales, fables, additional romances and timeless tragedies pepper the narrative. As Zachary embarks on his quest, these stories, which initially seem inserted to foster incoherence, coalesce, culminating in a uniform narrative that surprises and exhilarates.

As is befitting an epic fantasy, The Starless Sea is populated with interesting characters. There is Zachary, who yearns "to be in the story, not observing it from outside," and Mirabel, or "Max" as Zachary dubs her, a pink-haired mystery woman whose agenda is unknown. There is Dorian, a handsome ne'er-do-well with dubious loyalties, and Allegra, the novel's sympathetic villain, who collects doorknobs from portals she's closed in a misguided attempt at safeguarding fantasy. Support players include a taciturn librarian, a sailor voyaging on a sea of honey, a sentient kitchen and a man lost in time.

On first reading, it can be hard to keep up. This isn't helped by the novel's surfeit of symbolic imagery whereby bees, swords, keys, hearts, feathers, "Owl Kings" and prophetic paintings jostle for attention within narrative trickery and structural idiosyncrasy.

What is clear, however, is that The Starless Sea places incredible importance on the craft of storytelling, posing this question: Should we safeguard stories against corrosive influences and risk stagnation, as Allegra seeks to do, or allow them to evolve as per the long form role-playing games through which Zachary and others can participate in stunningly realized virtual realities?

Whether the question is satisfactorily addressed is for the reader to decide. What is indisputable is that Morgenstern's novel—littered with knowing references to a slew of beloved storytellers such as Maurice Sendak, C.S. Lewis, Susanna Clarke and Raymond Chandler—is a story lover's utopia, a joyful celebration of reading and language, an unconventional meta-confection as enigmatic as it is enthralling.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in January 2020, and has been updated for the August 2020 edition. Click here to go to this issue.