The Starless Sea

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, 498 pages

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student studying video game design when he discovers a mysterious book in the university library. In reading it, he finds that some of the stories seem to be about him. As he researches the book, he finds himself drawn into an unexpected adventure that takes him first to a masked ball in New York City, and then to a subterranean library filled with mysterious hallways, cats, and a possibly sentient kitchen. And throughout everything are bees, keys, swords, hearts, feathers, and stars.

This meandering book would best be described as a love letter to stories in all their forms, with fantasy and fairy tale tropes abounding. I really really REALLY wanted to love this book as much as I loved Morgenstern's previous novel, The Night Circus, but I just couldn't muster much enthusiasm for it. The book starts out feeling like a confusing RPG video game (a la Myst), and lost me with the many threads that were loosely combined in the story. I think the biggest problem though is that I honestly didn't care about the characters. I can read books where I love the characters and I can read books where I hate the characters, but in this one, they were all just... meh. The settings were gorgeously described (I swear I can feel honey on my fingers and in my hair as I type this) and it was wonderfully atmospheric, but the characters and plot just lost me. I'm so sorry that I couldn't love this book the way I wanted to.