Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

11 reviews

celisabeth's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Imagine a thousand-piece puzzle, but you start out with zero puzzle pieces. You have to wait for new pieces to appear in the box and the process is gradual. You don’t know what image you’re trying to piece together, and the initial puzzle pieces don’t even seem to form one coherent image. You can sense with growing frustration that it’s all supposed to fit, but it’s not quite there just yet. So you keep sifting and trying new combinations, gaining more and more success as new pieces appear.

Sometimes your first predictions are wrong, so you growl under your breath, recalibrate, and try another arrangement. It requires faith, patience, and maybe a glass of wine (ignore this advice if you’re under twenty-one). After a while, you finally understand. It is one cohesive puzzle and not separate entities. It fits. Hallelujah! The electrifying elation you sense while gazing at the finished product isn’t just because you finally comprehend the image. The satisfaction stems from the process, especially the thrill of putting clues together and finding connections between two dissimilar pieces.

Reading The Starless Sea feels like solving that puzzle: It’s a crisscrossing story within a story within a story within a story. Only that fourth story is also somehow the first story, but you don’t realize it because the initial appearance is different. Oh, and there’s also an eleventh story that somehow intertwines the second and seventh story together. Now multiply that by infinity. Forget eight years — I’m shocked it didn’t take Morgenstern a quarter of a century to type out a first draft. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping

Moderate: Drug use

Minor: Animal death and Body horror

aliyachaudhry's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious relaxing medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Death, Grief, Stalking, Pregnancy, Gore, Alcohol, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Torture and Animal death

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

ollieez's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Stalking, Outing, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Outing, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Stalking, Animal death, Homophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Kidnapping, and Death

strawberrypinch's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol

Moderate: Murder, Animal death, Body horror, Torture, Blood, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, Dementia, Death, Gaslighting, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, and Stalking

Minor: Child abuse, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexual content

jelliestars's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Alcohol

Minor: Animal death, Blood, Death of parent, Grief, Gun violence, Sexual content, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Violence, and Injury/Injury detail

falltumn's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

actual story content is solidly a 5 star, but the way the book is structed is 4.25/4.5 out of personal preference. i highly recommend reading book 1-3 in the order of the short, abstract stories first in Whole, and then reading the rest of the book. i found the constant interrupting of events grating.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Stalking

Minor: Animal death

cherry__tomatoes's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

The first 300 pages of this book confused the living life out of me, with the constant short stories and myths I was very confused. During these first 300 pages no huge plot was established and the first 300 pages weren't very captivating. But once I passed page 300 the book become one of my all time favorites, the symbolism each character represents is amazing. I feel like nothing was really connecting in the first 300 pages but everything started to make sense after little snippets of information were revealed. The last 200 pages really saved this book from being a one star review to a four star, the plot twists and truths revealed is impeccable, everybody isn't who you think they are. The ending was very good and very satisfying. My one problem with this book, as stated before, was the first 300 pages were really boring and not very attention grabbing but the ending and everything unravelling makes it better, definitely worth the read.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Animal death

traeumenvonbuechern's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

CN: alcohol, death, fire, suicidal ideation, forced drug use, removal of a tongue, branding, kidnapping, drowning, animal death

If this book was a smell, it would be the smell of old books. If this book was a taste, it would be the taste of honey. If this book was a feeling, it would be the feeling of finally finding a place where you belong.

I read and loved The Night Circus when I was younger, but this book... this book made me feel things I didn't know I was capable of feeling. It's magical, atmospheric and breathtakingly beautiful. It's a story about pirates, bees, lovers, swords, doors and keys. But most importantly, it's a story about stories.

This book is definitely not for everyone. Some will find it too long, some will find it too confusing, some will just find it boring. But for me, The Starless Sea is the perfect book. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcohol, Kidnapping, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Animal death, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, and Suicidal thoughts

li_reading's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence, Animal death, Panic attacks/disorders, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, and Death

Minor: Suicide, Grief, Pregnancy, and Blood

corvicore's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

this book fixed all the problems i had with the night circus. there are some bits im confused about, but given that this is my first read through it means that this book has reread value which is great. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Death, and Gore

Moderate: Torture

Minor: Animal death, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Homophobia, Murder, Sexual content, and Pregnancy