Reviews

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

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jessjaszczak's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense 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? No

4.25

redscrawl's review

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adventurous challenging emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

starryeved's review against another edition

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3.0

"I'm here to sail the Starless Sea and breathe the haunted air," he says.

So, I thought I had written a review for this, but I guess it got deleted? Never mind.

The Starless Sea epitomizes the book you so desperately want to love, but can't. In essence, there isn't necessarily anything wrong with it, but there is. Some stories are spun from mere words, and we all know Erin Morgenstern is a master of words. But even in a story submerged in honey and books and stories, words aren't enough.

This is pure Morgenstern, though. I feel like she took everything she ever wanted to read about and saturated it with her words and threw it all together, and then forgot about it. Pure indulgence. And I guess it is. It's a story for people who love stories. However, I wanted more. Somehow, even though the language wasn't dense, the imagery was so overpowering that reading every word made me tired. Everything was just so slow, and nothing was happening, and even when it did, it was confusing. The narrative just made no damn sense. And I understand that's the intertwining nature of a story, but to a reader it still needs to have some structure.

The Starless Sea was just evocative imagery and words, but little else. In The Night Circus, that was okay. Here, when you have so much more content and background, you need a little more.

An extra star for the writing. Throw her a bone.

We're here to wander through other people's stories, searching for our own.

nobodydies's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional 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

cataaa's review against another edition

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3.0

I really, really, REALLY wanted to love this book. It has tropes like secret societies, books about other books, books about the protagonists, hidden worlds within other worlds, mostly badass, nerdy characters … so what’s there not to love?

Well..

I think the whole story (or was it all a metaphor?) went a little over my head (case in point). I got so overwhelmed with trying to figure out who is who that i completely missed the fact that it was all supposed to be an analogy. I understand NOW, after reading a lot of reviews, how this book is a love letter to storytelling, but that’s not what I got when reading it.

The descriptions are very immersive -as is Morgenstern’s signature- but they were very sudden and hard to get into. I understand how every “random” story told outside the main plot comes into play in the end and I expected that nothing told here is random. However, I feel like there were too many changes/ discoveries and not enough time to wrap your mind around each one.

I think this is why it took me way longer than it should have to finish this book. Every time i picked it up, after having made sense of what I read before, I got confused all over again and probably also forgot some important details. I couldn’t focus for long and I really wanted to capture all of Morgenstern’s world, which is why I read every detail more carefully...

I will tell you though, it makes for a really good bedtime story.