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Zachary Ezra Rawlins’s story begins with a door, really an elaborate painting of a door, in the alleyway behind his fortune-teller mother’s store. It looks so real that he could reach out and turn the knob. But he does not, and the next day the beautiful painted wall has been covered with white paint.
His story picks up and gets going when he is a grad student reading as many novels as he can on a school break. He finds a strange old book, filled with fanciful stories that draw him in. But what equally shakes him and makes him obsessed with this mysterious book is a story that clearly is about him, standing at that door as a boy. To top that off, on both the door and the book cover are a bee, a key, and a sword.
Soon after, Zachary is off on a quest to find out where this book came from — and, almost unknowingly, to access a world hidden deep underground, on the shores of the Starless Sea. Rooms and hallways are almost empty of life but filled with books and paintings and stories. Only a few people are left to guard them. And others, aboveground, would go to any lengths to prevent people from entering the underground world.
Zachary meets a pink-haired woman, Mirabel, who becomes his guide to and through the place of the Starless Sea. And he meets a handsome and mysterious man, Dorian, the teller of enthralling stories. They don’t know what part they are to play in the long-existing story of the Starless Sea, but it will be both glorious and perilous, an adventure.
The Starless Sea, much like the place in the book, is for those who cannot resist fairy tales, timeless and impossible love stories, and beautiful words. It’s made to be fallen into, swept up in, and relished. It takes its time unspooling the many threads of the tale and then gathering them back up by the end into a very satisfying set of hand-tied bows. The pieces of the plot are multitudinous, but none are wasted. Descriptive passages, however, flow like honey, rich and sweet. When the story finally concluded, I came up for air and savored the remnants left on my tongue. So lovely.
Rated: Mild. Instances of profanity are few: five uses of moderate profanity, three uses of mild language, and one instance of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content is limited to a little kissing, and one scene where characters have sex but there are no details except to say they were tangled up together. Violence includes chases, attempted killings, and some deaths.
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