C.G. Drews's Reviews > The Starless Sea

I just want to be absorbed into this book and never never leave. It captured me in indescribable ways? No really; I'm struggling for words on how to sum up everything about this book. It was beautiful and peculiar, whimsical and weird. It was such a thoughtful look into storytelling and being passive in your own narrative...and also it's so deeply about searching. For your own story. For your person. For some reason to keep believing in magic. And then add in secret bookish societies, and the occasional gunshot, old books and old ink, caverns underground filled and filled and filled with books, cable-knit sweaters and tea, and secret doors that open to worlds that can't exist...it SPOKE to me. It filled aching holes in my soul.

aaand...I also need to take a moment and admit there were so many times I didn't have a freaking clue what was happening. 😌 So there's that too.

I do understand why it's a book people love or hate. I mean, for starters, it's very very slow and the writing is very passive. It will describe a book's binding and grain of the carpet. It's peppered with stories interrupting the main narrative, until you realise the short stories ARE ALSO the main narrative and they all connect -- but are they metaphor or real or magic? By the end I really didn't understand a lot. (view spoiler)[Like why DID Zachary have to die?! (hide spoiler)] But it was so immersive and beautiful and deeply magical, with actual stories spooling from the pages and stories without stories, tied behind other stories, I just was in love. I can't stop thinking about it.

I'm like Zachary with Sweet Sorrows: I felt seen by this book. (It reads like a bookworm's DREAM -- falling into an underground library with mysteries to solve and magic to uncover. And I, like Zachary, would also send a note to the kitchen saying "i love u kitchen" because utter mood.)

I think the book is supposed to feel like a video-game, in that you get turned loose in this underground book realm and you get to explore. So that's not a fast thing. (I also don't play vidoe games so bare with me lol.) And since Zachary is a video game major, I felt it tied that in -- talking about storytelling and narratives where the READER (or player) directs the story.

And Zachary? What a dumbass I love him so much. He's so so stuck in his own head, little socially anxious, little shy, little lost in life's direction -- not deeply unhappy, just deeply missing something. He spends like 90% of his dialogue saying "WHAT IS HAPPENING" though and that is an utter mood, but I also appreciated his self awareness of not always following the metaphors. Also he spends so long with smudgy vision because he didn't bring his glasses. 😂 I love touches like that. He gets moody at one stage and retreats to nap and eat a lot of dumplings. He's softly gay and will tuck a book into his coat pocket because it feels better having the story closer.

I am running out of WORDS to say how much I love Zachary Ezra Rawlins.

It's myth and metaphor and magic combined. It's honestly a phenomenal book and made homesick for finding my own underground library. I LOVED the secret society vicious twist, and the darkness coming to life at the end, and how Zachary had a book and then a sword and then an adventure. I totally didn't understand a lot of it. I kind of want to search for author interviews after this maybe. I just sit and MULL. And then reread. It just struck a chord with me, despite being confused and it being slow. I could fairly feel the old dusty book pages and cosy sweaters and cat rubbing against my ankles.

It's a book that challenges you, but gently -- right up until it shoves you off a cliff.

Don't be passive. Pick up your sword and your story and move.