The magical new novel from the bestselling author of The Night Circus.

When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a strange book hidden in his university library it leads him on a quest unlike any other. Its pages entrance him with their tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities and nameless acolytes, but they also contain something impossible: a recollection from his own childhood.

Determined to solve the puzzle of the book, Zachary follows the clues he finds until he reaches a subterranean labyrinth filled with stories, hidden far beneath the surface of the earth.

You are invited to join Zachary on the starless sea: the home of storytellers, story-lovers and those who will protect our stories at all costs.

What we thought:

This book is a sumptuous feast of a novel which you will want to take your time with.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is just a normal kind of boy who enjoys reading, computer games and well crafted cocktails, but when he finds a mysterious book in the university library his life is forever changed. Meeting a mysterious woman at a ball and finding a door into a hidden world, Zachary delves into a land of story under the earth, where bees and keys and cats and mysteries abound. Can he follow the story to the end, find the heart and be the hero? Or is that not what this story actually needs?

A book even better than The Night Circus, Morgenstern has outdone herself with The Starless Sea. You’ll love it for it’s prose and the sheer number of vignettes she has managed to weave in, which seem inconsequential at the time, but are deftly threaded into the central narrative as the story grows and grows. Anyone who loves the idea of an endless library (with endless glasses of champagne) will love diving into the Starless Sea. Take your time with it, you’ll be bereft when it ends.

Shannon, Rockingham QBD