The Starless Sea
Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a graduate student and lifelong lover of stories, finds a strange, unmarked book in his university library. Reading it, he is stunned to discover an episode from his own childhood recorded inside — a moment no one else could possibly know. The mystery pulls him out of his ordinary life and toward a secret society, a masquerade, and a door that leads underground to a vast, timeless sanctuary on the shores of a Starless Sea.
There, in a labyrinth of libraries, chambers, and half-forgotten myths, stories themselves are kept, tended, and endangered. As Zachary is drawn deeper — alongside an enigmatic man named Dorian and a pink-haired guide called Mirabel — he learns that this hidden world is under threat, and that the tales he has always loved may be far more real, and more perilous, than he imagined.
Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea is an immersive, intricately nested fantasy — a love letter to books, storytelling, and the doors that fiction opens, written in her signature lush and dreamlike style.
A story-loving graduate student who finds a book about his own life.
Leads a secret society intent on sealing off the doors to the hidden world.
A man tested and taken in as a Guardian of the hidden world; becomes Zachary's guide and love interest.
An earlier visitor to the Starless Sea who falls in love with Eleanor across time; inherits a key from his mother Jocelyn.
Zachary's college friend, who investigates his disappearance.