This book is beautiful and extraordinary and unlike anything else I've ever read, aside from The Night Circus, of course. The author has a masterful way of creating such a magical ambiance that a plot is almost unnecessary. Just drop me in the middle of an Erin Morgenstern novel and let me float in it like a lazy river.

It's difficult and almost unfair to try and write a review of this book and judge it like any other novel. The Starless Sea is more of an immersive experience. The reader reads the book along side the protagonist, Zachary, occasionally separating from him to watch from afar as he interacts with the book and the adventure it catapults him into. The book-with-the-book is full of fairy tales, adventures, romance, and loss, all elements that invade Zachary's story, too.

If you're not reading Erin Morgenstern's novels, you are seriously cheating yourself.

arc received from the publisher