The Starless Sea

“Far beneath the surface of the earth upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them.”

This first description of the Starless Sea sets the tone for the ultimate setting and confirms the novel’s magical realism. The Starless Sea is a place where stories are kept and where they originate.

“And so the son of the fortune teller does not find his way to the Starless Sea. Not yet.” 

This last sentence in the third story describes the end of a significant moment in Zachary Ezra Rawlins’s life. When Zachary reads this sentence, it puts the rest of the plot in motion, prompting him to investigate Sweet Sorrows and ultimately find his way to the Starless Sea.

“Anyone who enters the room affects it. Leaves an impression upon it even if it is unintentional.” 

Although this description concerns the room with the dollhouse, it is also a larger metaphor for both the Harbor of the Starless Sea and for life. Even the smallest actions can have large and unforeseen consequences.

“Isn’t that what anyone wants, though? To be able to make your own choices and decisions but to have it be part of a story? You want that narrative there to trust in, even if you want to maintain your own free will.” 

In the Innovative Storytelling workshop, a student suggests that not only gamers want a collaborative story experience. She suggests that human beings desire comfort and the feeling that their steps are ordained, even when exerting their own agency.

“Everyone is a part of a story, what they want is to be part of something worth recording. It’s that fear of mortality, ‘I Was Here and I Mattered’ mind-set.”

This moment not only speaks to the fact that each of the characters is in their own story (or stories) but also applies on a larger scale to humanity. People don’t want to be forgotten; they want to be part of a story that matters.

“These doors will sing. Silent siren songs for those who seek what lies behind them. For those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been to. Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking. Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them. But what happens next will vary.”

The doors to the Starless Sea attract story lovers who are searching for a place to belong. This siren song is not only the premise of the book but also a hook for readers who may experience similar feelings.

“A quest has been set in front of him and he is going to see it through.”

Despite his growing fear for his own safety and decreasing confidence in his ability to separate reality from fantasy, Zachary decides to continue in his obsessive quest to understand his book and find the Starless Sea. It is his nature to answer the call of adventure, even if it is against his best interests.

“Occasionally, Fate pull itself together again and Time is always waiting.” 

When Fate is murdered, Chance begins to dictate the outcomes of events in Time—but Fate finds a way to reconstitute herself. The tension between fate and free will is one of the book’s major themes.

“No, each one’s different. They have similar elements, though. All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all.”

Mirabel argues that all stories are based in change and share that element, even if nothing else is similar. This perspective holds true over the course of the many narratives making up this novel.

“A story is like an egg, a universe contained in its chosen medium. The spark of something new and different but fully formed and fragile. In need of protection. You want to protect it, too, but there’s more to it than that. You want to be inside it, I can see it in your eyes. I used to seek out people like you, I am practiced at spotting the desire for it. You want to be in the story, not observing it from the outside. You want to be under its shell. The only way to do that is to break it. But if it breaks, it is gone.”

Allegra argues that no matter how much a reader may long to be a part of a story, attempting to enter it will only destroy it. She only sees one side of the story, however; when an egg breaks, it also unleashes something new.

“The old doors were crumbling long before Allegra and company started tearing them down and displaying doorknobs like hunting trophies. Places change. People change.”

Mirabel states that things change even without the concentrated efforts of an antagonist. This reflects the fact that the story was already moving toward an ending and that Allegra’s efforts to stop the Harbor from changing were futile from the beginning.

“A book is an interpretation […] You want a place to be like what it was in the book but it’s not a place in a book it’s just words. The place in our imagination is where you want to go and that place is imaginary. This is real [...] You could write endless pages but the words will never be the place. Besides, that’s what it was. Not what it is.”

Mirabel tells Zachary that he will not get what he wants from the Starless Sea because it will never be exactly how he imagined it, and it is his imaginary version which he longs for, rather than the reality. His imaginings were based on a book written long ago, and many changes have happened since then.

“Maybe this time will be different.”

Mirabel tries to soothe the Keeper’s worries that he will lose her again. She expresses the hope that things have changed enough for this iteration of the story to end differently.

“I think people came here for the same reason we came here […] in search of something. Even if we didn’t know what it was. Something more. Something to wonder at. Someplace to belong. We’re here to wander through other people’s stories, searching for our own. To seeking.”

Dorian suggests that everyone who reaches the Starless Sea is responding to the same human longing for the extraordinary and a sense of belonging. He also suggests that they seek understanding of themselves and their own stories through the exploration of the stories of others. 

“Each of us has our own path, Mister Rawlins. Symbols are for interpretation, not definition.”

After discussing the rolling of the dice, Zachary asks the Keeper if, unlike what Sweet Sorrows had suggested, there are more than three paths. The Keeper answers that everyone has their own path and that the symbols are meant to help guide interpretation or nudge stories in one direction or another, but that they do not define who anyone is in a concrete way.

“I love you but I will not sit here and wait for this story to change. I am going to make it change.”

Though the Keeper is concerned for her safety, Mirabel is determined to take control over her own narrative for the first time. This decision ultimately proves to be successful, leading them all to the end of the story.

“Important things hurt sometimes.”

Eleanor makes this observation after confirming that the tattoo of the illustration from Fortunes and Fables was painful for Dorian. This seemingly innocuous statement is particularly poignant as it relates to the pervasive theme of lost love, which Eleanor, separated from her lover Simon, who is lost in time, knows all too well.

“He had always wanted to be in the place but he didn’t understand until he was finally there that the place was merely a way to get to the person and now he has lost them both.”

Everyone who goes to the Starless Sea finds something they are seeking. Dorian realizes that, as much as he had longed for the literary haven, that which he had been seeking was Zachary. Now, he has lost Zachary, and without him, the place doesn’t hold the meaning Dorian imagined it would.

“Why would you fear that which guides you?”

Simon’s statement about Zachary’s fear of the owls confronts Zachary’s assumptions about the elements of the story. The owls are a plot device designed to move the story forward, so Simon suggests that Zachary has no need to fear them, only to heed their guidance. Taking this advice empowers Zachary to find his way to the end of the story.

“A man this far into a story has his path to follow. There were many paths, once, in a time that is past, lost many miles and pages ago. Now there is only one path for Zachary Ezra Rawlins to choose. The path that leads to the end.”

For all that his choices have been his own, the climax of a story leaves few choices. Zachary has made it to the point in the story where the only way forward is to the end. He decides to take it.

“Whatever happens will happen whether I worry about it or not. It will happen whether you worry about it or not, too.” 

Madame Love Rawlins tells Kat that worrying solves nothing and that she should not waste her time with it. Although she speaks of Zachary’s disappearance, Madame Rawlins’s advice also applies to real life, where people have no more control over certain elements of their narratives than the characters do in this story.

“Someone was trying to keep the story from ending. But the story wanted an ending. Endings are what give stories meaning.”

This moment shows the plot twist: The story itself wants to end, and all conflict to date has resulted from its unnatural longevity, brought on by Allegra’s interference. This statement confronts the assumption that endings are negative and undesirable.

“This is where we leave them, in a long-awaited kiss upon the Starless Sea, tangled in salvation and desire and obsolete cartography. But this is not where their story ends. Their story is only just beginning. And no story ever truly ends as long as it is told.”

Repeating the phrasing used in the story of the pirate and the girl, this excerpt reinforces the underlying theme that endings are not bad, but necessary, and that they are inherently beginnings, too. It also offers the reader some comfort in the idea that there is no true end as long as a story is told.