I’m late to the party, and have read all of the other discussion on r/books and a few on other subs about the Starless Sea.
I took a giant break in the middle of the book and the first half is kind of foggy compared to the second half, and it is very much overdue so I can’t re-read at the moment.
Here are some things I wanted to talk about that I didn’t see already covered (I tried to un-collapse every thread but I wasn’t signed in so Reddit formatting \[open a new page for a single sentence instead of expanding!\] might have hindered me a little there) or that still left me wanting to talk.
1) What is the scope of a story’s beginning and end compared to a entire harbor?
So there are a bajillion stories in a hole in the ground, and that hole, with its keeper, is a Harbor. And this story has gone on way too long because Allegra tried to stop it, in multiple incarnations (how does she get to be immortal?). And Zachary finally allows it to end. It’s been around at least since the 18-somethings based on Simon’s origins. I’m less interested in “how many years” but more interested in… okay, so the entire sea is filling up to the top, there were many harbors before, Kat is going to open a new harbor, which is a new story, Zachary ended the last story/harbor… but the Keeper seems like he’s been around much longer than just his harbor, doesn’t he? Or is that only in the guise of Time that he’s been around, I guess that’s it, in this Harbor he’s a mortal who became time and is no longer time by the end. The bees are eternal, and have always been present.
Sorry for the semi-stream-of-consciousness here, when I don’t know how to format my question sometimes I word vomit and the library closes soon and I want to get it back today but I want to finish this post first in case I need to reference it.
I just… the fact that all the doors lead to this one Heart and the Heart dumps down straight into the Sea makes me feel like the Keeper and the Heart are not just part of one transient story/harbor but are a more all-encompassing thing that has been there since the beginning of time, and yet the Keeper also seems to be part of just one harbor/story on a shore of the silent sea. Obviously physical directions aren’t absolute and can be metaphorical, but unless all harbors could crack open and accidentally drop their inhabitants straight down into another sea…
But I guess that’s kind of it, isn’t it? This sea is also very metaphorical, and obviously doesn’t follow simple rules about sea level and being flat, given how Morgenstern describes the way the ship navigates out when the sea is rising. But it does cover harbors at various levels… and I suppose they aren’t at the very top, necessarily. So the sea can be under multiple harbors. I guess writing this out does make me feel more concrete about a harbor being a story that ends. And this one has been going on for a few hundred years and the Keeper isn’t any older than that except the part of him that is Time. Okay. Does that seem fair? But also the Wiki says this Keeper may be the original? https://the-starless-sea.fandom.com/wiki/Keepers
2) Why all the secrecy and murder?
There are three paths. Guardians don’t volunteer, they’re chosen. And you go through all these rites and in initiations, and if you decide at the end that you don’t want to do this after all, then they stab you through the heart and kill you .
So why? At first, that made me mad, and I hoped that we would eventually be shown that this is all unnecessary and wrong in some way, and the society or world around it would be destroyed, replaced with a better system, that maybe this was somehow related to the malaise that made the harbor dry up and empty out. I thought maybe Allegra had something to do with all of this. But now that I’m finished, I don’t know why any of this is necessary. The only group that, to me, seems to actually benefit from secrecy and harming others is the efforts of Allegra, as she is trying to keep the story from ending and people naturally, through fate, move into and out of the harbor and could bring about its end. So she needs to eliminate knowledge of and access to this place, out of the naive belief that it will stay the thing it is, the thing she loves. But it’s pretty clear by the end that none of this is Allegra’s doing, that it all was around before… at the end, Rhyme, the acolyte, is moving on to the next harbor. So who benefits from murdering someone chosen to be a guardian who declines? This place is full of doors, it’s stories woven together, it’s by nature temporary and continually changing, and has now survived an intervention to break time and destroy fate and sabotage all the doors and guess what? It’s still intact. So who or what (not to mention who or what makes these rules or enforces them) initially or currently benefits from the great lengths they go to to keep it secret?
3) Allegra, I’m fuzzy on her, but she quit and didn’t sacrifice that much. I mean frankly, considering some people commit to an eternity of silence and are murdered for saying no, giving up one eye doesn’t seem like such a big deal, though of course she’s a painter and maybe you can say it affects her more but still. What kind of crappy enforcement mechanisms exist if she can just quit the guardianship and walk away?
4) Simon was kind of a twat. Like bruh, you just found magic, and now you’re mansplaining to a woman that a magic door is impossible, like you deserve to get a hand cut off or something. Get lost kiddo. And then you gave up.
On the other hand, I never really bought the romance between Zachary and Dorian. This may seem sacrilegious to other book fans but… like… it’s a mysterious old murdering man and a shy college kid who reads a lot of books, and in their initial encounters, Dorian is an unquestionable authority and Zachary is a star-struck kid being cared for. I get that Zachary had a lot of feelings from the start, but it seemed more like having a teacher that was kind of attractive and smelled nice, that you looked up to and wanted to learn from and be protected by, it really never seemed like a relationship that should have turned in to romance.
But I guess there’s some of that also mirrored in Simon and Elenore, right? Because she was a small child when they met, then while he’s basically the same age they shag in the library? So maybe Simon got it right, hey, this relationship isn’t really worth pursuing, just a bit of lust from two people who previously didn’t know what sex was. Maybe Elenore would have stabbed Simon in the chest, who knows. Certainly not me.
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OK off to the library goodbye.
by RemindMeToTouchGrass