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Musings: Choosing Your Adventure: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

 

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Doubleday, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-0385541213

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook,  audio CD

 

The Starless Sea starts with a book-loving graduate student, Zachary Ezra Rawlins, who is writing his thesis on video games, finding a mysterious book of stories in his school’s library that includes a description of an incident from his childhood about a door he saw but didn’t open. Off he goes to find out more about the book and how he comes to be in it, that early on involves discussions of narrative and the differences between how it works in written works and in games. An inquisitive librarian tracks down information on the book for him, and between her help and a lot of searching the Internet, he is able to use clues from the book to connect it to a literary masquerade taking place in New York City in just a few days. Shortly, Zachary is on a quest, and the masquerade turns into a mystery, a chase, and an adventure that gives him the opportunity to walk through another door.

Once through the door, it is permanently closed behind him, and a different story begins for him. Zachary has entered a Harbor on the Starless Sea, an underground world where books and stories are safely kept. He is in a maze, or maybe it’s a hotel, or a library, with many doors, some locked and some open, where paths in time sometimes cross and sometimes do not, and people who meet in one room may not see each other again after leaving through the door. In addition to the Keeper and Zachary, there are just a few other people who appear in the underground world behind the door: Rhyme, the last guardian of the stories; Dorian, who may or may not be Zachary’s savior, killer, or true love, or a combination; Allegra, who wants to close all the doors so the story of the Starless Sea can never end;  Simon and Eleanor, lovers who lost each other in time; and Mirabel, their daughter. All of them appear in different incarnations across different times and spaces as Zachary travels through the lands of the Starless Sea, and the sea itself.  The world Zachary enters is dark, empty, often lonely and sometimes frightening or beautiful. His purpose once he arrives is unclear: even the Keeper of the Harbor doesn’t know, or want him there.

Erin Morgenstern writes gorgeous, lyrical, visually evocative prose. She started out as a visual artist and you can really tell from the way she has used words to create her worlds on paper. And if you are a person who loves books and stories and storytelling, who has always wanted to go through a portal or door to adventure, that might be enough for you to fall in love with this book. The weakenesses in plot and characterization are serious flaws, though. While Morgenstern starts out strong, once Zachary is through the portal, we lose the thread of his quest and it doesn’t get picked up again for a very long time (although there are a number of nods to the Narnia books throughout). There are multiple side stories that make you, as the reader, want to know where things went next, like the story of Simon and Eleanor, which has one foot in our reality for at least part of the time, and the story of the innkeeper falling in love, which feels like a fable but might not be.

The tales and fables in The Starless Sea are transformative, tragic, bleeding and dark. I was willing to try to track Zachary, as the anchor to the narrative, through his adventure because I wanted to know how some of these stories connected with his, but in many cases they were just vignettes, with the threads left hanging, or they returned in another incarnation. Then about three-quarters of the way through the book, Morgenstern, having constructed this elaborate, recursive story,  suggested that Zachary, the Alice in this wonderland, might be an unreliable reporter. That is, that nothing I had experienced (as a reader) with him could be trusted, and that he might not actually even be in the world of the Starless Sea. Although she backtracked shortly after that, it derailed the story. Once it’s out there, it can’t be unsaid.

Morgenstern was able to create a fairytale atmosphere, but in attempting to make her characters archetypes, she weakened them to the point that it was hard to care what happened to them, and this betrayal of the reader made that even more difficult. In constructing and connecting multiple layers and versions of potentially linked stories that reflected the possible choices of the characters, she left them adrift.  In interviews she has said plot is her weakness, and that she knew she had shortchanged her characters, and that’s really obvious here.

Because of Morgenstern’s amazing worldbuilding and gorgeous writing, and because I think she had some really interesting things to say about the way we structure stories in books (where the reader has a single path), versus games (where the player has many choices and can try different ones if the first ones don’t work), The Starless Sea was worth getting lost in. I feel like Morgenstern tried to present what it could look like to see what happens when a character makes different choices (like going through a door or not) by giving us a bird’s eye view of what it could look like to see the branchings and connections, outside the format of a game or a “choose your own adventure” book.

It’s an interesting experiment, but the observer’s position is unsatisfactory to me when I’m reading for enjoyment.

In adventure games, you get to be the active participant making decisions and dealing with their consequences.  “Choose your own adventure” books are written in second person, making “you”, the reader, the decision maker, with the ability to go back through your chain of decisions and change them, hoping for a different ending (getting to make your own choices is so vital that Chooseco just developed a series of board books). I just wasn’t invested enough in Zachary’s story to want to watch him make decisions (often random) without having more direct interaction.  Storytelling, if it doesn’t involve the reader or listener directly in participation, engages us when the storyteller invites us in. As gorgeously written as The Starless Sea is, it didn’t feel inviting to me as a reader. While the author created a memorable fictional world, she never opened a door.

 

Posted on May 1, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Trials of Apollo, Book Three: The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan

The Trials of Apollo, Book Three: The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan

Disney-Hyperion, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1484746431

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audibook, audio CD

 

The Trials of Apollo is probably my favorite of all Rick Riordan’s series, and the third series starring Greek gods and demigods. To be fair, I have read them with my kids starting when they were in elementary school and hero Percy Jackson was not that much older than they were, and the characters from the original Percy Jackson books are now college-aged, with much more complex stories and relationships.  The Trials of Apollo is unique in that it backtracks to a point in the earlier series The Heroes of  Olympus, where Zeus picked Apollo as his scapegoat for the terrible events that take place in the series due to Apollo’s self-centered and impulsive behaviors. Apollo’s punishment was to be literally thrown to Earth as a mortal 16 year old boy, Lester Papadopolous. Narrated in first person by Apollo, The Trials of Apollo reveals the god’s thought processes as an powerful, gifted immortal who has had adult (if immature) relationships and feelings, who is suddenly forced to deal with the limitations of being a less-that-perfect human mortal, who is dependent on others. Apollo’s absence, because he is the god of prophecy, means that no new prophecies can be created to guide heroes on their quests, and the oracles have been taken captive by Roman god-emperors as part of a larger plan of world domination. I suggest reading the books in this series in order, and it wouldn’t hurt to read the previous two series (Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus) first to get a complete picture of the characters and world presented in the books.

In the series’ first book, Apollo is not especially likable, due to his character flaws and refusal to admit that he now has limitations, but as the story goes on, he begins to gain some perspective in spite of himself, and we do get to see that he has deep regrets for some of his past actions. There are funny moments and times when he steps up to do the right thing, and he becomes a more sympathetic character.  The disparities between his perceptions of himself as an adult and long-lived immortal and the reality of being a mortal teenage boy are really interesting. While Riordan touched on sexual orientation in The House of Hades, in the series The Heroes of Olympus,  Apollo’s long history of relationships with members of both sexes is addressed frankly and nonjudgmentally, and flows naturally from the character. Riordan gives us the expected entertaining modern interpretations of characters from Greek mythology and pop culture references, as well. At the end of the book, the characters finally receive a prophecy, which sends them, in the second book, to Indiana.

As a longtime Indiana resident, I found The Dark Prophecy to be really entertaining, and it’s also where Apollo really starts to tap into what it means to be human. He continues to encounter the results of his actions on others when he was a god, and being faced with them forces him to rethink the way he has acted and treated others in the past. Watching his character evolve in The Dark Prophecy, as well as seeing how other characters deal with change, makes this an outstanding book. Apollo is still selfish, immature, and arrogant, but he has developed more compassion, understanding, and loyalty.

In this book, The Burning Maze, he has managed, with help, to defeat (at least temporarily) two of the three god-emperors (who are textbook cases in human cruelty and capriciousness) attempting world domination, and restore two of the five oracles. He’s clearly weaker than the other demigods and mythological characters he encounters, and they’re not doing so well themselves. Traveling through the Labyrinth to southern California, accompanied by the satyr Grover (he appears in earlier books as Percy Jackson’s friend) and Meg, a demigod daughter of Demeter who Apollo is bound to serve, they arrive to find it a desert, with wildfires and drought having destroyed most vegetation. The Erythnean Sibyl, the oracle they have come to free, is being controlled by the god-emperor Caligula, who is probably the most vain, erratic, cruel, narcissistic, and sociopathic of the three emperors Apollo and the demigods must face. He also prefers to delegate much of the work to others– in this case, the sorceress Medea. Medea appeared in the previous series as well, where she was cleverly presented and defeated. She’s not as creatively used here, and I wish Riordan had picked a different villain to do the dirty work in this book. Grover and Meg are perfect additions to this story about the destruction of nature by human carelessness, fire, and climate change, and their relationships with the dryads of the desert plants are well done. Meg’s warrior dryads, the Meliai, and Caligula’s furry henchmen, the pandai, are fun additions to the cast of characters, and add a touch of humor as well as menace to the story.  Apollo’s references to popular culture lace the story and act as reminders of his influence on music and literature.

This story has the most evidence of character growth on Apollo’s part, as he starts to see some of the complexities involved in human relationships, and the selflessness that some people have when it comes to protecting the ones they love or the world around them. At one point, he even asks himself if he would take immortality back if it meant abandoning his companions. Because of this, though, the two divergent aspects of his life don’t contrast as effectively, so even though his character shows more growth and reflection, we don’t see as much tension between the perspectives of Apollo-as-god and Apollo-as-mortal, and the story doesn’t seem as dynamic.

Something I appreciated in this book was that it returned us to characters who seemed to have their stories neatly tied up in the series Heroes of Olympus to show us that the “happily ever after” ending of a series is not always the ending of the story. Piper and Jason, a happy couple at the end of that series, turn out to have had some rocky times since it ended, and their subplot and its devastating consequences have a significant effect on Apollo’s continued character growth. That character growth seems to be the major focus of the book, though– while there is plenty of fast-paced action, I didn’t feel like it moved the story forward as much as previous books did. As with Piper and Jason’s relationship, The Burning Maze also does not have its ends tied up neatly, with the characters scattering in various states of grief, despair, determination, and hope as Apollo prepares to move on to fulfill the next piece of the prophecy.  This time, I really wish the story had been tied up a little more neatly, as the next volume is not scheduled to be released until fall of 2019, and I would have liked for the book to end on an up note. Still, Riordan has left me wanting more of Apollo and his trials and adventures, and I look forward to seeing where he takes the story next. Recommended for middle school and older.

Contains: Violence, murder, torture, cruelty, adult situations

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on June 6, 2018 by , Reply

Book Review: The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan

The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan

Disney-Hyperion, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1484732748

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

 

The Hidden Oracle is the first book in a new series in the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Trials of Apollo. This book takes place six months after the war with Gaea and the giants’ army, at which time Apollo was cast out from Olympus by Zeus. Now Apollo finds himself living a mortal life as a sixteen year old boy, indentured to Meg, a cranky demigod with a bad temper, hidden past, and voracious appetite. Apollo has many lessons to learn. Always vain about his appearance, now he faces himself in the mirror as a homely teenager with acne. Used to changing the world to suit himself, he must now find a way to fit in to the world as it is, and learn the worth of others. Arrogant about his supernatural powers, it’s quite a comedown to him when things no longer come as easily.

The Hidden Oracle is told only from the point of view of Apollo, and it’s an unusual point of view to find in a children’s or YA book, because Apollo has had the experiences of an ageless adult, in an adult body, but with the temperament and selfishness of a teenager. While he’s stuck in the body of an actual teenage human, his view is complicated by this combination of life experience, temperament, and the unfamiliar physical limitations of being mortal. When he’s wounded, for instance, his son, Will, acts as his healer… but physically, Will is nearly the same age, and has more emotional maturity. Apollo is matter-of-fact about things that can often be hot buttons in children’s books, like his regrets about his love relationships with Daphne and Hyacinthus, and his description of Will’s and Nico’s relationship (their bantering is a high point in the book). As the book advances we see Apollo the god begin to mature and connect emotionally with others as he learns his limits and how far he can push himself. As with any self-absorbed teenager, he can be incredibly irritating, but it’s worth it to see his self-reflection and changing attitudes.

The plot follows the arrival of Apollo and Meg at Camp Half-Blood with a storyline about communications being cut off with the outside world, the camp’s oracle deserted, and campers wandering into the woods never to be seen again. Apollo and Meg accidentally get lost in the Labyrinth during a camp exercise and discover that the physical location of Oracle of Delphi has been taken over by the monster Python, working with a mysterious character named the Beast. The Beast is attempting to take over all the oracles and destroy them. Meg has had some frightening experiences with him in the past: he’s responsible for the death of her father, and she will do anything to avoid him.

On returning to camp, they find that two of Apollo’s children wander off into the woods. Apollo and Meg go after them, battling giant ants with both weapons and musical talent, and answering marketing surveys from geyser gods (one of the funniest parts of the book) They finally find the missing campers and, despite the destruction of the other oracles, are able to discover a prophecy that can send them on a quest.  A terrifying standoff with the Beast reveals Meg is much more vulnerable than she looks, and leaves a fracture in the relationship between Meg and Apollo… and there’s still a battle to be fought for Camp Half-Blood. It’s quite a lot to pack into 376 pages, and the story rockets along.

The Hidden Oracle is worth reading more than once– there is a lot of character development that takes place, and it’s easy to miss if you get caught up in the action. This really isn’t a book intended for the same age group that read the original Percy Jackson books, though, or even the Heroes of Olympus books, which are really targeted at teens and, while they are darker, have a much more YA soap-operaish feel. Because of its more adult themes on relationships, trauma, and abuse, and the frequently adult perspective of the narrator, The Hidden Oracle seems intended for more mature readers. I recommend reading the previous two series, though, particularly Heroes of Olympus, because that’s where the events of the story begin, as well as Nico’s and Will’s relationship, and there are references to characters and events from earlier books. If you are a fan of Riordan’s work going all the way back, this is a great addition to his Greek mythology series, and more complex than his other books. He is writing a series grounded in Norse mythology concurrently, and I much prefer this. I look forward to seeing where Riordan takes the story of Apollo from here. The second book in the series, The Dark Prophecy, will be released in May 2017, and will undoubtedly answer some of the questions raised in the first book while introducing new ones. Highly recommended for YA and “new adult” readers, for middle and high school libraries, and for Rick Riordan fans.

 


Posted on December 3, 2016 by , Reply