Read it in the Green Room

The Starless Sea

Erin Morgenstern

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2019

  • pacePatient, sprawling middle
  • settingRooms, ballrooms and buried library
  • atmosphereBookish, bewitching wonder

A graduate student finds a mysterious book that seems to describe his own life, and follows it down to an underground library of stories. It is for readers who love nested tales, secret libraries and metafiction.

Beta invites go out in waitlist order. One devlog email a month, at most — or just read the devlog.

The Green Room

Backstage of The Starless Sea.

Walk in mid-chapter. The people of the book are there, as themselves, knowing what they know so far — and nothing else. Ask them anything. They have read exactly as far as you have.

A moment in the Green Room

The Starless Sea · Erin Morgenstern

The narrator

Of The Starless Sea, as they are at your reading place

You

What happens next?

The narrator

“I can only tell you what you have read. Past your page there is nothing yet — not for you, and not for me. Turn it, and come back.”

Their knowledge stops where your reading does.

Illustrative conversation. The app answers from the passages you have read.

Who is in the room

Anyone who has walked on by your page.

The cast

Any character who has appeared so far. Someone who hasn’t walked on yet isn’t in the room. That’s not a limitation; that’s the point.

The narrator

The voice telling you the story, as far as it has told it.

The author

As the book presents them — the mind behind the pages you have read, not a biography.

The book itself

Ask what it is doing to you so far. It answers from its own pages, up to yours.

Before you go in

What critics and prize juries said.

Editorial synthesis

Kirkus Reviews called it ambitious and bewitching, a love letter to readers that requires patience before the gears turn. Locus found a big, admirable swing that does not completely connect, with a lot of middle and some ideas that do not pay off, but plenty of beautiful moments. Critics split between enchantment and sprawl.

Drawn from Kirkus Reviews, Locus.

How it stays unspoiled

Nothing past your page exists.

The companion is assembled from the passages you have read and only those. A character who knows the ending is no one worth talking to, so there is no override — not behind a setting, not behind a confirmation. Your position is the wall.

You are here

Get the book

One ebook. Yours.

US$12.99ebook · eBooks.com

Buy the ebook once, read it in Green Room — or in any reader you already use.

Get the ebook at eBooks.com

Reading, narration and Green Room compatibility not yet verified for the retailer edition.

The cast has been waiting for you.

Join the waitlist — beta invites go out in order, and the devlog keeps you honest company until then.