Point of View

Morgenstern writes The Starless Sea in third person present point of view. The novel mainly follows Zachary in the present day timeline, which takes place in 2015, as he discovers the world of the Starless Sea. However, there are several excerpts includes throughout the main storyline that take place at different times and follow different characters. These sections strengthen the present day storyline as a whole and fill in Zachary’s limited perspective.

Books 1 to 3 feature Zachary’s third person perspective. Within this main storyline, there are excerpts from the following three books, respectively: Sweet Sorrows, Fortunes and Fables, and The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor. In these stories, there is an omniscient third person narrator that describes certain situations the characters experience. For instance, in “Sweet Sorrows: To deceive the eye,” Morgenstern writes, “The boy is the son of the fortune-teller. He has reached an...