This is yet another book where I have no idea how it ended up on my to read list but I am so glad that it did! I truly feel as though this book was able to capture something specific and essential to my current existence, and I really treasure those opportunities when they come along.
The book starts with a story about a pirate and a girl. Then it changes to an acolyte pledging herself to a place that seems like a library. Then it changes again. Zachary is a graduate student studying video games when he checks a book out of a library that appears to have a chapter about him as a child. He does some digging, and thinks he’ll get more information from a literary party in NYC so he heads down and meets Dorian. Dorian promises him more information in return for help stealing a book from a secret society he used to belong to. Around here the interspersed separate chapters change from the library book Zachary found to the book he stole for Dorian. Zachary gets the book but they’re found out and have to make a quick getaway. They start to go through a painted door down to the library-like place, but Dorian is stopped and only Zachary makes it. There Zachary finds the Keeper, an old man who keeps watch. He also meets Mirabel, the person painting the doors.
Mirabel and Zachary go to save Dorian and bring him back down. Once back, Zachary is still trying to find answers to his questions. Now the interspersed separate stories change to The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor, a book that Zachary finds. Zachary hunts down Dorian once he’s recovered and they start to go through the information together. It becomes clear that these stories are about all of them, there’s a chapter on Dorian as a kid, and Mirabel/the Keeper are Fate/Time trapped in a doomed romance. Simon and Eleanor are also Mirabel’s parents. Zachary and Dorian also are flirting with each other. They head back to the Keeper and find the leader of the secret society Zachary stole from, who threatens Dorian. A rift opens in the floor, Dorian and the leader fall through, leaving the Keeper and Zachary behind. The Keeper reveals that the leader was an acolyte once who saw that this place was going to be destroyed and wanted to stop it by removing every way to get to it. Mirabel and Zachary then descend even farther to try and find Dorian.
The interspersed chapters are now Zachary’s friend from school, Kat’s, diary as she tries to find Zachary. Dorian falls into a honey sea and is pulled out by Eleanor. He travels with her for a bit and then separates to find an inn. From there he heads into a demon-infested world to try and find Zachary. Meanwhile Zachary is separated from Mirabel, but he finds his way separately through the depths, locates Simon, and then finds the honey sea. He then turns around to find Dorian, but Dorian stabs him through the heart. Now dead, Zachary brings the key to the end of the story to the bees, and the honey sea starts to rise. Meanwhile, Dorian has found a heart left by Fate and uses that to revive Zachary as the Keeper and Mirabel locate a new Harbor to start some new stories.
I am honestly unsure that my summary makes much sense, I had to leave many things out. There’s also an Owl King and the bees are everywhere and cats. There’s more interspersed chapters revealing the mythology of the place, and probably hundreds of things I didn’t pick up on. If you want everything to be wrapped up in a neat bow, this is not the tale for you. There’s symbols and questions, and characters that are metaphors and some that are not. You have to work for it and be ok with a few loose threads. Myself, I was thrilled. I loved the detective work and how elaborate the world was in that you could read books from the universe!
Primarily though, this is a book about telling stories. Zachary is doing graduate research on how video games tell stories. The underground library place is a repository of stories that the acolytes write down, the Keeper keeps record of, and the secret society was originally supposed to protect. Once the characters get below everything, that sea of honey is described as a place where stories can manifest objects, depending on what story you tell yourself. It’s the power of humans to create narratives made physical. There’s discussions about “the story” of the book as though it is its own separate force, such as bringing Simon back into “the story” when he’s found by Zachary, and how Zachary brings the story everywhere he goes. At the end, he tells Mirabel a story to get the key to end it. And of course the last 50 pages when I was desperately hoping to delay the ending, it is all a wonderful musing on what it means for a story to end. I felt like the author really anticipated what I would be feeling there and I feel a little called out as a result.
This hit so many notes that are just important to me
personally. All of the references to other media and Zachary feeling as though
all his life is are these references, that got me (as a fan of postmodern
writing and someone who only has like 3 jokes that I tell over and over, that
sure got me). There’s the fact that Zachary is a graduate student trying to
figure his life out when all he wants to do is read books, that’s me for sure.
The video games as stories is something I’ve been trying to engage with more
and having that as a subplot as something that Zachary and his friend from
university are both into was really fun. I think I would have loved this book
even if I wasn’t in graduate school, but having that extra touch really
heightened the experience and probably made it so that this was the perfect
moment for me to pick up this book. And it just made me love reading and
stories and wish that I had in fact more time to spend on consuming them all.
What a wonderful book.
