If you loved how Zachary discovers that the book he finds seems to be writing him back—and how the Harbor’s archives, Keepers, and fables bleed into reality—then you’ll relish the Hell-adjacent stacks of the Unwritten Wing. In The Library of the Unwritten, librarian Claire must wrangle characters who escape their unfinished stories, sparking a cat-and-muse chase across realms that feels like following the bee, key, and sword through secret passages of narrative itself.

Like the interludes of fables and fairy tales in The Starless Sea—the Owl King, the Moon, the story of the acolyte—January’s tale unfolds through manuscripts, marginalia, and a discovered book that reframes everything she knows. If the nested tales guiding Zachary toward hidden doors and the Harbor enthralled you, January Scaller’s breadcrumbs of text and myth will feel like stepping through another painted door.

If you enjoyed piecing together Zachary’s path—Dorian’s motives, Mirabel’s origins, the Keepers’ designs—through out-of-sequence tales and artifacts, Piranesi offers a similarly enchanting unraveling. Told through journals in a vast House of halls and tides, its mystery blooms gradually, rewarding the same patient curiosity you brought to decoding the bee, key, and sword.

If the ornate, honeyed language of The Starless Sea—its moonlit harbors, masked balls, and whispered fables—swept you away, Laini Taylor’s rapturous prose will too. Librarian-dreamer Lazlo Strange chases a half-remembered city the way Zachary follows the thread of a story, and the result shimmers with the same awe you felt wandering the Harbor’s candlelit chambers.

Drawn to the doors Zachary finds painted and hidden—each promising a world like the Starless Sea? McGuire’s tale follows teens who once stepped through impossible doors and now ache to return. Its quiet, uncanny corridors and the idea that certain souls are called by specific worlds echo Zachary, Dorian, and Mirabel’s bond to the Harbor’s story-ruled depths.