Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher(s) for a digital ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review. I'll be completely honest: I drug my feet on reading this, mostly because I was throwing a mild temper tantrum because this wasn't a SIGMA series title. I struggled to get into this book from the start, but I know that Rollins carefully plots his books, his worlds and his entire story, so I kept going and I'm really glad I did. Things picked up midway and I really found myself getting into the story and being emotionally invested in these characters and their situations. Some of it I found a little harsh-one of the characters seems to have just and endless run of bad things happen and I found myself going "PLEASE EASE UP" but that didn't happen. I'm hoping-now that I've realized that this is a series-that in future installments the characters has a run of really good things that happen to compensate all the bad. I was grudgingly pleased at this book overall-Rollins is a fabulous author, so I really shouldn't be surprised at how it all came together and went. He's got talent in spades and I'm finding myself waiting for the next installment.

*Rounded up from a 3.5*

I would say that I enjoyed this book. It wasn't perfect, but the story had enough unique aspects to it, as well as plenty of action that kept the story chugging along fairly well. It's a good blend of the classic multi-POV fantasy adventure story coupled with some good politics and drama. So it has a little bit of everything for every fantasy reader. It even has some very light, almost sci-fi elements? Maybe more steampunk, but I always associate steampunk as a sort of overlap of fantasy and sci-fi. The focus on alchemy and the way they use it to improve technology just gives me big steampunk vibes. One thing I will definitely say about this book, it had fantastic world building. It's clear that a lot of time and effort went into crafting the world and all of its history in this book. The cultures, the world itself, the creatures, and the history of the world were all thorough and interesting to learn about as you read the book. It doesn't hurt that the end of some of the chapters have sketches of the creatures. I don't know about you guys, but I love when books (especially fantasy books) have pictures of the content. Rollins' writing was very descriptive so as to allow the reader to become immersed in the world and the action happening. But it also wasn't overbearing, the writing itself was very balanced so as not to take away from the plot, but rather to bolster it and keep it moving.

The story was pretty good and it kept my interest, but there were some things that I didn't care for that kind of took me out of the story. First off, I never really cared for Nyx. Just something about the way that she's written did not vibe with me. I wouldn't say that I disliked her, I just didn't care very much for her. The fact that every time she was hit with something new, or would gain a new ability, she always just knew how to do it. There was never development of that ability because she always just seemed to immediately know everything about it and how to master it. There were also a fairly strong reliance on characters tropes which I can give or take, wasn't the end of the world, but it made the characters feel relatively standard. The thief with the heart of gold, the scoundrel prince, the overweight side character who serves to bolster the main characters, etc. On a similar level as tropes, there were a lot of convenient saves. A lot of "we'll never survive this but oh look something happened right at the last moment so there were no real consequences." I'm hoping that these things will all be greatly lessened by the time the next book is released.

Overall, it was a strong start to the series. I'm fairly impressed by the content, especially since James Rollins is known for thrillers, so for him to write such a solid fantasy book on his first go is pretty impressive. Sure, there are things that I didn't care for very much, but the story itself and the characters within have promise. I look forward to seeing how the world grows and the characters develop in the next book!

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author James Rolling has a stunning new book in a brilliant new series. The Starless Crown is the first volume of The Moonfall Saga. It's an epic story with rich world-building and wonderful characters.

Abandoned as an infant in the swamps of Myr, Nyx is mostly blind and needs help with her studies at the Cloister. Jace failed his fifth year, but assists Nyx in her seventhyear by reading her texts aloud and writing for her. Despite this handicap, she excels at her studies and the other students bully her.

Fleeing from one such barrage, Nyx is attacked by a Myr bat. The creature’s deadly venom brings terrifying visions of the world's end. Nyx wakes nearly a full turn of the moon later, her vision restored and with conviction that she has seen the future: Moonfall.

The Starless Crown is a true fantasy saga, where characters from different backgrounds collide. They grow “into a makeshift alliance, united by blood, grief, and purpose, all centered on one word. Moonfall.”

I enjoyed the book so much that I purchased the audiobook version for my collection via Audible, and started listening to it immediately after its release.

The Starless Crown
(Moon Fall #1)
by James Rollins

This book is so weird and interesting! I was so engrossed in Nyk's story that I just wanted to stay with her but it lead to the others. Nyk's is a girl that is almost totally blind. She was found that way. When you find out how she became blind and her life the 6 months before she was found as a baby will stun you! It did me! Then, well let's just say her life doesn't get any more normal!

Then there is a Prince that is a twin. His dad doesn't care for him at all and only loves his brother. A thief that escapes a pit during a quake. During that quake a large copper egg is found that opens up and holds a copper statue! But it responds to the their only when the soldiers and priests aren't looking!

This is a most unusual adventure. Nyk's has predicted an world ending event! So has the Prince's tutor. Very exciting!
I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this terrific fantasy book!

Solid Storytelling. Nearly Deceptive Description. Let me be explicitly clear: THIS IS A FANTASY BOOK. It is NOT a Sigma Force style science-bending military technothriller. Given Rollins' rise to fame on the back of his Sigma Force books, as well as the fact that he has *another* pseudonym for his pre-Sigma Force fantasy novels, the fact that the description of this book does not make clear that THIS IS A FANTASY BOOK is dang near deceptive marketing. If you enjoy fantasy tales, this one is going to be perfectly in line with what you enjoy and more power to you. But despite having a *far* wider range in my own reading than most readers, fantasy books are one of *few* genres that just make for dang good naps every time I try to read them - and this one was no different, despite LOVING Rollins' Sigma Force work and at times reading it in a single sitting. This noted, Rollins' abilities to craft a tale are just as strong here, and for what it is the story is compelling. Truly my only complaint is that it should have been made explicitly clear that THIS IS A FANTASY BOOK, and I would never have touched it at all. Recommended.

3.5 stars

You can read all of my reviews at Nerd Girl Loves Books.

This is the first book in a new Fantasy/SciFi series about a prophecy that a young girl born to an exiled couple will bring about an apocalypse. The Kingdom is on the brink of war with another nation. The King orders his second son to hunt down a species of bats in order to get their venom for weapons. He also orders the Prince to capture the young girl. Meanwhile, in another part of the Kingdom, a thief escapes prison along with a life sized bronze woman that has come to life. The thief's intricate escape plan goes awry when the woman indicates she has a destiny to fulfill.

Well. I don't even know where to start with this book. It's 560 pages long, and it felt like it. I can normally breeze through a book this size in a few days, but I struggled to finish this one in over a week. It's very common to have a significant amount of worldbuilding in the first book of a fantasy series. I get that. I've devoured tons of George R.R. Martin and Brandon Sanderson books. But the worldbuilding in the beginning of this book was excessive, and was far too detailed. I was at around 35-40% of the book before I even knew what the story was all about. That's not good.

There are multiple main characters and the chapters alternate between their points of view. There are also several minor characters to keep track of, and frankly it got to be a bit much. Even with all of the worldbuilding in the beginning, the author kept adding more and more background, characters and lore throughout the book until I finally gave up trying to remember everything.

I think the main storyline is intriguing and I like most of the main characters, but I still couldn't connect with this book. I'm not sure if it's the enormous amount of information provided, or perhaps the author's writing style that just left me numb. I think forgoing some of the intricacies of the story, and/or better editing would have greatly improved the book. Usually the rest of the books in a series move more quickly, so I'm hopeful that the next book has less worldbuilding and more story telling.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and MacMillan-Tor/Forge. All opinions are my own.

Reviewed the audiobook edition:


DNF at 84%

I'm just throwing in the towel. It's a decent story with good characters and worldbuilding, I just don't care. It's been going and going and going and my attention is drifting further and further away.

Not a bad book, or a bad audio, I just need to move to something else before it triggers another reading slump.

An long but interesting read. I've been a fan of Rollins from his fiction books and was interested to see him venture into Fantasy,

We follow the adventures of Nyx a teen student who has a gift and foretells about Apocalypse. We then embark on a journey with her and her group as they face perils with people who want to stop her yet also get the support of those who want her to succeed.

The book takes some time to introduce us to the world and characters, but it's certainly action packed. The characters are developed well and plot picks up after a slow start.

Overall, I enjoyed it.

Yes. More please. I pretty much loved everything about this book, well except one thing but it wasn't important to the story line. I loved the in depth story and the world building. The characters, you could empathize with them, and antagonist you actually hate. It is a great story I can't wait for more.

***Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.***

Getting through the hundreds upon hundreds of pages (normally something I love to see with fantasy!) of this book was my biggest challenge of 2021. It was weird to me to discover that this author is known for his thrillers, as the pacing and suspense of this book were so terrible that it was a chore to read.

An entire chapter for a man to go to the bathroom and walk around? Tropes (the blind orphan girl who gets bullied but is precociously smart; the prisoner who overthrows the guards and becomes higher status, the unlikely band of misfits who comes together) just....it was too much, and not well done enough to be worth it.

Essentially LOTR with sexism, poorer quality writing, less engaging characters, and lazy worldbuilding. So....LOTR without all of the things that make that series so incredible.

Sometimes a book comes along with such a powerful blurb that you can’t help but be drawn to it. The Starless Crown, by James Rollins, is one such novel. A kind editor at Tor sent me the elevator pitch for this book back in the middle of last year and I was immediately entranced. A band of unlikely heroes comes together in a science fiction fantasy story to fight the literal moon? Where do I sign? Unfortunately, because of our packed review schedule, and the fact that The Starless Crown does not come out until early next month, I had to push my read of this exciting new story… until last week. As the first novel in the MoonFall series, is it an explosive success or just a crater?

Starless follows three and a half protagonists, which is new for me. The half is because the fourth protagonist joins the story about halfway through, but once they hit the ground they keep running. Our eclectic adventuring party is made up of first Nyx, a fourteen-year-old student at a prestigious school studying the secrets of the world and who also happens to be 90% blind. Second, we have Prince Kanthe, a second son and wastrel who lives a life of debauchery because he can never have his older twin’s throne. His father tires of his antics and sends him on a quest to destroy the home of the Myr bats, enormous poisonous bats that are extremely dangerous. Third, we have Rhaif, thief and amateur archeologist. Rhaif is stuck in prison when he discovers a powerful artifact in the mines below the jail. After using it to escape, he finds himself on the run for his life. Finally, we have Graylin, a knight in exile who is finally given a reason to come home. There is more to this story, but he is the half a protagonist I mentioned and I don’t want to give away too much.

So what do all of these people have in common? Well, they are trying to fight the sky. The world of Starless is a distant planet that is in a tidal lock in its solar system. What this means, essentially, is that the same side of the planet is always facing the sun which turns half into a boiling death trap, and the other half into a frozen death trap. The only survivable portion is a thin (starless) crown around the planet that is habitable at the equator. This would all be well and good, but early on in the story a teacher figure of Kanthe discovers that on top of everything else that makes their world SUPER FUN, the moon is also in a gravitational decline and will soon crash into the planet and kill literally everyone. Just the best. As this information propagates our diverse cast all end up looking for solutions to the death by moon problem. Thus we get 4 quests that cross and diverge all unified by the same goal of not dying by moon.

There is a really powerful frantic energy in Starless. Rollins does a very good job establishing a heavy and urgent atmosphere around this idea that everyone is going to die to a cosmic event that they can’t even begin to hope to affect (at first). On top of this, the cast is just delightfully memorable. On top of each character having a great hook, they have a really nice range of personalities that foil off one another. Nyx is curious and insightful, Kanthe is charismatic and boisterous, Raith is cunning and competent, and Graylin is chivalrous and driven. Despite their time together in this first volume being short, all of them feel like they fit together in this large phantom puzzle.

To top it all off, the plot is exciting and thrilling. Rollins apparently was a thriller bestseller before this, and it comes through in his story structure. The twists are many and exciting. The plot is always swerving to interesting and exciting places. On top of this, Rollins may be new to fantasy but he clearly knows the genre. There are lots of fun trope subversions that are clever and not just there to be ‘twisty’. So with all of these brilliant positives, Starless must seem like a knockout success. Unfortunately, I still have an area I need to dig into about where I struggled with this book: the prose.

If I didn’t consistently struggle with the prose of this book, I might have already flagged it as a potential top novel of 2022. I found Starless’ exposition lacking, the dialogue stilted, and the delivery oddly repetitive. To begin Starless is filled with very complicated and interesting sounding locations and creatures, but their descriptions fail to bring them to life. Exposition in some places is so short and vague I struggled to understand what I was looking at. In addition, most of the dialogue is extremely awkward. Most of the internal monologues were great, but when characters interacted I always got the feeling that I was watching actors in a play. I was constantly aware that I was reading a book and was actively pushed out of my immersion in many instances. Finally, passages were sometimes extremely repetitive. I occasionally wondered if this was only an issue of my ARC, because it would feel like Rollins left two versions of a scene in a book in order to try them both out. Characters repeat conversations with only minor deviations. One example early on is when Raith is moving about his prison. We are treated to a description of a guard about how callous and selfish he is, only to get a second description on the next page that also describes him as callous and selfish, with only a slightly different example to demonstrate. My enjoyment of Starless was constantly weighed down by the writing and it was a disappointment.

The Starless Crown has a squadron of strengths in its corner. With its twisty plot, cool world, and great cast it sits as a fun and entrancing read that straddles both the science fiction and fantasy genre. Unfortunately, my struggles with the book’s prose kept me from engaging with the material. I had enough fun that I will be back for the sequel, but I hope my issues with the prose are less prevalent by then.

Rating: The Starless Crown – 7.0/10
-Andrew

I received an ARC of The Starless Crown from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review.

James Rollins is best known as a writer of thrillers, but The Starless Crown is far from his first foray into fantasy: he previously wrote The Banned and the Banished series and the (currently unfinished) Godslayer Chronicles under the name James Clemens. I have been patiently waiting for the third book in the latter series since Hinterland was published in 2006 (I’m not being sarcastic when I say “patiently”—there have been more than enough good books to keep me occupied in the meantime), and while The Starless Crown didn’t quite capture my heart the way Godslayer Chronicles did, reading a Rollins/Clemens fantasy again scratched an itch that hasn’t been scratched in sixteen years. He doesn’t write quite like anyone else in the genre.

The Starless Crown takes place far in the future, on a tidally locked Earth—or “Urth,” as the characters in the book call it: the planet perpetually faces the sun on one side and away from the sun on the other side, leaving a habitable zone between. The primary protagonist of The Starless Crown is Nyx, a near-blind girl who finds herself at the heart of a dark prophecy. Rollins layers in a surprising number of secondary protagonists as the novel goes on, including prince Kanthe, thief Rhaif, knight Graylin, and several other POV characters (Kanthe’s older brother, Mikaen, pops off the page as a deliciously compelling antagonist—more of him in the sequel, please!).

I was so engrossed in the first half of this book. I eagerly sank my teeth into every new character, and I was tantalized by every hint of the delightfully wicked world inhabited by these characters. Rollins’ writing has flavors of Anthony Ryan, George R.R. Martin, and Ian C. Esslemont: there is strong sense of physicality that anchors me in the fictional world, and that’s important to me as a reader. I like the visceral nature of his prose. But Rollins’ most interesting quality as a fantasy writer is that even when he’s writing fantasy, he’s not writing fantasy—he’s still writing thrillers. The Godslayer Chronicles are structural thrillers dressed up in fantasy clothes, and The Starless Crown is no different. This time, though, that quality hurts the story rather than helps.

Unfortunately, The Starless Crown falls prey to the thing I always dread in genre storytelling: it gets so caught up in action sequences that it forgets about the characters. The second half of this book is almost nonstop thrills, and that’s not a compliment—the personalities that made the characters so distinctive and memorable in the first half of the book simply fade away until they are nothing more than names on a page, names who have nothing unique to contribute during the climatic sequence. After spending hundreds of pages with these people, I suddenly found myself stopping to decipher who was who because they had all blended into an indistinguishable beige background behind Nyx (who loses her most interesting quality as a character early on).

That’s the first of two lesser frustrations I had with The Starless Crown: it introduces a disabled protagonist and then cures them of their disability without stopping to consider what that means, either to this specific character in this specific world or as a part of the real-world storytelling tropes surrounding disability (as a disabled person myself and someone who studied disability in college, it’s a bit of a sore spot for me). It’s lazy, dishonest, irrelevant to the story, and worst of all, a boring cliché. My other annoyance is with Rollins’ insistence on replacing the letter “i” with the letter “y” at every avaylable opportunyty (presumably to make the words ynvolved seem more archayc and exotyc and fantastycal). Look, I lyke the letter “y.” Y’d probably rank it in my top ten Englysh letters. Yt can be a vowel or a consonant! But when yt comes crashyng ynto words lyke the Kool-Ayd man, yt becomes chyldysh and dystractyng rather than flavorful and ymmersyve. (Y’m exaggeratyng for comedyc effect, but come on, let me have my fun.)

The Starless Crown is a decent book. It’s fun! The writing is good. The worldbuilding is full of rich detail—Rollins excels in this arena—and I desperately want to know more about how the Earth we know became the fantasy landscape portrayed in these pages. I will certainly be picking up the sequel. But I still feel like I ate a bag of potato chips: it was yummy, but far from filling—“empty calories,” as they say. Characters are like fire: they burn brighter when they have some oxygen. Hopefully the next book will give us a bit more to chew on by lightening the action and allowing those characters room to breathe. If they have that, I expect they’ll burn brightly.

This book was the perfect answer to all my epic fantasy lulls - What a great start to what promises to be one of my new favorite epic fantasy series! This has EVERYTHING I want in my epic fantasy: incredible world building, including various places/locations, cultures/empires (and great animals), plus a multilayered plot with plenty of intrigue, mystery, and action - and all peopled by an assortment of complex characters (multiple POV's) all following their own plot lines that eventually collide. What a great way to start off my reading in 2022. There was nothing I didn't like about this - 100% grade A Fantasy entertainment - completely swept me away. **Thank you to both NetGalley and TOR for my eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review - and to the author for writing such a great book. My imagination salutes yours:)**

There's definitely been a lull in my epic fantasy life the last 3 or 4 years (as I wait for the usual suspects George and Patrick to continue their series - thank heaven for the prolific Sanderson!) and I've found myself going back to some of my teenage favorites like Brooks, Goodkind, Bradley, and others to fill the void. Don't get me wrong their are a lot of contemporary authors doing amazing epic fantasy that I've thoroughly enjoyed but every once in a while I just want a good old kind of epic fantasy that I can really sink my teeth into and be totally transported away. This definitely met that fix for me.

I wasn't sure about a thriller author taking on fantasy, but the one previous book I've read of his, Amazonia, made me think "this guy should write fantasy", and there's echoes of some of that books ideas and themes here, but exploded exponentially as he lets it all go for straight fantasy. His obvious knowledge of sciences (especially the natural ones) are so great, the lands he creates complete with corresponding flora and fauna end up populated with believable, relatable, and yet creative creatures. He also does a really great job mixing traditional medieval fantasy with some alchemical mischief and mayhem with strong steampunk elements - and it all works so perfectly in this world. We've got magic, and old Gods, and old mysterious technology, alchemy, secret sects, and "bridle songs" communicating with animals.

The character development was equally strong, with a wide variety of both recognizable archetypes and more complex morally gray characters favorited today. I'm definitely rooting for the mixed up crew of would be world savers, and the villains are proving themselves to be even creepier than I originally anticipated.

Definitely my number #1 rec for epic fantasy lovers. The eARC I read did not include the drawings of the various animals, that I later saw in the print addition and all I have to say is THANK YOU to both TOR and Rollins for including those, i'm a sucker for art in the books. And Rollins descriptions were so good in the eARC that when I finally saw the pics they were surprisingly close to how I imagined them.

Read it!

I made it 30% into this book before I had to delegate it to the DNF pile. While in the beginning I was intrigued (that prologue scene was INTENSE!), as I kept reading I was just wholly unimpressed. The worldbuilding was lazy, in my opinion, nothing different from any other run-of-the-mill fantasy story. I say this as an avid fantasy reader and lover of the genre: this book was average, at best. With so many groundbreaking and innovative additions to the genre in the last few years, it really boggles my mind that books like The Starless Crown are still being published.

Some of the things I disliked: the wasted opportunity of examining disability in a fantasy setting; the played out treatment of women and their sexuality; the stereotypical use of bright/unnatural colored eyes in POC-coded characters to mark them as "special"; the way the Black-coded characters of a certain sect (eunuchs) were said to have "had their deception beaten and whipped out of them long ago". I could go on. If you aren't engaging with certain tropes in a nuanced and purposeful way, what is the point? Why stick to harmful tropes and stereotypes?

Beware the horn’d snaken!
This is my first time reading James Rollins and I wasn’t disappointed. Rollins builds an immersive and intricate world and seamlessly blends together many character points of view and plot lines. No character is what they seem when we first meet them, and their relationships and personalities grow over the course of the book. I enjoyed the magic system. It’s not the first time I’ve seen singing as magic, but this was an interesting take. And I’m also a fan of the “black sheep is actually the good one” trope. Further, there are hints along the way that this may actually be the far future, built on the ruins of our current society - an “Urth” that stopped rotating on its axis. I loved the bits of science sprinkled throughout this tale.

As a content warning, there are some brutal torture scenes, including the torture of children.

Fundamentally, this is an action packed, traditional high fantasy, but there’s more below the surface. I’m excited to see where the next book goes.

I received an ARC of this book from Tor in exchange for an honest review.

December was a long month for me this year, and The Starless Crown was a satisfying popcorn book to sit down with over the "dead week" between Christmas and New Years. While the story doesn't feel especially original, Rollins writes good action scenes, and keeps the plot moving briskly enough for the book to feel engaging. The classic author's trick of switching points of view right as the action starts to get good is on full display in the first half, with cliffhanger after cliffhanger followed by a jump-cut to another character, but even though I knew what was coming I was still hooked. As the book goes on, it becomes clear that while the characters might all end up in the same place by the end, the major puzzles Rollins lays out won't be resolved until a sequel (or sequels--I'm not sure, but experience leads me to expect a trilogy), which lowered the stakes significantly and made the concluding battle feel much less satisfying. Of the three protagonists--Nyx, Rhaif, and Kanthe--only Rhaif's arc comes to a satisfying conclusion. Nyx feels under-explored after a promising beginning, with a major trait (discussed in the spoilers below) discarded after the opening chapters in favor of a more run-of-the-mill hero's journey. Kanthe doesn't have enough time to change, remaining relatively static as a character after an initial misdirect when he is first introduced. Rhaif is the only protagonist who grows over the course of the book and is still left with room to explore revelations about his past in the sequels, making him more interesting than the other two in my view. Rollins does better writing the big action set-pieces in the second half of the book, giving urgency to the protagonists' flight across a remote mountain range and then painting a vivid picture of a steampunk-like conflict fought between ground forces and enemy airships. For spoiler-related reasons, much of the world is left unexplored, which leaves room for plenty more surprises as the series unfolds, but given this book's reliance on classic fantasy elements I'm unsure how many of those twists will be genuinely unexpected to a seasoned reader. Fans of the Brandon Sanderson school of fantasy--puzzles to unravel, an ever-expanding cast, and an avalanche of revelations in the last third of the book--will find much to enjoy. Overall The Starless Crown makes for a good weekend's entertainment, but not much more.

Three out of five stars. I'm curious to see whether the second book manages to take these ideas in a more original direction, but won't be waiting with bated breath.

A review with spoilers follows below! Read no further unless you want to be spoiled!

After reading Charlie Jane Anders's The City in the Middle of the Night, the signs of a story told on a tidally-locked planet were easy to find, and The Starless Crown makes no real secret of the fact that it is set on a future Earth that has (somehow) become tidally locked. Rollins may have been trying for a novel combination of science fiction and fantasy elements, and I expect the relics of whatever future civilization existed on Earth before the tidal-locking occurred to play a large role in the series going forward. However, limiting the first book to a standard fantasy setting while hinting at the larger science-fictional world ultimately means that neither story is realized especially well. In the fantasy world, Nyx's initial mostly-blindness is quickly cured, and after a few chapters in which she makes interesting remarks about learning to navigate a world with full sight for the first time, she pays little attention to this change for the rest of the book. Setting aside broader issues of disability and its portrayal in fiction, I found this change disappointing, since it left Nyx as just another Chosen One with a Dark Past. Many of the other details of the protagonists' adventures are classic elements of the genre, from the escape across the mountains to the Wise Forest Tribe to the menacing but ultimately helpful pirate ally. With the tidal locking largely relegated to background information, and the identity of the planet as Future Earth never really in doubt, there isn't enough mystery in the science fiction portion to elevate the book beyond these tropes. Naming the habitable band between heat and cold the Crown (and remarking on the difficulty of seeing stars from the glare of the sun) is a clever touch, but unlike The City, little is done with the regions beyond the Crown in a move that feels like intentional stalling until the sequel. While many of the character moments fell flat, the highlight of the book for me was the airship battle at the end, where Rollins's skills as a thriller writer felt like they had been put to good use. As I said above, this is a good popcorn book, and worth picking up at your local library, but it has little philosophical heft and fails to reach beyond the now-well-known science-fantasy conceit of a future Earth that resembles our past.

I love all types of fantasy books and this one was no exception. I loved the way it was written and since this is my first James Rollins book I look forward to reading more. I can't wait to see where this story leads!

I have never read a James Rollins book but he may have just gained a new fan. The characters were all very well fleshed out and the story line kept you on the edge of your seat the entire time. I was never bored with this one!

We get to follow Nyx as she discovers who she actually is and where she really came from. We meet one prince to appears to be bad only to find out he may not be the problem child in the family. Add to this some pretty cool side characters and the discovery that the world is about to end and you've got one epic fantasy tale that will have you begging for more!

Scheduled to post 1/4/22.

Where did I stop? 8% in

Why? Usually I'll give a book a much bigger chance than this, but I couldn't. I was struggling so hard just reading what I did read. It would have been an unkindness on me to keep reading and I didn't want to end 2021 suffering like that. It was mostly the worldbuilding that killed it for me. Wholly unoriginal and completely lazy, it takes place on Urth where we're just getting around to heliocentrism but there's alchymy and pyrites and a school run by nonnes. It's a very false sense of worldbuilding. Plus the misogyny. Penetration of the vagina in any way will get a woman shunned for life, irrespective of whether she consented to the act or not. Of course, the same rules don't apply for boys. Because why not? This IS the only way to build fantasy worlds, isn't it? Ugh. I was bored and unimpressed with what I read.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Books, and the author for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book. An honest review was requested but not required.

I have not ever read James Rollins previously, neither his much earlier fantasy works, nor his more recent action/thrillers. But I can definitely see elements of both genres in Starless Crown. Rollins packed LOTS of action scenes into what I expected would be a straight-up high fantasy, but it was done so deftly and believably that the pacing seemed natural. The beginning was a bit of a slow start but it picked up quickly. I think my only real issue with the book is that there were SO MANY characters that I just know that by the time Moon Fall #2 comes out I'll have forgotten half of them.

Nyx and her bat brother Bashaalia (sp?) were by far the most intriguing and appealing characters but I also really liked Rhaif and Shiya. Pratik the Klashean didn't get a lot of page time in this book but I think based on the ending he'll have a bigger role in book #2, which I'm looking forward to. (view spoiler)

I sort of wondered if the majority of the population's fear of the Moonfall warnings (believing them to be nonsense at best and heresy at worst) were some sort of reference to the climate change debate, but I'm probably overthinking it.

I enjoyed The Starless Crown a lot and I look forward to seeing what's next for Nyx, Kanthe, Frell, Rhaif and the others but I will probably have to read this again (or at least skim it) before I read #2 just so I can refresh myself on all the characters.