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.

Thank you to NetGalley and TorBooks for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This falls somewhere between 3 and 4 stars for me. It took awhile to get going - like 50+% of the book, but the ending had a ton of action and was hard to put down and there are some really interesting ideas and concepts in here that I like. I am looking forward to the next books for the continuation of the story.

It is marked as adult but I felt like some of the writing and pacing of the book was more reminiscent of a young adult book (which isn't bad, just not was I was prepared for). One thing that irked me through the book was having different spellings of words (or the pronunciations would be really close) - for example Urth is their world - either spell it Earth or give it a different name! And using y instead of i or e in other words like spyll - that just seems lazy to me.

It was ok. Bit of a slow start and it’s long. I did like it better by the end of the book. There’s a lot of set up but once it gets to the end the pace has picked up. It’s a very grim and dark setting. There is a scene near the start where some older male teens think ruining a young teen girl’s life and dreams with gang rape sounds like the thing to do though the girl does escape. That’s going to put some readers off. I had it pegged fairly early in reading that it was either a fallen colony world story or a dying earth story. That all the magic is science is obvious pretty early. There’s really nothing wrong with the book, it’s just there’s so much epic fantasy out there and this doesn’t stand out as brilliant. It’ll be the right book for some readers. If you’re in the mood for grim and bloody it might be the right book for you. For me, I’ll probably read book two but just because I read mountains of fantasy books… this one was just fine and better by the end than the beginning.

The Starless Crown is the first book in a new series by James Rollins.

"A young student has dreams of an apocolypse. Her reward is a death sentence. She flees and finds herself drawn to a team of outcasts - a broken soldier, a drunken prince, an imprisoned thief that escaped with a gleaming artifact that is wanted by many.
They must learn to trust each other to survive...because doom is coming."

This book marks a departure from the Action/Thriller that Rollins has typically written. His books have often had a fantasy element but this book is full on fantasy. Often in a new fantasy story, an author will spend a lot of time with "World Building" but Rollins makes it easy on the reader. The descriptions and names don't slow down the story. Your pulled into the characters and pulling for the good guys and yelling at the bad guys. The bronze woman is fantastic.
The action sequences are fantastic - giant bats - wind ships - lots of explosions.
There are some loose ends but Rollins resolves the story enough to give the reader satisfaction.
Very fast read for a long book. Great beginning to this new series from Rollins,

2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) I have read Rollins for years. The Rollins I love writes contemporary with a twist of sci fi; a team of people and researchers, embarking on a journey that find new lands and beasts. He also writes spy thrillers. He’s probably one of the authors where I’ve read almost 100% of their books. So when Tor reached out to me to review this one, I couldn’t be more excited or flattered.

The story has many POV’s. So many that they felt like different story lines for quite some time. Because of this, the characters became numerous and easily confused. There was no real flow or predictability so it was hard with several jumps between each character.

I liked very few characters. I never connected with the story or the characters and really struggled to finish this one. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. While I don’t love all of Rollins work, I have loved so many that I had high expectations for this one. Ultimately it was too fantastical, too long and didn’t hold my interest.

It definitely is a unique book and I believe many will love it. Rollins has a unique idea for this story and I’m curious to see where it goes. However, somebody let me know when he gets back into sci fi because until then I will be rereading my favorites.

Thank you to Tor Books for the gifted copies in exchange for an honest review.

The book releases January 4, 2022.

This one was just a little too slow to get going for me. Too much telling, too much detailed description of surroundings, clothing, kingdoms, history and not enough interesting things happening.

Maybe it is the way this author usually writes, but I like either a character driven book or a plot driven book but this one lingered somewhere in between. It was held afloat by large swaths of epic description and multiple action sequences. I’m also very bored and done with the women in these style of books being disrespected, used as sex slaves, assaulted, declared hysterical and condemned to death.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t my taste but I am betting there’s epic fantasy readers out there that will eat this one up.

This is probably one of the strangest books I have read in a long time. I enjoyed it immensely, but have no idea how to pitch it to people to sell it. I kept telling people what was happening each chunk I read and they said it sounded very disjointed and all over the place.

There's a Big Reveal late in the book, but careful readers will figure out what happened to this world. It'll be interesting to see how that plays into the forthcoming books. Is this a YA book or adult? There are good arguments to be made for both, but I sense that adults will be less interested while YA readers may find it a little violent (the whole brain thing, for example). Clearly there are more revelations about what Nyx's role in the world's future to come, I just question how much more can be packed in: the bats, the princes, the balloons, etc. all felt like a little much in Book One and more in Book Two will just be confusing.

A huge thank you to Netgalley for the e-ARC!
This does not influence my opinions.

While I overall enjoyed this one, I had some issues with pacing and intrigue. From the get go I enjoyed each of the characters perspectives that we followed. They were the main thing that kept me progressing through the story.
The plot of this books moves incredibly slowly, because Rollins takes a lot of time on worldbuilding and its history and politics. However, to me it was at the cost of intrigue to the actual story. There are few, if any "twists" because they are spoiled before we even know about them. I personally enjoy a story that keeps me intrigued by the plot and also by the characters, and with this book I only got one of those.
This is my first time reading Rollins' books, and I ended up really enjoying the writing of this story. I'm intrigued to see where the second book goes.

Thanks again to Netgalley for the early copy!

If you’re looking for a cool new epic fantasy series to check out then might I recommend The Starless Crown? I expected this to be pretty awesome going in based on my experience with James Rollins’ other books (despite the very different genre) and was not disappointed. This was action-packed, had several of my favorite tropes, and the moon is also going to destroy the world in 3-5 years. More on that in a moment.
The story starts off with a woman fleeing for her life through dangerous swamps, stopping to birth her child, which is then swept away by a mysterious creature. Cut to the current day, where a mostly blind girl named Nyx is being chased by a group of extremely salty students who she inadvertently embarrassed in class. She is fleeing upwards, to the top level of the Cloistery she attends when a giant Myr bat swoops down, killing one of the boys chasing her and biting her in the process. Myr bats are described as these giant, unholy terrors of the swamp with deadly venom in their bites. Nyx however doesn’t die from the venom exposure, but is instead granted sight (and terrifying fever visions) and finds that perhaps she is connected to the bats somehow. Oh, and also she is certain that the moon is going to fall from the sky and destroy them all.
Then we find Rhaif, a thief who was sentenced to work in the mines, taking advantage of a disruption to escape his prison. Until he stumbles across a cavern where he finds a strange bronze statue of a woman. He could swear that the statue blinked at him… and though he is focused on escape, he detours to help the woman who appeared to be a statue escape the clutches of those who would use her as a weapon.
And lastly there is Kanthe, secondborn prince of Toranth. The black sheep of the family, the Prince in the Cupboard, the spare. His father sends him off to the swamps with a team of soldiers to clear out the Myr bats, which have become too much of a threat since they attacked that boy at the Cloistery. He feels unwanted by his family, but perhaps this trip to the swamps will help him prove his usefulness and his ability to face danger.
The three characters have their own supporting casts and let me just say, it was quite a delight to watch them slowly converge and join together as the book moved along. Their individual plot lines are each quite fascinating and when they do meet up things really pick up the pace! Nyx’s chapters were probably my favorite since she has an animal companion and a mysterious past but Rhaif and Kanthe were excellent as well. Between the two of them, they supply enough rogue-ishness for the whole book.
The world building is also really quite something. The world is called Urth, and at some point in its history it stopped rotating on its axis and there’s a thin comfortably habitable area with scorching desert and frigid wastes on either side. The story strongly hints that long ago there was more advanced technology and I speculate that perhaps this is a post-apocalyptic version of our own Earth. I love that sort of thing and love getting those little hints at a fascinating history or seeing how history is distorted as the centuries pass. Strong Mark Lawrence vibes in that respect. The advancement of technology is pretty cool as well, with some of the greater advances coming from a dark religious order that is honestly pretty terrifying.
Overall, I was super impressed with the quality and depth of the story. Though there are several younger protagonists, this is most definitely an adult fantasy, what with some of the darker content and all. There are some seriously dark and brutal moments, many of which focus on human experimentation by the creepy-ass monks. There are some areas where I felt like the pace slowed a little (not always a bad thing) and I wanted to rush on to the next exciting sequence or the next POV. I can also confidently recommend both the print and audio versions since I checked out both formats (about 50/50). Great start to what I hope will be an incredible new fantasy series!

I love when fantasy includes elements of science fiction so I was incredibly excited when this novel started with a discussion of orbital mechanics.

I have never read the author's backlist so I cannot personally comment on how this compares to his previous work. Given his background in thrillers, I was not surprised that the narrative moved along at a good pace. The prose itself was a little rough. I felt like the author was trying too hard to be poetic, and would instead of benefited from sticking to a cleaner style

The weakest aspect of this story, in my opinion, was the characters. While the characters had intriguing backstories, their actual personalities fell flat for me. I struggled to attach to the characters which made it harder to care what happened to them.

As one of my most anticipated releases, I was unfortunately a bit disappointed with this one. I loved the scientific elements, but as a whole the story left me a bit underwhelmed.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.

I'm making the decision to put this one down, unfinished. To be clear, the issue is not with the quality of the writing or the quality of the story. James Rollins is one of the best in the business and I believe this book and subsequent series holds enough promise that I may, one day, return to it and give it the time and attention which it probably deserves.

Unfortunately, my relationship with the fantasy genre runs hot and cold and I'm feeling tepid at best with this one at the moment.