The Starless Crown
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4.2 • 345 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An alliance embarks on a dangerous journey to uncover the secrets of the distant past and save their world in this captivating, deeply visionary New York Times bestselling adventure from thriller-master James Rollins.
A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death.
Fleeing into the unknown she is drawn into a team of outcasts:
A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he’s forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home.
A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother's shadow and claims a purpose of his own.
An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact - one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe.
On the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation.
But with each passing moment, doom draws closer.
WHO WILL CLAIM THE STARLESS CROWN?
The Moonfall Series:
The Starless Crown
The Cradle of Ice
A Dragon of Black Glass
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young woman discovers her foreboding destiny in this fun but one-dimensional fantasy adventure from Rollins (A Kingdom of Bones). Nyx, a nearly blind student at the Cloistery of Brayk, survives an attack by monstrous Mýr bats, vicious swamp beasts with lethal venom. But rather than killing Nyx, their venom miraculously restores her vision and imparts a premonition of Moonfall, an impending apocalypse. When Highking Toranth ry Massif learns of Nyx's survival, he demands to have her brought to his castle; her blood could prove valuable to his physicians and he fears she's connected to the legend of the Forsworn Knight, whose alleged child was prophesied to be the cause of the kingdom's downfall. As Toranth hunts for her, Nyx flees with a team of unlikely allies on a perilous journey to find her alleged father, determined to stop Moonfall before darkness takes them all. Though the fantastical creatures and landscapes are imaginative, the fast-paced but shallow narrative takes the easy road by concentrating on a series of chilling beast encounters for Nyx and her party rather than exploring the tension between characters. Readers looking for plot-driven fantasy will enjoy the action but shouldn't expect much depth.
Customer Reviews
I love me some James Rollin’s books!
I give the ‘The Starless Crown’ 3.5 stars even, but am rounding up to 4 for the sake of the review because I am a big fan of James Rollin and I did find this book to be pretty good. The only reason I gave it a lower score was because this band of misfit characters who all join forces throughout the book reminded me very much of the same band of misfits from the series of “The Six of Crows” / “Red & Rising.” In fact, I’d say anyone who had read those books and enjoyed them, that the Starless Crown is an adults version of a similar tale. There was another small subplot where I felt the characters were doing a small nod to the Star Wars franchise, because of a certain complexity of lust and confusion between a trio of characters — but the whole “is this my half sister whose actually attractive” plot is blown up too much in this country and I feel we need to move away from those problematic plot lines. Only because normalizing that kind of relationship in books/movies, and then to have the entire pornography industry also have these disgusting plot lines- it may have a negative outcome on the youth. I just want to protect all children from any predator, even if it ends up being their slightly older step sibling or whatever.
So yeah, because of it reminding me so much of Six of Crows series and because I’m not a fan of that “possibly lusting over my half sister” plot line, it was knocked down.
That being said - I thought it was an overall good book and I have already ordered the second in the series, as well as recommended this book to both my brother and my mother. (My brother is the one who got me to fall in love with James Rollin books and my mother has fallen in love with him after she saw how many of his books we were reading.)
Good fantasy
Incredible world-building. Gives off a steam-punk vibe. Good read!
Bravo!
Well worth every minute reading. A full flavor movie-in-the-head read. Hope there will be a sequel!