Review: The Starless Crown

The Starless Crown by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While James Rollins is still going to have a new Sigma Force novel coming out in the next few months, he's starting off 2022 with a pretty big bang of a fantasy novel, set in a world of his own design and following an ensemble of characters across all the strata of class you can imagine as they struggle to stave off an impending apocalypse. To the best of my knowledge (and the bookseller who was looking this up at Klindt's in The Dalles when I asked if they had any in stock), this is to be the first of a four part series, for which I commend Rollins for continuing to be one of the most inspired, and inspiring, writers in the business.

I'll be honest, though, this book did wind up a tad bit damaged by hype, especially for me as one of the biggest Rollins fans. I think my biggest issue with this book is that Rollins tends to pace the book a bit oddly, especially in its earlier chapters where there are new parts every 20 pages or so, and each one follows a different major character for a while. It makes for some annoying pacing for sure, and it leaves me wishing we could move the storyline a bit faster - especially since some of the ensemble cast are less memorable than others. Me, personally, I think I would've liked it a lot better if Nyx and Kanthe had been the only two prominent protagonists - I thought they were absolutely the most compelling ones.

That said, though, Rollins takes a lot of inspiration from so many of the greatest fantasy and sci-fi writers - he cites Brandon Sanderson (understandable given the book's reliance on well-detailed drawings to populate its bestiary) and N.K. Jemisin (for the unusual geology of this world, and how much that geology influence whole religions in-universe) in particular, but I also feel like he's got some inspo from Jay Kristoff (again, the astrophysics of the world being totally out of whack and influential on in-universe religion) and Charlie Jane Anders (that the Urth is tidally locked with one side facing the burning sun at all times while the other side is permanently frozen, and people can only live on a narrow sliver of land in the middle, reminds me strongly of The City in the Middle of the Night in particular), among others. That, plus the intriguing promise of the final chapters and their sudden twists, are what gets me to give this book a 3.5 rounded up to a 4, and hope for even better in the forthcoming sequels.

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