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A review by bookph1le
The Starless Crown by James Rollins
4.0
I'm very picky about fantasy novels. Very, very picky. So imagine my delight when I found myself immediately immersed in this novel, and remaining so until the very end. Some minor spoilers to follow.
My one critique of it is the characterization isn't as strong as I would like. Though I don't think the characters are necessarily stereotypical, there is some strong typing and some stereotypes prevalent here. Jace, because he is fat, is assumed to be slovenly and stupid, and the women are uniformly sexy and hot--except maybe Xan, who's old and, therefore, fits the mystical old person type quite nicely. As for the others, it was hard to get a feel for their ages, which also contributed to the weaknesses I noticed in the characterization. Nyx reads as very young early in the book, but then she doesn't seem so young after, which left me surprised when late in the book her age is given as fourteen or fifteen. I also seem to recall Kanthe's age being given as seventeen at some point, but he most definitely does not read as a seventeen-year-old, which made his feelings for Nyx seem not only creepy because of the heavy whiff of incest about them, but also because I thought he was much older than her.
However, the real draw of the book is in its plot. I usually prefer my books a little more character-driven, but Rollins is just so good at plot. This book races out of the gate and hardly slows down for more than a moment or two. There is just so much stuff happening here, with action scenes piled on top of action scenes while another two or three burst in to join the party. The deftness with which Rollins does this plotting is admirable. This is a roller coaster ride of a book.
It's also bursting with richness when it comes to the world-building. There are so many interesting creatures populating this world, and the illustrations we get of some of them are a bonus--though I admit I kept picturing the animals Nyx's father raises as looking like a sky bison a la the Avatar universe, so their drawing was a disappointment to me. I also appreciated the settings, which I had no trouble picturing, even though our heroes seem to have no more than a few seconds to appreciate their surroundings at any time, given that they're constantly fleeing from one peril to another. I do wish the book had taken a little more time to develop the settings and the various human cultures more, which also takes my rating down a notch.
Still, all in all I found this a really fast-paced and engrossing read and I'm looking forward to further installments.
My one critique of it is the characterization isn't as strong as I would like. Though I don't think the characters are necessarily stereotypical, there is some strong typing and some stereotypes prevalent here. Jace, because he is fat, is assumed to be slovenly and stupid, and the women are uniformly sexy and hot--except maybe Xan, who's old and, therefore, fits the mystical old person type quite nicely. As for the others, it was hard to get a feel for their ages, which also contributed to the weaknesses I noticed in the characterization. Nyx reads as very young early in the book, but then she doesn't seem so young after, which left me surprised when late in the book her age is given as fourteen or fifteen. I also seem to recall Kanthe's age being given as seventeen at some point, but he most definitely does not read as a seventeen-year-old, which made his feelings for Nyx seem not only creepy because of the heavy whiff of incest about them, but also because I thought he was much older than her.
However, the real draw of the book is in its plot. I usually prefer my books a little more character-driven, but Rollins is just so good at plot. This book races out of the gate and hardly slows down for more than a moment or two. There is just so much stuff happening here, with action scenes piled on top of action scenes while another two or three burst in to join the party. The deftness with which Rollins does this plotting is admirable. This is a roller coaster ride of a book.
It's also bursting with richness when it comes to the world-building. There are so many interesting creatures populating this world, and the illustrations we get of some of them are a bonus--though I admit I kept picturing the animals Nyx's father raises as looking like a sky bison a la the Avatar universe, so their drawing was a disappointment to me. I also appreciated the settings, which I had no trouble picturing, even though our heroes seem to have no more than a few seconds to appreciate their surroundings at any time, given that they're constantly fleeing from one peril to another. I do wish the book had taken a little more time to develop the settings and the various human cultures more, which also takes my rating down a notch.
Still, all in all I found this a really fast-paced and engrossing read and I'm looking forward to further installments.