The Starless crown by James Rollins – book review

I follow James Rollins regularly for he is one author who publishes a book per year - specifically on sigma series. Not sure if he is prolific across other genres as well but sigma series is my favorite for its mind-boggling premises and pacy presentation. I was attracted by the title of this one and when I saw the author as Rollins was under the impression that it might’ve been ghost written or co-written by someone who is leveraging on the fame of Rollins. But apparently this is completely a work of Rollins and to be honest after reading the book the initial doubt still recurs strongly – was it really written by Rollins?!! Not just the theme but the language and presentation every single aspect that is a trademark of his other books are completely missing. Language, of course, is different because of the genre and the way in which it has been presented, but the simplistic approach and straight forward story telling via dialogues was majorly missing in this book.

At over 600 pages this is by far the biggest of his books that I’ve read and even halfway through, it was quite evident that this wouldn’t be a stand alone one and may possibly be part of a series which was confirmed in the ending. The biggest confusion I’ve is on the period in which the story is set – is it way back in the past or way ahead in the future!! He describes about animals that resemble saber toothed tiger, wooly mammoth inspired bulls, Game of Thrones inspired Wolves and many other such animals. In fact, the under current all throughout is heavily inspired by Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and in some sections even Mathew Reilly. The author has honestly given due credit in the acknowledgement section by listing all these authors as his inspiration behind this book. But what prompted him to butcher the language, supposedly spoken by the characters of that era, beats me. “Mayhap” instead of “Perhaps” is one such example for rest of the other words didn’t really register. In the pretext of presenting something like LOTR characters, every single one of them have been weirdly named and despite the same characters repeating throughout the book, it is quite difficult to remember. The heroine or the lead character of the book, luckily is spared of that nonsense and is named Nyx.

It's her story that takes the book forward, right from her introduction as a blind girl, studying in a school like Hogwarts from Harry Potter, living in a family resembling the Hobbits from LOTR, getting bullied like Bran Stark from Game of Thrones, only to be saved by a bat (who are addressed as Myr in the book!!). Just like the dragons in Game of Thrones, bats play a big role in this book and are like siblings for the heroine. She is accompanied by a guy who is downright loyal to the girl, possibly harboring Idhayam Murali like secret romantic feelings for her. But considering she is a 14-year-old, the author may possibly introduce such scenes on subsequent books!! There is a king who is supposedly benevolent and violent at the same time, ruling over a realm called Crown!! As per a prophecy, the girl would cause the destruction of not just his regime but also the world as they know it is the reason why everyone is chasing the poor girl, who herself is confused by her “visions” which gets restored after a poisonous attack by a bat. There are 2 potential heirs to the crown, one of whom is already favored by the king to succeed him whereas his poor twin is set aside as outcast. The favored twin, obviously the evil one, decides to do away with his only potential threat to the throne and attempts to assassinate his brother who is already set on a wild goose mission by the king to kill all those bats whose poison can be leveraged as a weapon and also to bring the girl (Nyx). There is a substory of Nyx’s origin whose mother is killed by the king’s men and her father banished by the king to some faraway place as a mean to avoid the prophecy. There is also a bronze girl who is seen as a potential weapon (ithana weapon vachu yaar kooda sanda poda poraangannu book poora thediten..cleara sollala..maybe in next part!!). All of them along with one fancy tribe people reach a mountain like place, resembling StoneHenge and find that for the world to survive its doom, the world has to be destroyed!!! Sathiyama athaan solraanga!! Apparently, the moon is going to crash land on Urth (Earth I guess) and to prevent that from happening world as it exists has to be destroyed. Idhukaga they go on a quest to a place resembling Antartica from where the second part of the book begins. Typical to such novels there is a climax fight between the twins where the evil brother suffers a wound chopping away half his face (inspired by Star Wars), fueling his rage even more to destroy his brother. So, the evil party might potentially chase the good guys (!) in Antartica in the next book which is titled “Cradle of Ice”. 

One good thing about the book is, you can hop-skip-jump across all those paragraphs which are filled with crazily butchered words trying to explain the setting and can still make out the story and follow its progress. I am already on to book two and quite interested to see how many more “inspirations” are there in it! Will keep you posted 😊