The Starless Crown is the first book in the Moonfall series by James Rollins. Nyx is a young blind girl working her way through the tiers at her local school when she finds herself confronted by a bully before narrowly escaping an attack by myr bats that leaves the bully dead and her cured of her blindness. At the same time, practically on the other side of the continent Rhaif is a young thief trying to escape his sentence of forced labor in the mines when he manages to unintentionally find and then run away with a treasure that the shriven, an obscure religious order, seems to desperately want. As they both work on finding out what exactly is actually going on they also find themselves caught up in events beyond their control. The second Prince, Kanthe, is sent to investigate what happened at Nyx’s school and then lead an attack against the bats in retaliation. Him and Nyx end up joining forces when she learns that doing so would instead lead to a massacre by the bats. As Nyx works on figuring out her own mysterious past and how it related to the bats, Kanthe must work on navigating the internal politics of being a member of the royal family.
I want to start out by saying that the cover description for this book was mildly misleading as the characters don’t come together as fast as it implies. At the same time the scope of events in this novel is almost beyond the ability to distill it down into such a short description. This book was just incredible in a lot of ways. The plot was pretty intricate and did a pretty good job of keeping me guessing as to how the two separate storylines would end up being connected which I definitely appreciate. Not many stories actually keep me guessing that much anymore. On top of that the story was really fascinating as it had numerous elements and moving parts that all had to work together and stay on track. It was very well done. I also greatly enjoyed the characters and how distinctly different they all felt. It was incredibly easy to determine who was present at any given point in time. Perhaps the best part and the part I was most impressed by as this is typically the hardest part to achieve, was the world building. I can honestly say that the level of detail about the culture and the world in general that was snuck in throughout the book was great. Most of the time this is left fairly vague but for this book I really got a feel for the world and the culture that these people came from. I was overall pretty impressed with this book and am looking forward to reading the rest of the series. It gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from me.
This is a great example of an adult fantasy novel and one that also has more of a medieval feel to it so if that is your preferred type of story you should consider trying it. I can easily say that it would be worth the consideration. It is intended for an adult audience and while there is not directly explicit content there are adult references and some interesting language so keep that in mind when considering it. In my opinion there is not anything that would restrict it exclusively for adults but I would also suggest only older teens or those sixteen or older should consider it. The book is good though and I enjoyed it a lot so I hope you will consider it. Remember to share your thoughts in the comments if you do decide to try it.