But she’s not viewed as a weak woman – her families respect her intellect and abilities and encourage her to be the best she can be. The MAIN main character Nyx is blown about from found family to found family, and is lucky enough to land with caring people each time.

I am also a huge sucker for any book that incorporates found family. Of course there are extremists who take things too far in both camps and they are showcased in the story as well, but even they play their part in pushing everyone toward the ultimate goal of escaping calamity. They inform each other, and an acceptance of each as a balance on the other makes for not just a believable world but one we might aspire to ourselves. Rollins does an excellent job blending religion and science, to the point that it makes sense to the reader for them to be working together. Rollins takes his time and every movement makes sense, every emotion and decision has its place, all motivations are super clear – just a fancy way of saying I didn’t roll my eyes at anything, which is refreshing! All of out main character groups end up finding each other and working together, and almost as fast as it is formed, their fellowship must break apart to help save the Urth from the great cataclysm of Moonfall (which is what would happen if the Earth’s rotation actually stopped, the Moon would spin closer and closer until it collided with us). Most fantasy novels either have them together from the start, or they SLAM together at the end just by happenstance and it doesn’t feel earned. This is the first book I have read in a long time that brought several different groups of people together for the climax in a satisfying way. The events of this book begin centered around a prophecy, that the old gods will be reborn and destroy the Urth, and everything extends out from there. Different areas of The Crown (the landmass not the kingdom) worship different pantheons, but all know of the old gods that were vanquished by the current ones and buried forever.

It’s also been many millennia since the Earth has been what we know it as today, so society has regressed back into being more of a medieval type society, although science (Alchymy) and religion are studied equally in the places for education. One half of the globe is ice, the other is molten, but one circle gets just enough sun to be habitable. This book takes place on our Earth (Urth) but the globe has stopped spinning. I requested and was granted its DRC via NetGalley (The Cradle of Ice releases February 7th), and once this happened I requested and obtained a copy of The Starless Crown at my local library. When I found The Cradle of Ice (Moon Fall #2) on NetGalley the description pulled me in immediately. Source: Borrowed from the Pasco County Library Systemįind me around the interwebs at my LinkTree!

The starless crown review