Kate Elliott's "Crown Of Stars"

[Servius Heiner]

I have never herd of this series, until tonight, the reviews are good. Has anyone read them, are they worth the time to read a 7 book series.

[Colleen]

Well. As always with these things, it depends on what you like to read. Have you read and liked A Song of Ice and Fire? Do you like complicated books with a host of hundreds of characters? Do you like books that will take you more than a few days to finish? Do you like it when everything doesn't automatically go smoothly for the main characters? Do you like books that make you wonder - even just a little - who the "good" guys actually are?

Then yes, you should definitely read them. :)

I'm on book 5, and so far, I've adored them. BUT - if any of the things above are going to detract from a story for you, then you should probably give them a miss.

[Servius Heiner]

The deeper the plot, the more characters, the better I always say. I love "Ice and fire" my only quip with the big series is how long it takes for the writer to get it al out, like for instance, hmmm who was suppose to have the latest book out last year, hmmm... thats why I was looking into this series because it is finished.

[Megan]

I'm on the fence for the Crown of Stars books. I think the series started out much stronger than it finished ... and towards the middle, I began to dislike where the author was taking some of my favorite characters.

But .. that's just me.

It's a nicely detailed world, and the first two books I found very enjoyable. I say: give the first one a try. If you don't like it, no biggie. And as long as you use a library rather than spending money on them, all you've lost is time.

As for Martin ... I love his books. I just wish he'd get a move on!

[Shannon]

Kate Elliott's The Crown of Stars series is one of my favourite series. It's plays around in new ways with classic fantasy tropes, and I love Elliott's writing style.

If you want to try one with more of a sci-fi bent, her Jaran books are brilliant. The first is Jaran, followed by The Sword of Heaven, His Conquering Sword (which always gives me an immature snigger), and The Law of Becoming. If you enjoy them maybe you'll move on to The Crown of Stars books, but I read the Jaran books after the other series and she's one of my favourite authors now.

And, as was pointed out, at least the series is complete and you don't have to wait 1 or 2 years to find out what happens! Hate that (yeah I'm looking at you Robert Jordan - oh sorry, that one's not going to work anymore... who else is slow?)

[Servius Heiner]

Well, martin isn't exactly Mr. Speedy Gonzales himself.... If one more author drops dead on me without finishing then that’s it, I'm going over to television where at lest I have no expectations.

[Lasairfiona]

I mostly like the Crown of Stars series though I read it a long time ago and don't remember it all that well. I do remember that it had a lot of characters but it felt downright ethereal in detail compared to Martin. I do remember that it was a fun read and it felt like a lot of other mainstream fantasy books but with more plot.

[Servius Heiner]

The first three books were great. They had some problems with lazy writing, but they were good. Something happened in book four that just took something out of the series. Couple that with Elliot’s lazy writing and the series lost a lot of it’s’ draw (for me). In book four, there were some drastic changes to some solid characters making them not so solid. Book 5… well I really don’t remember Book 5, I only read the series a 1 ½ months ago… not a good sign. Book 6 the Anti-cataclysm, repositions does not equate emotion, you don’t need to repeat the same paragraph for all 40 main characters for me to get it, got it the first time lady. And book 7 was left wide open. In the Authors note she stated that she tried to fit the series into six books but wasn’t able to, truth be told it could have been a 5 book series if she took all the redundancy out. And the only reason I am being this harsh is because in her authors note she said the seventh book was necessary to finish all the character lines, and she didn’t even do that. Even after the epolge there are main characters that are left wide open… If you can’t wrap it up in 7 books… you bit off more then you can chew.