Let's split up! That always works!

 So, Cradle of Ice, the second book in what's allegedly going to be a trilogy, opens with our team of intrepid protagonists splitting up to accomplish different goals. 

Nyx, our major heroine, is accompanied across the Frozen wastes in the dark side of Urth by Shiya, Rhaif, Graylin, and a company of pirates, as well as her friend Jace to discover one of the places where they can get the Urth rotating again. Along the way, they discover The Cradle, an area under the ice that is warm that supports human life. A different race of the hive mind bats live there, but they're under the control of something else.

In the meantime, Prince Kanthe and Freyll have gone to the southern Crown to the Empire of Klashe, where intrigues abound. Kanthe winds up engaged to the Emperor's daughter, who is in love with the leader of the faction that opposes the caste system in place in the Empire. (Not that Kanthe doesn't have his own suitors, the Princess's brother makes his desire failrly clear, as does on of the female assassins running around. 

By the end, the plot has advanced as several goals are met, we have much more information as to what Shiya is (courtesy of a "lesser" bronze being who's been disguised on Klashe for a few centuries), and we have a set up for the next book which suggests either it's probably going to be rushed to a conclusion or expanded into 5 books. (Between the private war between Kanthe and his Twin brother, who now rules the Northern kingdom, the fact that they still have to go to the center of the desert wasteland on the always sun facing side of Urth, and they have to get a third relic from the now rather hostile Northern Kingdom....)

Yeah, I've gotten sucked into this series. I look forward to seeing what the next volume brings.

When the Sky Falls....

 So, on a whim, I checked out James's Rollins's The Starless Crown out of the library, thinking it looked interesting. Which it wound up being, although given the large amount of queer adjacent fiction I've been reading of late, the lack of anything resembling queer folks in here was kind of a shock.(Yeah, I know.)

Anyway, we open on a knight helping a "Pleasure Serf" escape into a swamp. Said serf gives birth to a girl not long after the knight runs off to prevent pursuit of the surf. 

Over the course of the story, we find out the girl survived and was raised by human sized bats, giving her access to certain ancestral memories. Nyx, as she is now known, gets dragged into what looks to be a trilogy, along with her support scribe, Jace, as the King of Halandii wants her in relation to a prophecy that she will destroy the world. Along the way, we get involved in the crown prince trying to kill his brother, a thief who found an alchemical wonder of an animated copper woman, and Nyx's long exiled father. So, yeah, fairly standard for fantasy story lines.

The setting (planet Urth) is a bit more original, although there are hints we're in the old trope of a future Earth. The Urth is tidally locked with the Son, so that one hemisphere is constantly light, and one dark. (Much like the Moon here in the present Earth.) As such, as far as we know, everything mostly lives in "The Crown", towards the area where twilight would be the norm. (The sun doesn't really set, and there are seasons, so axial tilt is still a thing.)  The two major factions present in Halandii (and rumored to have a different integration in the enemy state Klashe) are the Alchymists and the Religious, although there are Orders on both sides who have mastered both mysteries. And as we get hints of throughout the book, it's likely the moon will crash into Urth within a few years of they can't find a way to stop it. 

I enjoyed reading this, even if nothing in here is particularly original. Still fun though.