Books of the Series

There are seven books in the Crown of Stars series:


 * 1) King's Dragon (1997)
 * 2) Prince of Dogs (1998)
 * 3) The Burning Stone (1999)
 * 4) Child of Flame (2000)
 * 5) The Gathering Storm (2003)
 * 6) In The Ruins (2005)
 * 7) Crown of Stars (2006)

Number of Books
The author, Kate Elliott, originally intended for the series to span only three books, with a second trilogy to follow.

Additionally, in the author's note of "The Gathering Storm", Elliott wrote"To my readers--thank you for waiting. I'm sorry it took so long but it proved to be a lot more complicated to write than even I thought it would be. The sixth and final volume will be titled 'Crown of Stars'."Further, in the author's note of "In The Ruins", Elliott wrote"In the two years it took me to write the final volume, I considered only the needs of the characters and the story in order to write as strong an ending as possible to Crown of Stars. I am satisfied that I did my best and, as much as I could, achieved the ending I envisioned.""However, at approximately 430,000 words, the manuscript I turned in to my publishers was simply too long to bind as a single volume. I was left with a choice. I could cut several hundred pages out of the book--and weaken the end of the series by leaving plot threads and characters' fates unresolved--or I could split the manuscript into two volumes, each of which would run about as long as Prince of Dogs.""I spent a lot of time agonizing over length, wondering whether any book needs to be this long. In the end, however, I couldn't see a way to make the cuts without losing a significant amount of the story's impact, so I chose to make a split in order to preserve the story. This means that Crown of Stars will be published in seven volumes, rather than six.""In retrospect, I note that the number 'seven' echoes the mage's ladder, so perhaps in some way this was inevitable."