A thousand times a day.
Rites of the Starling
Devney Perry
Shield of Sparrows, book two
Hardcover, 500 pages
Published April 7, 2026
ISBN 9781682816752
Calandra’s five kingdoms are on the verge of destruction. The crux migration is coming. And in the wake of a devastating attack, I’ve been separated from the man who owns my heart.
I’m lost. Terrified. Homesick. Hunted by monsters, driven to exhaustion, and kidnapped by a powerful priest, the only thing keeping me going is the little girl counting on me to keep her safe. It’s my turn to become the Guardian.
Our lives change one fateful night. A night of death. A night of monsters. A night of truths. That night, I learn the real meaning of fear—and the depth of my own strength.
Everyone wants me to be something I’m not—a queen, a spy, a sacrifice. But what if I embrace my crown? What if the secrets I uncover save our realm?
What if my sacrifice means salvation for the man I love?
For too long, I’ve feared the monsters we make.
It’s time to discover the monster within.
The long-awaited sequel to my first five-star read of 2025.
And yet...
If 'This could have been an email' was a book.
Caspia. A Starling. A new character with visions of her sister's murder by a silver-eyed male.
Murdered by the Guardian.
By Ransom. Who is currently searching for his wife.
Odessa, the Sparrow.
I could see it barely thirty pages in... I was going to need a chart.
At thirty percent in, I was bored. I was so, so bored.
Then, finally, at forty-five percent... the return of Ransom!
Thank the stars, the Eight, the Divine, the Shades even. Because I despised Andreas. He is so dull. So nice and so dull. One of those characters that will do anything you ask and believe anything you say. I think he'll wind up being my most loathed character of 2026.
::Spoilers imminent::
I was so rage-inducing bored with that side story. And even when things started to click about how they fit into the plot, what with Caspia having visions and likely being in the past and therefore would potentially be Odessa's mother... leaving Andreas to potentially be her father...
I had been curious why we never learned the Golden King's name while reading the first book.
Then he had disdain for the golden castle which was a feeling Odessa attributed to her father.
And he lit up when he saw Odessa's red hair only to immediately shut down...
Yeah, thankful when the signs clicked into place because I needed *something* to make them tolerable.
I loved Ransom. May he never be left out of the story for so long ever again.
But in the end, I would attest that this is a highly skippable sequel. Very little progress is made. While the first book revealed the origins of Lyssa, this.. urgh... this revealed the origins of the monsters that may not even be monsters if not for magic. Corrupted magic? Basically, power dependent religious fanatics are to blame. And there's a long forgotten land that holds Odessa's ancestors.
Again, all of it could have been an email. A few chapters stretched and stretched and stretched again to fill a five hundred page sequel.
Oof.
3 out of 5 stars.
Available in ebook | hardcover | audiobook
Previously in the series:
2026/16