Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: Red Tower Books

Genre: Romantasy

Tags: Fantasy, Romance, Monsters, Action, Bloodshed

Length: 639 Kindle Pages 

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon, Devney Perry 

Blurb:

A TREATY SEALED IN MAGIC. A FATE BORN OF MONSTERS. A LOVE FORETOLD BY LEGEND.

The gods sent monsters to the five kingdoms to remind mortals they must kneel.

I’ve spent my life kneeling to their will and to my father’s. As a princess, my only duty is to wear the crown and obey the king.

I was never meant to rule. Never meant to fight. And I was never supposed to be the daughter who sealed an ancient treaty with her own blood.

But that changed the fateful day I stepped into my father’s throne room. The day a legendary monster hunter sailed to our shores. The day a prince ruined my life.

Now I’m crossing treacherous lands beside a warrior who despises me as much as I despise him? bound to a future I didn’t choose and a husband I barely know.

Everyone wants me to be something I’m not a queen, a spy, a sacrifice.

But what if I refused the role chosen for me? What if I made my own rules? What if there’s power in being underestimated?

And what if for the first time I reached for it?

Shield of Sparrows is a slow-burn, high-stakes romantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, where enemies become lovers, monsters stalk a cursed realm, and a forgotten princess finds the strength to tear off her crown and become the warrior she was never meant to be.

Review: 

“You have always been my queen.” 

I’m very glad I took a gamble on this book because Devney Perry is a new-to-me author. I mostly pay for my own books and I’m time strapped so I have little time to read let alone review. I’m always happy when I manage to choose well. I chose well with Shield of Sparrows. 

Princess Odessa Cross: Because the book is from her POV, I’ll chat a lot about her. She showed initial promise, I loved the cliff diving, the small rebellion it represented. She’s betrothed to the general of her father’s army, Banner – worst name ever – but there’s no love. It’s an arranged marriage that suits her father – got to keep B@^^*r loyal, sorry not sorry, I refuse to spell that name out again. She accepts it because it’s the thing to do. While Odessa is a princess, she’s learnt to people-please. She lives in her half-sister Mae’s shadow. It’s been her adaptive skill to survive in a family that doesn’t consult, value, or choose her after her mother died. Her biological father and stepmother both favour Mae. But her stepmother takes her frustrated unhappiness out on Odessa.

Margot doesn’t like Odessa’s red hair, it’s like her biological mother’s. Okay, Odessa dyes it brunette. She can’t seem to live up to her father’s standards. Okay, Odessa tries harder or casts a smaller shadow. Things are kept from her. Okay, need to know basis and clearly she doesn’t need to know. Until, that is, she’s called into a meeting room with her family when the Turan delegation, complete with her father’s Voster – Brother Dime – who creeps her out, tell her, ‘hey gurl, sorry about no notice, forget B@^^*r, you’re marrying Prince Zavier now. Sure, he was meant to marry Mae, we’ve prepped her for eons to that end. Don’t let that bother you, hon. You’ll be a Turan queen, bride prize and all. So cool, right?’  Basically, the Turan’s pull a last minute switcheroo on the original deal and her family goes along with it. Sneakily. 

A blood oath is signed and sealed and the deal is done. She is the new, completely unprepared, completely untrained Sparrow, marrying the heir to the Turan throne, a country known for it’s rough terrain, secrecy, staunch people, and monsters. She now has to help keep five kingdoms in Calandra together via this marriage. It’s a time-honoured way of binding kingdoms to one another, theoretically making them stronger, and it’s specifically in line with every impending crux migration, which wipes out thousands across the five kingdoms when it occurs. Got to tell you, they’re god-awful things, the crux. ‘Oh, and before you leave Odessa, daddy has an extra spicy Plan B for you, gurl. You’ll loooovvvee it!’

Time to whip out the box breathing, O- 

Father commanded. “Repeat your orders.”
I swallowed hard. “I am to find the way to Allesaria. Then I’m to learn about the Guardian’s powers. And if I have the chance, you want me to kill him.”
Another person.
He was asking me to take a life.
“Yes,” father’s relief was palpable. “You can do this. You must do this. Then I will bring you home.”

Say what?! Nice plan, dad. A carrot that’s dangled, coming back to Quentis is contingent upon his tactically and physically untrained daughter marrying someone she doesn’t know from a dangerous land, spying, and having to kill someone who is called the Guardian. Love that for her. Shitty family’s shitty. 

Turah is different to Quentis. It’s more rugged. It’s breathtaking or overwhelming, depending on your viewpoint. It’s mountainous with forests, certainly not easy to traverse, and there is plenty of serious danger lurking in the shape of various monsters. There’s marroweeels, in the sea, which Odessa gets up close and personal with on her way across the Krisenth Crossing. Then there’s the grizzur, bariwolves, tarkin, and no one can forget the crux migration that literally everyone fears the most. This marriage, this blood oath of the Quentis Sparrow and the Turan prince, is supposedly to do with the crux migration, but where there is power, people don’t play nice. The married pair can’t kill one another because of the blood oath, but that doesn’t mean other people can’t. Her father is hyper-fixated on Allesaria’s location. Turah’s King Ramsay is busy organising his own separate militia. There’s more going on than an oathed marriage and the crux migration.  

It takes a while for Odessa to hit her straps, she’s the quintessential fantasy/romantasy nerdy girl who reads books but now finds herself in a situation she never imagined. If that isn’t difficult enough, finding books to read in Turah is ridiculous because the king’s made a sport out of turning up to towns unannounced, burning books and libraries to ashes. Why would he do that? Good question. Like a lot of other questions. Which Odessa asks not only herself, but others. Often. This book is written around questions. Given that the Turan’s play things v e r y close to their chest, her own family have kept her in the dark as well, it’s understandable.

No matter how I dressed, how I pretended, I was not a Turan. But was I still a Quentin? Did anyone really claim me as theirs? Or was I like this boat, adrift between kingdoms?

So, questions… and having to learn how to handle some daggers. If you ever find yourself swept into a romantasy world, my fellow readers, you have to have Marilyn Monroe on high rotation in your head singing “diamonds daggers are a girl’s best friend.” While it starts out rough, Odessa has quite a lot of growth by the end of Shield of Sparrows. Hang in there if you’re not feeling Odessa at first. She starts with no clue about what’s going on and it understandably takes her time to gain her feet. The fact that no one in Turah trusts easily doesn’t help. A lot of information is held by few. While she’s there with daddy’s Plan B, to spy and find a way into Allesaria, not one single person will talk about the capital. They deflect and distract. Also, no maps are allowed in Turah. She starts to believe there is no such place as Allesaria. That the Turan’s have made it up as a strategic ruse. As for her father wanting her to kill the Guardian, well, good luck with that, he is one hell of a fighter, a beast, and as guarded as all fuck. Never going to happen.

Maybe those rumors about the Guardian were true. Maybe he was the God of Death.

Everywhere they go in Turah, and they travel a lot, people revere the Guardian. He has mythical status. I found him a tad annoying at the beginning but he goes from smirking to smoking. I loved his loyalty and I loved the way he would constantly call Odessa “my queen.” Which she hates, by the way. He also makes sure she gets training with the daggers, as does Tallia, one of the rangers.   

There are plenty of secondary characters in this book. They exist in the different towns they visit, and every one of them has a unique voice and story. Meanwhile, Odessa grabs onto skerrick’s of information from people who know how to hide a secret like their life depends on it. I liked the majority of these characters, including little Evie and Faze, the baby tarkin Odessa adopts through chance and kindness.   

Most frightening for the people who live in the forest towns of Turah, the monsters have become more and more organised and urgent of late. Where most were solitary, and attacks weren’t as frequent, now they are out in packs, attacking more often. It’s like they’re after something or someone.  Some of them bleed green blood. There is a blight – Lyssa – that is infecting the monsters. That’s also a tightly held secret by those who know. Most Turans don’t. Odessa works it out, though.  

“Now what?” I asked.
“Nothing has changed, Cross. The goal is the same. Kill the monsters. Find the source.”
“And a cure.”
He sighed. “There is no cure.”

The Guardian claims there is no cure for Lyssa but Odessa believes there is and the truth lies in Allesaria – if she can ever find it. She believes the Voster are clustered there, they’re both enigmatic enough, that their magic is involved in Lyssa somehow. This arc is really solid. There is a lot of action around the various monsters, bloodshed as well. The author doesn’t shy away from graphic gore and some violence. This can involve children and fantasy animals. I strongly advise that you know your triggers. Lots of world is being built around the MCs and the primary secondaries. Including resilience. Shifting out of a bubble. Friendship and family. How that looks. How we sometimes see what we want to because we haven’t had our eyes opened. Yet. And, of course, there is also the romance. 

The Romance: I loved the romance. The book will be ruined if I go into detail about the love interest. I don’t want to do that. I’ve tried to be as obtuse as possible about the primary romance arc. I will say that it’s absolutely a slow burn. It’s somewhere past the 80% + mark before things truly hit anything resembling sex between Odessa and the future king. When they can manage it, they do smoke it up together. It’s not too much. It perfectly fits within the story being told. It’s well written and very connected and intimate. Perry understands series writing in regards to romance, connection, and sex.       

There is no love triangle in the book. That might cross your mind for a while. It crossed my mind for a few seconds. Once again, not a thing.

I’m completely invested in this world. I hope the author can continue to keep it all authentic moving through the series.

I found the storytelling highly addictive once I had buy in. The characters evolve. I do love them. The world was amazing as well 

I can’t wait for the next series book to come out. Shield of Sparrows is one of my favourite books of 2025. It’s 5 Star reading for me.