Review by lalaylinn - Shield of Sparrows

lalaylinn 's review for:

Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry

3.5

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I did enjoy that the author invested in a lot of world building. I feel like most fantasy books suffer from bad (or not enough) world building and Perry wanted to make sure that we felt set in the world. I also enjoyed the monsters and the ambiguous magic system that hasn't really been fully revealed yet. What I struggled with was how long the book was! I've read other books that were this long and the narrative included multiple years of the story. This book was really long (20 hours audio book) and included only a few months of the story. I think a lot could have been cut, especially with visiting the different towns. I did like that Perry tried to trick us and the many plottwists but a few of them fell flat for me as like 10 of the twists were revealed in one scene.
I actually really liked the side characters (Evie was alright... I don't really enjoy small children in books but it was mostly okay) and the romance was fine too. Not world changing though. I really enjoyed how gory it got sometimes! I didn't expect it and it set itself apart from other books in the genre by going in such gory detail

Still, the book was interesting and captivating enough that I was able to stick with it even though it was very long. Will most likely read the next book.

Content Warnings