Review--Rites of the Starling by Devney Perry

 

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.

Well,  I finally finished Deveny Perry's Rites of the Starling! I did enjoy it, but perhaps it was a touch slow. It did not help that work was super busy and that my weekends were jammed packed with to-dos, I essentially had no time to myself to just read, hence why it took an exceedingly long time to read. But as always, I just powered through little by little, although the head cold that popped into existence during the home stretch was most aggravating indeed!

We enter into this story picking up on the trails that were left behind. Ransom is MIA and separated from Odessa and Evie who went off with Brother Dime who is supposed to be leading them to safety, but Odessa begins to have her doubts. And then in a whirlwind of a surprise we are greeted with a new chapter point of view and let me tell you this threw me. I already have a sketchy memory when it comes to remembering details about all these fantasy novels and nowhere in my notes did I mention this character, so I was assuming she was brand new, and she was!

Caspia and her cousin, Xandra are off on a quest of sorts. They are from a line known as Starlings and will one day go through a ritus and be able to take on the form of an animal. But what Caspia wants more than that, or almost more, is to know what happened to her sister who ran off a long time ago. She's hoping this quest will provide answers or even her sister herself.

This is definitely a book with a lot of travel. Odessa and Evie are traveling clear across the continent to return to Odessa's home land and on her own journey, Caspia is also traveling wide and far and meets a "handsome stranger" along the way as well. It almost feels like the making of two separate stories, but I figured Perry would eventually show us the connection and it does come, my friends, so hang in there (if you haven't read this yet, you've probably already read this, I am super slow to get to new releases and then actually read them when I am reading them!).

I'll admit that this book does run the "middle" vibe as I believe this series is meant to be a trilogy. The last handful of pages where the "action" was all at. And by action, I mean answers and connections. These last few pages are what we were aiming towards all along and it's tough to say if it was worth it or not. Again, sketchy memory of the first book and I must have skipped over things that I thought weren't "key" that still got mentioned in this one, but there was enough context that I was able to get a vague idea.

There was only scattered bits of romance in this one. Odessa and Ransom are largely separated for most of the novel, but they do eventually reunite. Then of course, we have romantic tension with Caspia and her new beau but that runs with treacherous secrets as well on both party's part.

Our ending was mild to say the least, but it's the kind of mild I call the calm before the storm. We learned a lot in these last few pages and the ending is the characters dealing with what they now know. There's a lot to come on the horizon with this grand finale on the way, and I cannot wait to see what happens next for sure!

Overall Rating 4/5 stars