Book Review: Rites of the Starling by Devney Perry

Okay, witches. We need to talk about Rites of the Starling, because I finished it less than 48 hours after it released, dragged myself out of bed on zero sleep to go be a mom, and I am still not okay. Like, I'm functioning. I'm making lunches. I'm taking the dogs out. The kids are alive and the dogs are fed. But emotionally? I'm wrecked.

Let me start with what wrecked me the most: Caspia and Andreas. I am obsessed with them in a way that should probably concern my therapist. Their love story hit me in that specific, tender part of the chest that only the best fantasy romances can reach. I was sobbing, y'all. Full ugly cry at 2am while both dogs stared at me from the foot of the bed, completely unbothered. No shame.

And now I have to confess something, because this is a judgment-free zone and I trust you all: it took me... a while... to clock that Caspia and Andreas were Odessa's parents. The timelines are not concurrent, and my little goblin brain just did not put it together until the book basically handed me a neon sign. When it finally clicked? I sat there staring at the ceiling for a solid minute. Rereading scenes with fresh eyes. Feeling equal parts delighted and slightly betrayed by my own reading comprehension. If you figured it out early, I don't want to know.

Here's the thing about Calandra, though. We thought we understood it after Shield of Sparrows. We had the map in our heads, the general shape of the magic, the feeling of the world. We had no idea. Perry spent book two quietly dismantling everything we assumed we knew and rebuilding it into something so much bigger and stranger and more alive. The deeper lore kept unfolding in ways I genuinely did not see coming, twist after twist that felt earned rather than cheap, like the whole story had been sitting on top of a secret underground architecture the entire time.

That's the mark of truly excellent world-building, y'all. Not just a place that feels real, but a place that keeps revealing itself. A world with more corners than you expected. Calandra has that in spades, and honestly it's the kind of fictional setting I want to live inside forever, which is inconvenient given that it doesn't exist and I have two kids and two dogs counting on me to be a functional human being.

Which brings me to the one truly devastating piece of information I have to share: we don't get the conclusion until March 9, 2027. I know. I'm not happy about it either. That's basically a year of sitting with all of these feelings, zero resolution, and an entire household that has absolutely no interest in processing fictional grief with me.

If you haven't picked up Rites of the Starling yet, fix that immediately. Clear your schedule, warn your people and your pets, and accept that you will not be sleeping at a normal hour. This series has that specific kind of magic that gets under your skin and stays there, lush and layered and the kind of story you want to press into the hands of everyone you love.

Get your Sparrow merch here to tide you over until March 2027.

Add it to your hoard. You've been warned.