Typically, my biggest complaint with romantasy is that the fantasy elements suffer for the sake of the romance (which is often also not good, but we’ll get to that later), but I was pleasantly surprised with Shield of Sparrows. For this author’s first foray into fantasy, I don’t think she did a bad job. There are some unique magical elements that I haven’t seen in other books. The monsters were interesting and the conflict connected with those monsters kept the momentum going. 

The romance, however, was lackluster. Well, it didn’t lack any lust. That’s about all it had though.

It was a typical “I hate you” to “you’re mine” romantasy romance. Had this been a standalone, that would be fine, but this is a series that I think is being marketed as slow-burn. And maybe it’s just me, but I need the couple to yearn and pine and need each other for the first 75% of the series, not just the first book, for it to be considered a slow-burn.

In general, the book was just ok. It was predictable and too long for how little actually happened. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really good either. I am interested to see where the fantasy elements go so I will likely read the next book when my library gets a copy.