Lit Witches: A Fantasy Book Podcast
Is this the perfect romantasy sequel? Unpacking 'Rites of the Starling' by Devney Perry
27 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What themes are explored in 'Rites of the Starling'?
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I don't know, there were just so many reveals and I just remember these lines sticking in my brain and I think this has that same quality of just there's this ache that you feel about what's going to happen and it makes you want to just... You need book three now, which is not right now, but we will wait.
It needs to have yearning, it needs to have some sort of secrets, it has to have a reveal, but also some sort of ramification for the love story, which I guess it had it all, really. It had it all. So it delivered in the end.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely.
Hello and a very warm welcome to Lit Witches, the podcast for fantasy readers, writers and all things in between. I'm your host Adelaide Jensen and today I'm joined by Izzy Wero and Sinead Eustace and welcome back to the podcast you two.
Hello, it's nice to be back.
It's so good to be back every week and today we're going to be talking about sequels and we'll be focusing on Rites of the Starling which is the sequel to Shield of Sparrows, a fantasy series with myth
magic and monsters all of our favorite things but before we get into that i'm going to start with a little opening question what do you think has been the best ever character redemption arc in a story
Oh, that's a big question. It is a big question. You know when like everything you've ever read just goes out of your brain? Yes.
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Chapter 2: How do character redemption arcs enhance fantasy sequels?
And yeah, I think it just gives them space for arcs like this, which you don't get in a standalone book.
Well, you need to understand their motivations and their motivations need to be subject to change when given the right pressure from outside. That's what makes really rich characters and rich stories. Those are very good answers. Thank you. Good questions. Yeah. Let's get chatting about sequels and about Rites of the Starling.
So throughout this episode, there will be some spoilers for Shield of Sparrows, obviously, because we're talking about book two, and some very light spoilers for Rites of the Starling. But the majority of that will be kept in the After Dark section. So at some point we will signal that if you do not want spoilers, do not listen to the After Dark.
But we will make a note in the show notes so you know when to avoid that segment. Let's get started. But before we talk specifically about this book, let's talk about sequels generally. What do you think makes a really good fantasy sequel?
Oh. That's a great question. I love, personally, and this could be controversial, a fantasy sequel where the main characters are split up. I love when they're both or all, it could be more than two, on different side journeys before they have to come back together. I don't know if that's controversial, but...
Yeah, I guess when you're really rooting for the relationship, maybe it is a bit controversial because you're like, oh, I just spent a whole book wanting these characters to be together and now they're apart. But I think I agree. I think a sequel, like the thing you want out of it is to build on the first book and you want it to kind of expand the world. You don't kind of want to repeat.
So often, especially, I mean, if you're thinking about sort of a romance, if the characters are more or less together by the end of the first book, where's the tension in the second book? And like a way to create that is often to separate them or to introduce new characters or kind of explore new relationships
facets of the world to get that tension and that compulsion to finish the book in there. So I think that would be my answer, yeah.
I love when the world, sorry to interrupt you, I love when the world is expanded. Like when we get to see little pockets of things that they've talked about in book one and you're like, oh yes, now we get to see that.
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Chapter 3: What makes a successful fantasy sequel?
Like there seems to be different magical and kind of biological rules on the different continents.
It was almost like a cold open to a whole new series. Yeah. Yeah.
Sorry, cold open. I love that term. It was a cold open.
We use it for this podcast. Yes, in my vocab now. And so I think that added a really great element to the story as well because I was a bit like, oh, where's this going? Like I can't immediately see what's going to happen here. And obviously you've got two different points of view.
They're on these two different journeys kind of seemingly on a similar trajectory but potentially going different places and the whole time you're like, where's this going? And it also introduces Caspia and Andreas who is sort of immediately established as her love story. Did you like having another romance? Yes.
I did. It's so nice. He was so sweet, just like in his little cabin in the woods when they first run into each other. This is all very early as well. But yeah, I think, again, that's another way around because we do have the separated love interests, as we talked about as a common kind of trope, which we do have in this book. But I think another way to keep that.
Because this is romanticism, so I think to keep that element of it is to introduce a new love story. And it was interesting as well to kind of see it not as a second love interest. I think the authors actually said there is no second love interest in terms of Odessa and Ransom. Like, don't worry about that. They have bigger problems. Thank God. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think introducing a new love story that you could root for was just so lovely.
I did. I did like this, but I also thought it was unraveling too quickly. But I understand that Daphne Perry probably had the limitations of words, time, chapters. But I was just like, oh, she learnt this whole new language off page. And she talked about how they were bonding off page. And I was like, oh, I wanted to see that because that would have made me love them more.
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Chapter 4: How can writers avoid the second book slump?
It's that thing again about like what is monstrousness because, you know, everyone who sees him aside from Odessa and Evie and Ransom and everyone who knows him are like, he's a monster. Like you've got to get rid of him. It's like, well, what makes the monsters? He hasn't hurt anyone. He loves Evie. He loves Odessa.
But then there are these little moments where you're like, is something going to go wrong? I don't know.
It's that nature nurture thing again with monsters.
How much of it is humans? And how much of it is made? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God.
Well, it's such an interesting general discussion of monsters and how they are made in these books. But for now, we're going to wrap up the general discussion and we're going to go after dark and we're going to talk about spoilers. So if you do not want spoilers, do not listen to this part. All right, now. The big reveal. Let's get into it. Several big reveals of this book.
But one of the main ones is that Odessa and Caspia's timelines are at different times, which is a classic way to trick people.
I was that old.
The reveal is that Caspia and Andreas are Odessa's parents. How did we feel about this? Did you guess that the timelines were at different points of time? Yes. You were nodding very smugly.
Yes. There was those little bits of information, and I tell you when it clicked, I was just like... Because, like, Andreas was talking about how his dad was, you know, spending money on things and, like, blah, blah, blah. But then Odessa was talking about, like, the very gilded palace and how her grandfather... And I was just like, wait a minute. Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
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