Kait Ballenger, Author of Original Sinner, Reviews Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry
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Interview Transcript
J. G. Gates
Hi and welcome to Authors Review Books where your favorite authors share the books they love. I am bestselling author J.G. Gates, author of over a dozen books, and most recently, you may have heard of Dragons and Aces. It's an enemies-to-lovers story about a badass dragon rider and dashing biplane pilot from enemy nations, which I wrote. It has banter, has spice, and has a morally gray male main character. So if you loved Fourth Wing, then this one might be your next favorite dragon read. So check it out!
Our featured new release of the day is Kingdom of Tomorrow by Gina Showalter. 20-year-old Arden Roosa has only ever known Ourland, a fractured world stitched together with fallen gods, heavenly artifacts, and a strange madness that haunts the night, turning innocents into killers. When she discovers a mysterious book written about her life, she's forced into Fort Bala Royal Academy, where she's paired with the ruthless High Prince Cyrus Dolian. Between combat training, panic attacks, and an invitation to the elusive Tome Society, a secretive group guarding a library of prophetic books, Arden realizes her entire destiny might be written long before she has a chance to choose it herself. The book is out now.
And now let's welcome our guest. Kait Ballinger is an award-winning author of dark romantasy and paranormal romance. She is obsessed with tales of morally gray, sometimes villainous heroes and can't resist a spicy redemption arc. When Kait's not busy writing kinky paranormal fantasy, she can usually be found with her nose buried in someone else's naughty books. She lives in Florida's Bible Belt with her husband and two adorable sons and will gladly use that belt to whip you. I love that. Kait, welcome.
Kait Ballenger
Thanks so much for having me.
J. G. Gates
Awesome. And this is not our first time meeting, right? We were in school together. We were in MFA program together, right?
Kait Ballenger
Yes, yeah, yeah, in all transparency, we are already friends.
J. G. Gates
Yes, yes, absolutely. And it's funny. I mean, I think you were published at that time. But I do remember reading your work in workshops and stuff and just being like: no notes, Kait's fantastic. So yeah, yeah.
Kait Ballenger
Thank you. Yeah. That was my early Harlequin days. I was already writing for Harlequin at that period and it's been a long journey since then.
J. G. Gates
Absolutely. Well, you were a phenomenal writer then and are continuing to have tremendous success, which is no surprise to me, but I'm happy to be hanging out with you again. So, I know you have a book that you want to review with us today. But first, I want to give you a chance to talk about some of your books. So let's hear about it.
Kait Ballenger
Thank you. Yeah, so as we already mentioned, I write dark romantasy. So the current series that I'm focusing on is my original Sinner series. And the first book, Original Sinner, came out back in March. And then I just released book two in the series. Wicked Believer came out at the start of this current month that we're recording in. So yeah, the little bit of background about that series is I like to say that it's like Netflix's Lucifer if it had a baby with 50 Shades of Gray. So it's like that show but a little bit spicier is the best way to describe this series. In Original Sinner, Lucifer and the other seven deadly sins are now billionaire celebrities and they live topside in New York City and are kind of controlling the world.
J. G. Gates
Nice.
Kait Ballenger
And our heroine Charlotte is an ex-evangelical running away from her ultra-religious family to New York and she finds herself working for the devil himself, for Lucifer. And romantic chaos ensues from there. It's a fake dating trope, morally grey MMC of course, because he's Lucifer. And yeah, the chaos continues.
J. G. Gates
My gosh, that sounds super duper fun. Yeah, that sounds amazing.
Kait Ballenger
I've had a great time writing this series. It was very much a joy project for me. It was just something fun that I wanted to do. And then like the fact that it's, you know, taken off kind of the way it has has been really great. My readers are very excited for the book three's installment to come out.
J. G. Gates
I bet they are. That's just such a fun thing when you're an author and you have a concept that you're just like, ooh, like I'm gonna have fun with this. Like you can just tell it's gonna be a fun concept. So yeah, absolutely…
Kait Ballenger
Exactly. Sometimes you just have to do projects because there's the joy of it. And that was very much this series. And so the fact that readers are on board with it too has been extra special.
J. G. Gates
That sounds amazing. So awesome. So that's your book. Now, what book are you going to review for us today?
Kait Ballenger
Yeah, so we're going to be talking about Shield of Sparrows by Devne Perry. And this one was going all around BookTok when it first came out. It's a Red Tower title from Entangled Publishing. You know, I read a lot of the big romantasy books that come out and have varying opinions, but this one was just chef's kiss Good. So, yeah, it was an easy choice.
J. G. Gates
This is definitely a book that you're right… flipping through Booktok or wherever, you saw it a lot. It makes you go, hmm, there's gotta be something about this one.
Kait Ballenger
Sometimes I'm on board with the hype and other times more often than not I am not, but this one I was like, no, I see what the hype is about. This one's great.
J. G. Gates
So what's it about? Give us a little breakdown of the plot. Without too many spoilers.
Kait Ballenger
Yeah, not too many spoilers. So Shield of Sparrows starts in a fantasy world that is facing what is essentially called like a migration of these really large, almost like monstrous creatures each year, right? They have issues within these varying fantasy kingdoms of trying to figure out how to protect themselves from the migration, which happens, I want to say it's like every 300 years, like don't quote me on the specifics, and they're about to have another one. And Odessa, the heroine, is the second-born daughter of one of the kings of this kingdom and has spent her whole life kind of being in her elder sister's shadow. So there is a sort of treaty called the Shield of Sparrows that requires these kingdoms to occasionally intermarry in order to keep, the peace among them as they're all cooperating toward this big migration thing that's about to happen. And Odessa has known that her elder sister has been training for this her whole life, right? She's essentially going to be a spy in another kingdom as soon as she's married off. But then when When the Turans, which is the opposing kingdom, basically come to collect her sister, the prince says, uh-uh, I don't want the eldest one. I want her instead. So she's suddenly taken from this life she's known where she's just the second-born sister. She doesn't have a whole ton of pressure on her. She's just had to do everything in service to her family and that elder sister specifically. And then now she's the focus. And it's very much, would say, book one is almost like a travel fantasy, right? Like they're going across kingdoms, monsters are fighting with them, that sort of thing.
On its base level, I was like, okay, the concept was intriguing to me, but I've read a lot of fantasies with that similar setup. But what's really great about this one is just the execution. The writing is really superb. The hero is like chef's kiss good if you like romance and so it's a perfect romantasy. I don't want to give too much away about the romance because there's a bit of a twist at the end, but… you will know that the man, you will know very early in the story that the man she's supposed to marry, the prince, is not who she's going to end up with. And so, yeah, it is really, really good. Lots of slow-burn tension between her and the hero and just really excellent writing.
J. G. Gates
That sounds like a great setup. That sounds like lot of fun. That's what I was gonna ask. You mentioned slow burn. What are some of the tropes that are in there?
Kait Ballenger
We've got arranged marriage, but she doesn't necessarily end up with who you think she's going to end up with because she gets picked by the prince basically to go off and be wed. So we've got arranged marriage. There's definitely an enemies-to-lovers feel between her and the hero because he figures out very soon into her being married off that her father intended for her and her sister to be spies on his kingdom and he's not happy about that. And so there's definite enemies-to-lovers vibes and secrets abound. Everybody's hiding something in this story and that makes it very interesting, especially when you get to the second half and things start to be revealed and you start to see a clearer picture of everything that's going on.
And I would say there's somewhat of like a, I don't want to say ugly duckling trope, but a little bit of that, right? Like she's the younger sister, she's a little bit of a tomboy, has never really been prim and proper princess, right? And now she's going off to this other kingdoms. She doesn't really have any skills. She learns how to defend herself, of course, and ends up, you know, being this knife-wielding warrior. So, there's a little bit of that archetype, which is pretty typical, I would say, in a romantasy, but I think it's really well done here. She's a very relatable heroine, and the story's just a lot of fun, and I'm very excited for when book 2 comes out.
J. G. Gates
Yeah, that sounds amazing. Do you know the date for book two?
Kait Ballenger
I think it was just announced very recently. I want to say it's like sometime in late spring of 2026. So it's not too far off, but I can't remember the title because I just saw it like the other day. It was very recent that they announced it.
J. G. Gates
Okay. I think I saw it too, but yeah, I don't remember off the top of my head. All those nuances sound great, though. You mentioned, of course, romance is a big part of it. How spicy are we talking? Like out of five chili peppers, what are we looking at?
Kait Ballenger
Well, you know, take the caveat that I write what I would consider to be five chili peppers, right? Like, so I'm giving listeners the caveat there. I would say this is about like... maybe a three on the spicy scale out of five because it’s very much a slow burn. There's really only one super spicy scene near the end of the story. It does get somewhat explicit in that one scene, but this is very much a story like if you like lots of pining and tension between the hero and heroine, this is a good one for that. The tension is palpable throughout the whole story, but there's actually not a whole ton of spice to it. I was reading and I was like, when are these two gonna get together? But the payoff is is great. There's so much tension between them that finally when they do, you're like, okay, this is perfect.
J. G. Gates
Right, emphasis on the slow burn there for sure, sounds like. Which character jumped out at you the most, you say?
Kait Ballenger
The Guardian. So The Guardian is the sort of moniker of the hero of the story and he's just a really well-crafted hero. Romantasy readers are gonna love him and go crazy for him because he very much presents as kind of like what I would call an alpha-hole at the beginning of the story. He's kind of a bit of a jerk. We love to hate him, essentially, at the start of the story, but once we get to know him a little bit more, he's actually kind of a bit of a squish, like he's a softy inside, and I loved that slow reveal of his character, but Odessa, too, is also a really standout. I think that it can be hard to write a really relatable romantasy heroine, but she feels very relatable. She's coming from being in her sister's shadow, which I think a lot of female readers in particular can feel if they've had similar family dynamics or varying things… times where they have not been the center stage. And so she's really kind of coming into herself as a heroine, and I think she has a really great overall arc to her journey. I really just liked her character. She was just somebody… like, I would be friends with this heroin, right?
J. G. Gates
Yeah, it sounds like these characters are not just one-note archetypes. Like, they definitely have some layers in there.
Kait Ballenger
Yes, yeah, they have a lot filled out and like, and personally, one of the tropes that I really don't love in a story, and that's not this story at all, is when the heroine like, you know, she takes to battle training and she's automatically like amazing at it, right? And like, and that's not the case here, like Odessa very much struggles and earns every bit of her journey and you see moments where she's really wringing out her emotions to try and become this better version of herself and I felt like that was just really well done.
J. G. Gates
Yeah, that's always nice to see, for sure. That organic character growth.
Kait Ballenger
Yeah, exactly. It felt very organic and very realistic to me. Like, as realistic as you can be in a fantasy romance, right? Like... ⁓
J. G. Gates
Yeah. Where someone goes from being just a princess hanging out all day to like a sword-wielding badass…
Kait Ballenger
Yeah. I also appreciated that I didn't feel like the princess and royalty elements were overly emphasized. I feel like those are kind of subtle. They're present in the beginning of the story for the setup, for sure, but once they go off on the journey, it felt like just two fantasy characters trying to survive this volatile fantasy world.
J. G. Gates
That sounds great. What other books did this remind you of? Like, if somebody loved X and Y book, they're gonna love this one too?
Kait Ballenger
I feel like if you liked Callie Hart's Quicksilver that this would probably be a less spicy version. Those are both high fantasy, romantasy stories where there's a lot of world-building and monsters and varying creatures that are being battled. You've got a grumpy hero who's actually a softy underneath. So I felt like those definitely have a similar vibe. This one is much more of a slow burn and also a little bit faster pace. It's not quite as long as Quicksilver.
J. G. Gates
Gotcha. Okay. And I think you've touched on this in a few different places here. But what would you say made this book stand out from other ones in the genre? It definitely checks a lot of the boxes. But what made you be like: yeah, this one is a little different.
Kait Ballenger
Yeah. I would say the characterization is just really spot on, so that's a big part of it. I feel like these characters are really well fleshed out, and that's something that I care about particularly, both as a writer and a reader. Like, I want to be able to feel like I care about these characters, and these characters are very well written. And also, I just feel like the amount of world-building that went into this book was really impressive because there's never really a time where I feel like the world-building is being spoon-fed to you. It just comes up really organically, but by the end of the story, you're like, I know the customs of these varying kingdoms and that sort of thing. And it just, it really, really unfolded in a very natural way. The writer did just a really excellent job with that.
J. G. Gates
Yeah, you love to see artful world building where at the end you have a view of this whole different world, but it never felt like a chore. It never felt like a history lesson or anything.
Kait Ballenger
Yes, exactly. It never felt like a chore. It never felt like a history lesson, but I felt like everything fell into place and I could understand it all very clearly and very visually imagine this world. And that's a kudos to the writing for sure.
J. G. Gates
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we have to wrap up with, of course, how many stars out of five would you give this book?
Kait Ballenger
Oh, this one I would say I was close… like it's hard for me to give a book five stars unless it's like one of my all-time favorites so I would call this like a 4.5 for me because I really, really enjoyed it, like I was flipping the pages all the way through it's not one of my top ten favorite romances, but it's close. It was very well written.
J. G. Gates
Yeah, I hear you. Five stars is kind of a hard scale actually because between four and five, there's a lot of range.
Kait Ballenger
Yeah! There's so much variation, right? And so I feel like five stars are what I would give books that I would go back and reread over and over again. But this was very close to that. I really loved this. When you're an author, sometimes you can get jaded about the things you're reading, especially when you're reading so voraciously. And so sometimes I enjoy something, but it doesn't really hook me. But this one, I was hooked from the beginning and just kept wanting to flip the pages. Like, I was on deadline at the time I was reading this and I was like… I have to put this book down so I can actually go work on my own book.
J. G. Gates
Well, that's high praise then, right? If you've got a lot of other stuff you need to be doing and it's still sucking you in. That is high praise for sure. Awesome. So there you have it. That is Kait Ballinger's review of Shield of Sparrows. Amazing. Can you tell us, Kait, where can we find you in your books?
Kait Ballenger
Yeah, readers can find me at my website at www.kaitballenger.com and then I am also frequently on Instagram and TikTok, so you can find me there. My handles are just my name and I love to hear from readers. They can sign up for my newsletter. I've got plenty of Original Sinner bonus content on there. So yeah, come hang out with me online.
You can find her on TikTok @kaitballenger and Instagram @kait.ballenger