A wonderful mix of 'Murderbot' & 'Psalm for the Wild-Built' with a splash of 'The Wild Robot.' I found the beginning to be quite depressing, all the robots just toiling away with no sense of the end of the world...and yet that was the point. By the end, though, it wasn't depressing at all. Uncharles was a perfect, unassuming, accidental savior of humanity. And how was seemingly every line for Uncharles 100% relatable and quotable!? We don't deserve you, Uncharles, even if you do come with a non-zero chance of murder!

This book gets a lot of comparison to The Expanse, and I can kind of see it. However, its less expansive and less gritty. It has a singular plotline with only two character POVs. But I wouldn't say it suffers from those differences. It's space sci-fi, but more of the more accessible variety. Is Cavalon a bit of a Gary Stu, who just happens to have all the right doctorate degrees to save the universe? Perhaps. Is it a little insane that the entire contents of the book takes place in what I think is a little over a day? Maybe. But those things didn't bother me too much. I enjoyed the characters, the ragtag nature of the crew, and the grandiose ambitions of the plot. I'll be continuing this series and I'm interested to see where the story goes in the rest of the trilogy.

This book wasn't really on my radar at all until its release date when it was all over booktok! Between this one and Silver Elite, I was honestly more excited about Silver Elite. But Shield of Sparrows was available from the library first, and so I started there. And while the bubble popped on Silver Elite and it seems to be falling in favor, this one is holding pretty steady in booktok opinion. And I'd have to say I agree, I really enjoyed it. It's nothing groundbreaking, but the worldbuilding was interesting and I'm intrigued to learn more about the monsters and magic system in coming books. Is it just Fourth Wing with monsters instead of dragons? ehhh...there are similarities, but there is enough differences that I wasn't too bothered by it. And honestly, within the romantasy genre the tropes are going to trope and so you're going to end up with some similar structures. Plus, if I liked it once, I'll probably like it again...and I'm giving it four stars, so there ya go! Anyways, fun book, will continue the series!

For the most part, I'd say I enjoyed the story. The plot was engaging and the world-building was interesting. But I absolutely couldn't get past how strongly I disliked almost every single character. I can get past one or two unlikeable characters in an ensemble cas, but this many?? It was too much. I've heard that they get better as the series continues, and that's not surprising because I'm not sure they can get much worse.