A review by kaloughl
The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim
5.0
Oooooh I LOVED THIS! This newest installment in Rick Riordan's imprint by debut author Graci Kim is a highly engaging story and is an entirely new spin on the general children-of-gods theme. Riley Oh is an adopted Korean American girl living in LA. Her family is a group of magical healers who are one branch of an extensive Korean community that makes their living from magic in plain sight. Riley is non-magical, a saram, and she yearns to be a true Gom (healer) and even has all her incantations memorized. When her sister Hattie offer to perform a super off-limits power sharing spell, Riley readily agrees but their experimentation goes wrong and reveals devastating secrets and a longtime conspiracy. Together with her best friend Emmett and other friends along the way, Riley must race against the clock to fix her errors and help save her community from destruction.
Kim has established a wonderful magical world that is able to live in plain sight within real world; their meeting place is disguised within an H-mart, their library in a laundromat, and their school in a karaoke bar. The branches of this Korean clan are all gifted magical abilities from their six patron goddesses and the children must perform an initiation on their 13th birthday. There are the typical Riordan-like animated objects like a scooter that acts like a pet and doors that must be complimented which are cute. We also have a good deal of the teenage snark though it ebbs and flows throughout the novel and reaches a very manageable level by the end. The adventures within this magical world though very Percy Jackson-esque also reminds me a lot of Harry Potter because of the interaction with the non-magic world (lots of forgetting infusions and things hidden in plain sight). There was also unraveling of a prophecy tied to the end of the world which is so HP-like.
I was enthralled by this book and am gutted that I have to wait a year for the next one! It's perfect for the Percy Jackson and other Rick Riordan imprint fans as well as Potterheads, those that like Amari and the Night Brothers, and generally enjoy secret magic in the real world!
Kim has established a wonderful magical world that is able to live in plain sight within real world; their meeting place is disguised within an H-mart, their library in a laundromat, and their school in a karaoke bar. The branches of this Korean clan are all gifted magical abilities from their six patron goddesses and the children must perform an initiation on their 13th birthday. There are the typical Riordan-like animated objects like a scooter that acts like a pet and doors that must be complimented which are cute. We also have a good deal of the teenage snark though it ebbs and flows throughout the novel and reaches a very manageable level by the end. The adventures within this magical world though very Percy Jackson-esque also reminds me a lot of Harry Potter because of the interaction with the non-magic world (lots of forgetting infusions and things hidden in plain sight). There was also unraveling of a prophecy tied to the end of the world which is so HP-like.
I was enthralled by this book and am gutted that I have to wait a year for the next one! It's perfect for the Percy Jackson and other Rick Riordan imprint fans as well as Potterheads, those that like Amari and the Night Brothers, and generally enjoy secret magic in the real world!