The Last Fallen Star

Graci Kim's The Last Fallen Star is a fantasy for 9 year olds about a girl with no magic at all, born into a family of witches who heal.

What happens

Riley Oh's family are Gom, a Korean clan descended from the Cave Bear Goddess, and healing is what they do for a living. Her mum and dad run a clinic. Her sister Hattie turns thirteen in two days and will be initiated in front of hundreds of people from five clans, after which she can wear her Gi and cast spells with no grown-up watching.

Riley was adopted. She's saram, which means no magic whatsoever, and she'll be thirteen in a month with nothing to show for it.

She's memorised healing spells she'll never be allowed to use. She knows Hattie's vows better than Hattie does, and prompts her through them.

Then their mum lets something slip. There is a spell for sharing magic with a saram. It's dangerous, it wouldn't be permanent, and she shuts the book with a thud and refuses to say another word about it.

Hattie, who is not the cautious one, decides they're finding that spell and casting it at her own initiation. Riley, who breaks out in hives at the thought of breaking a rule, goes along with it. What could possibly go wrong?

Riley narrates the whole thing and she's wonderful company. She confides in you like a friend, she jokes about her own feelings, and she cries at absolutely everything and knows it. Her best friend calls it her leaky bladder eyeball problem, which tells you the register exactly.

The world is packed with specifics, from the glass Gi charms that glow a different colour for each clan to the tornado fries at the Korean supermarket. None of it is explained dutifully. It's just how life is for Riley.

What makes it good is the feeling underneath. Riley loves her family and still doesn't feel like one of them, and the book never pretends those two things cancel out. A stranger assumes the Ohs only have one daughter, and she smiles her well-rehearsed fake smile.

One note. The register is American and Riley is nearly thirteen, so this reads at the older end of the shelf. A confident nine year old will be fine. A newer reader might want it read with them.

What to read next

For where it all goes next, The Last Fallen Moon carries on into the Spiritrealm, which is where the dead live, with monsters and dark underwater worlds waiting.