Book Review: The Last Feather by Shameez Patel Papathanasiou

Twenty-two-year-old Cassia's sister is dying, and she doesn't know why. Cassia wakes up in another realm to find her missing best friend, Lucas, who knows how to save her sister.

Lucas is part of a community of Reborns, people who were born on earth and after death, were reborn in this realm with magical abilities. The original beings of the realm, the Firsts, rule over them.

To keep the Reborn numbers manageable, the king of the Firsts releases a curse to cull them. Cassia needs to break the curse before her time runs out and she is trapped there forever.

GENRE: Fiction / Fantasy / Epic

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shameez Patel Papathanasiou was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. She lives there with her husband, child and two cats named Turbo and Charger. During the day she juggles her time between taking care of her daughter and working as a civil engineer where she designs roads and analyses traffic—but at night she writes! And she writes fantasy AND romance.

She considers herself a professional binge-watcher and fangirl. Don’t be surprised should you bump into her dressed as a Hobbit or Lady Loki and should you need anything from her, offer her a choc-chip cookie and her heart is yours forever. ​

She fell in love with fiction, especially fantasy and romance fiction at a young age. Her parents fondly recall receiving her first handwritten story before the age of ten, titled The Treasures of Zombie Island, which surprisingly featured no zombies at all. She has been writing ever since.

Learn more about Shameez at www.shameezwrites.com.

Review & Recommended Listening

The book is listed by the publisher as epic fantasy, but it felt more like NA portal fantasy to me. (In portal fantasy, a person is transported from one world to another by some sort of magic, usually through a specific place or object such as a wardrobe, rabbit hole, or mirror.)

Anyway, if you're a fan of the genre, you just might enjoy this book! There's a whole new world to learn about and explore, an interesting cast, and an especially strong female POC lead. If you have a soft spot for family and found family, you'll have plenty of interactions to like and maybe even characters you want to adopt. If you enjoy some enemies to lovers kind of banter, this will make you grin and snicker in places. If you just want to get lost in a magical world? You've come to the right book. And there's apparently more than one realm, but we probably need the sequel/s to get there?

It's fast paced and easy to read, which is why I think it's more NA than adult epic fantasy to me. There were some parts that annoyed and/or confused me, and I noted some inconsistencies, but they weren't dealbreakers, at least for me. The whole thing also ended quite abruptly, but I suppose it had to be dealt with the way it did. Still, I'm pretty forgiving when I'm satisfied with the book overall, and I am!

My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Recommended Listening: As I mentioned in my open call for books to review, I’ll now be adding a song to my reviews! It’ll be one that either sums up the book for me, what I’d imagine in a trailer were it a movie, something that I associate with the story or one of the characters for whatever reason… or maybe even an original inspired by it 😉

The feather part reminded me of the anime Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, whose soundtrack I absolutely adore — Yuki Kajiura is a fantastic composer and I love everything she's ever done! And with all the song choices from TRC, this somehow came to mind when I thought about music in relation to the book. Perhaps it's the mystical feel of the Selene Realm?