Title: The Dark Feather
Author: Anna Stephens
Publisher: HarperVoyager
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: March 28, 2024
Star Rating: 10/10
Summary
Ixachipan is in flames.
Rebellion rages in every land and across every hill as the Empire of Songs battles to maintain control, but nowhere more fiercely than in the Singing City itself. In the great pyramid at its heart, Shadow Tayan faces the awful consequences of his actions, and their seductive possibilities.
In the city streets, Xessa and Lilla lead their warriors in increasingly desperate battles, their unity riven by betrayal and deception, while far to the north, Whisper Ilandeh discovers the freedom—and obligation—in making her own choices.
But war is fickle, and so are people. Sometimes, the only peace possible is that bought with blood and lies.
And when vengeance sings, the choices made will determine whether the flames of war are fanned—or drowned.
Review
The Dark Feather by Anna Stephens delivers an epic conclusion to one of the best dark fantasy series I’ve read.
This book has ripped out my heart and stomped on it a couple of times, but it also made me feel hope. There is a perfectly struck balance between the horrendous events and those (big and small) moments of gratification and joy.
The characters are absolutely one of the main strengths of this series. They are all incredibly well written and feel totally real. All the characters have depths of motivation and mindset that make their actions not just understandable but entirely reasonable, so that you even empathise or sympathise with the villains. At other times you can feel hate towards the supposed heroes. There are no stereotypes, instead all the characters have a whole range of facets, which meant I ended up rooting for almost all of them at different points in the story. When you find yourself feeling for the obviously wrong people, then you know a writer knows their craft to the bones.
For example, if you follow my reviews, you know how much I usually detest romance. Here, some of the romantic relationships are so integral to the characters that I was totally hooked and fully invested in how things turned out. None of it felt like the artificial drama—the utterly avoidable manufactured conflict that you so often see. Instead, it was just human all the way through. People being believable and credible, doing the best they could in the circumstances. If delivering that kind of authenticity is not a mark of the highest craft, I don’t know what is!
The worldbuilding is superb, and the politics get ever more entangled. The way the cultures, religions, and societies are entwined again illustrated exceptional levels of the writer’s craft. With a lot of books, it feels like there’s a nice two-dimensional background, like the backdrop on a theatre stage. Here it feels utterly three dimensional, as though I just walked right into this world, and could have lifted any stone, or walked around any corner and the world would still have been fully fleshed out in depth and detail.
All in all, this is one emotional rollercoaster of a story, which managed to leave me both hollowed out, and yet somehow also full of hope. How that works? Some kind of magic.
I was utterly satisfied, even though I felt like yelling at the author quite a few times along the way. Some of these decisions really hurt, but they also all feel very organic, and just needed to happen.
It’ll take me a while to fully digest this, as the best stories do!
