Lightlark

Very intriguing book. I found it because of bookstagram, thought it was interesting, and added it to my TBR list. Then it wouldn't leave my mind and when I found it in Target randomly, I knew I had to get it. I really liked the story. The twists kept me on my toes the whole time. I was thinking for a moment about how Isla's powerlessness keeps making her a damsel in distress for other people to save and how it was starting to get annoying, but then a few pages later I took back that thought. The ending was a great setup for a sequel, which I'm excited to read. The world building did get confusing at times because it was so much that needed to be created by Alex Aster, clearly communicated, and understood by the readers, but it all made sense eventually. Glad I read it.

Finished this super fast. Compulsively readable but lacking in world building and character development. Still enjoyed it though.

I am not a huge consumer of modern trope-y fantasy literature, but I did cut my teeth on Sarah J Maas' entire bibliography at the end of last year, because my wife loves all of it.

Fans of ACOTAR (like my wife) will probably like this a lot. For me, it's solidly “so okay it's average”. That said, Bean's exhaustive review is also 100% correct in substance so I won't repeat it here, just to say go read that review.

My biggest gripe though, has to be one of the core conceits around the main character. Namely [early plot spoilers] why would you give us a main character who grew up in a savage amazonian realm where the people eat hearts and can grow flowers with blood and are tragically fated to kill anyone they fall in love with so they're basically badass wendigos with nature powers... and then have said main character affected by exactly none of those unique and cool and interesting factors? It's literary cowardice. We could have had so many cool logistical conflicts, but now it's all replaced by a few throwaway lines about pretending to have those conflicts. Pulling a stunt like this doesn't make the main character unique, it makes her generic. The eventual reveal ([major ending spoiler]"Oh she had powers all along it was just cloaked by the other powers she also had all along, but somehow none of the curses that go with those powers?!") reads more like post-hoc justification for a poor character design choice.

Anyway, not a terrible book. But certainly a flawed one, which is unfortunate because it could have been really interesting if it wasn't so intent on checking all the genre boxes.

I don't understand why this is getting such a bad rep. Is it groundbreaking? No. Is it innovative and new? Also no. But it's still really enjoyable! Maybe going into it with low expectations has helped my enjoyment? But I loved it. 
Predictable? Kind of.  Convenient? Yeah. Every plot device is wrapped up pretty quickly. Isla seems to find things, and be rescued pretty easily.  Is Isla annoying? Ugh yes. She never listens to anything anyone says, and only focuses on herself for like 75% of the book. She's also CONSTANTLY putting herself in reckless situations and getting her hurt/almost killed unnecessarily. She says she can't trust anyone multiple times and then proceeds to do exactly that and convince herself to hell with it let's see what happens! Which often bites her in the ass, but it's YA that's kind of to be expected! I feel like everyone is being so critical, when we should really just take it for what it is. It doesn't have to be that deep. It was an enjoyable read even if it wasn't perfect!
I do kind of wish that it hadn't been set up to be a series though. I feel like without that last chapter (or if we had explored that avenue earlier in the book) it could have been such a good standalone fantasy. Even without finding out about the ending in this book I feel like it was tied up pretty nicely and I'm not sure if I even want to read the next one. I'll be interested to read the premise and see how I feel. 

1/4 stars

I'm so glad I didn't buy this book. I could not get through this book. I had to DNF at around 20%. I have zero interest in knowing how this book ends. The writing style wasn't for me. I kept rereading paragraphs in order to fully grasp what was actually happening. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.

It's very interesting, looking at the synopsis before and after reading the book; which just shows the power of a good synopsis and how it can fool you. Which was the case with this book. I was actually interested in reading it due to the synopsis and then all the drama happened but I decided to just forge ahead and go for it. Really, I should've stopped at the sample where I could tell this book would be a very difficult one. Will I be reading the sequel and hating every minute? Absolutely.

Like I said, it looked promising from the outside and then it kept falling apart and unraveling until nothing made sense anymore (all this well before the 50% mark, mind you). The synopsis promised adventure, curses, love, intrigue, even a game that sounded so good. What we get is a smidge, about like 4.3% (if I'm being honest, probably lower, I'm not good with stats) of all of that. I haven't read Aster's other (middle grade) series so I don't know if it's her voice. Maybe her writing and editing (Lightlark) so quickly in order to keep interest made nothing really work.

I could definitely see that Aster's previous series was Middle Grade. I'm not saying that you have to write heavy and confusing sentences for teenagers to decipher (they get enough of that in their language classes) – this just read too juvenile for most YA books. Maybe Aster could be good – if she just spent more time on this. Apparently she's been working on this for over 10 years. Someone said the names read like placeholder names – and it DOES. It does read like she never changed the names even though she kept meaning to.

What I noticed was her overuse of popular tropes – and how they weren't even well executed. I will admit, I could tell that she does love the tropes she used, but it needed a LOT of work. I don't mind them being used at all, I'm just asking for them to be written well. Don't just try to mush all the tropes to say you're using them – especially if you aren't able to execute them well. Also to me it looked like Aster wanted the tropes of the book so badly that she thought she could just go ahead, the actual writing would come after (it doesn't). Also like everything about the book is very YA but Aster goes on about spicy scenes on her social media? Make it make sense.

Isla Crown is the main character. Isla means island and she lives on an island and she goes to another island. As for Crown being her last name when she's the ruler of her realm – that's like because I wear glasses, my surname is Glass (Which it isn't).

The other names and their characters were just as bad. Oh, wow, here's this guy named Grimshaw. His voice is as dark and striking as midnight. He's super tall, his eyes are black as coals, and his hair is like ink. I wonder what realm he belongs to. Maybe the “bad” realm (Nightshade)? And of COURSE he is! Azul, ruler of Skyling – Azul... azure AKA SKY. Oro is Spanish for Gold and he's the Sunling realm's leader. What colour is the Sun? GOLD. Listen, I'm not saying that you have to sit and think up a name for like months, but also... maybe sit and think of names a bit more?

The Realms are Sunling, Wildling, Starling, Moonling, Skyling, and Nightshade. I'll give you 3 guesses as to which is written as the bad realm (even though I just said it in the previous paragraph). Once again, she really could've spent more time choosing names for them all.

Another thing I didn't like was the constant mentions of the realms and what they could do. When they barely even did any of that. We constantly heard that the Nightshade Realm is the worst one, that they're so evil. But then nothing they actually do can really be classified as evil in my opinion? Like the Wildling realm, who actually eat hearts, could technically be considered the evil realm more than Nightshade. The entire book is one whole string of tell, don't show (and even the telling was bad).

We get told that Isla is the most perfect, most beautiful, most amazing person ever to exist! She's just absolutely beautiful and gorgeous. She doesn't care what she wears but will also choose to wear beautiful, skintight clothing because that's what she's been taught to do. She can sing most wonderfully (and she was never taught to do this, it sounded like she could just sing perfectly from birth?? I don't know if other Wildlings have the same power) – looks like Aster can ALSO sing so like... I just found that a tad bit funny.

I laughed so many times because we're constantly told that Isla is beautiful and has been practicing for every single battle that can ever be fought as soon as she was able to walk BUT she's also clumsy! She's the BEST strategist to EVER strategise but none of her plans actually ever work. She's so amazing at seducing people but also hates to do it. Also I just don't understand how she was taught to wield LITERALLY every single weapon ever, PLUS able to seduce people, PLUS being able to dance, PLUS knowing how to strategise ALL WHILE knowing how to speak to other people in certain ways? And she knows how to read and write – there is absolutely no way she went through all of that at her young (18-20, I think) age. Even if she was isolated in her room, I really don't believe it.

I very much dislike the fact that we're promised diversity in the book and we get absolute crumbs. Cleo has a throwaway line about how her sexuality, and the line also reinforces the stereotype that bisexuals sleep around. Azul is black and gay (so two minorities for the price of one, I guess!) but I didn't realise he's not white until I was reading reviews and it was mentioned. We get about two lines of his (late) husband.

Isla is not white. All we get told is that her skin is a few shades darker than another ruler. The author is Indigenous Latinx and she said she wrote Lightlark, and specifically Isla, because she wanted to read that type of book and character on the shelves when she was a teen. Which is great for Aster. But that doesn't... necessarily always mean the character of colour will be written well (and that's me reading other Latinx readers' reviews to see what they had to say).

Something I don't like about the Wildlings' realm is that it's constantly seen and referred to as the wild ones, the savages ones. They're able to seduce everyone, which... is not the greatest thing when that realm is basically classed as the Latinx community and the community is often stereotyped as people who sleep around.

Some extra, tiny thoughts (because this is a long review): Lightlark was a shiny, cliffy thing. The sun was a yolky thing. Aster wrote Lightlark before breakfast, I can see. There were so many plot twists – like NINE happened in 1-2 chapters (overrated perhaps but oh well). I don't really think it could have been written well and you'd have to be a good writer (so, not Aster).

The world-building in this is both hilariously simple and it also makes absolutely no sense. I was telling my friend all about this and my friend was like “the world-building is lacking” and I'm like YOU WOULD THINK. We get told every other page of the curse (but only get told much later more about the curse), There's a prophecy but we only actually get TOLD the prophecy around the 50% mark. We get told about the different realms, their powers and their curses about every 5 pages – so really I should've have known everything by page 100. YET, there I was, sending a THIRTY MINUTE voice note to my friend, trying to explain the plot while also going every few seconds “I'm sorry if this is confusing, because I'M Confused.

3.25/5 stars

I just love having opinions, which is why I read this book ASAP, because you can't form a solid opinion without doing research (contrary to the beliefs of my family on Facebook). And to be honest, I was expecting to come out of this read with my very own pitchfork and burning torch. I just love the Beauty and the Beast villager aesthetic.

But do you know what (much to my dismay)? This wasn't horrible. I'm not in love with it, and a lot of the book I did hate, but like myself at age 2, there was so much potential. Will that potential also get wasted like mine did? Probably, but I'm gonna be optimistic.

Because while yes, the worldbuilding wasn't sturdy and it took almost the entire book for me to become somewhat attached the characters....and the writing was annoying at times...and there was no build up between scenes and plot points, but I expected much work. There are fantasy series that are much worse and we as a book community should be spending our energy on hating on them instead. cough Gild cough

Shout out to my boy Oro for carrying most of this book, he's the true VIP.

The rulers of the six realms have been called to Lightlark for the Centennial. It's a competition to see if they can break the curses that were cast on the realms centuries ago. If they can figure out how to break the curses, everyone will win, except for the realm that will cease to exist.

I don't read as much YA as I used to. They all seem pretty much the same. The blurb for this was so intriguing that I had to read it. I'm happy to say that this is fresh and unique. Each realm has a different curse and different powers. I loved the different magics. Isla and the king are my favorite characters.

I really enjoyed listening to this narrator. I highly recommend the audiobook.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an early copy.