Reviews

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.

meganpsick's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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