A review by penandswordinn
Lightlark by Alex Aster

adventurous dark hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 

The first review of the year is one that had a controversial 2022. If you have been living under a rock, Lightlark is written by Alex Aster, who has gained controversy because of her privileged background, marketing of the book, and others. I want to note about the privilege thing is that she promoted herself as someone who grew from the ground up, but really she comes from a very rich family. But this review will be about the book and not the controversy surrounding the author. 

Lightlark follows Isla Crown, the ruler of the Wildling people. Five hundred years ago, a curse was placed on all six rules of the realm, only able to be broken if a ruler dies and an offense was made again. Every one hundred years, the leaders come together on the island of Lightlark to try and fix this curse. 

This book was marketed as the Hunger Games meets ACOTAR. I want to start off by saying that is not the case. This book does not really have elements of either of those books besides maybe aesthetics. 

Our first problem is that Isla is born without the powers of her people. Because of this, she is hidden away and trained with weapons to one day fight on Lightlark. It is never stated how old our main character is but given the sexual content later on, we are going to assume over 18. She comes to Lightlark with this huge secret that she has to hide. She is immediately attracted to Grim, who is the King of the Nightshade people. Which, until the end of the book, I really didn't care about. It was just lust at first sight, and she mentions how she wasn't allowed around men, so she just fell for the first guy she ever had a conversation with. 

Isla and the ruler of the Starlings, Celeste, decide that they have to find this relic called the "bondbreaker" to break their own curses before they can be killed. Isla begins to travel around Lightlark to break into all the libraries. Why she has to do this herself and not bring Celeste along is never explained. 

A big problem with this book is that it's marketed as this dark, sexy young adult fantasy. But when you read it, the writing is very simplistic and reads for a younger audience. There is a sex scene toward the end of the book that, if this book is written for a young audience, should not be as graphic, in my opinion. And this is coming from someone who has read ACOTAR and fanfic in her day. There's nothing wrong with the writing being simplistic but there is a lot of repetition and, honestly unneeded adventures throughout. I really think if this book has more time with an editor, it could've been written better. 

This book includes a lot of popular tropes found in young adult books which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it felt like a lot was being thrown at you. Even though I guess who the big bad guy was going to be in the end, I was shocked at how it developed and the twist and turns that took us there. This book is very slow, especially in the middle when a lot of the repetitive action took place. But the ending was compelling and left me thinking a lot about it. 

I can see where people really didn't like this book. But I genuinely liked it. It had an interesting world and interesting characters. And, as I have said over and over again, a better editor could've helped take the filler out and brought more fleshed out characters in. 

I am genuinely curious as to what the second book with bring. Also no spoilers but #TeamOro