6 months ago
tyrosine
Update: I was kindly given access to an audiobook on NetGalley and can now divulge a full, honest review! Fair warning, I was right about this being an ACOTAR ripoff with terrible prose. I feel thoroughly validated lmao
Are you ever so nosy that you willingly invest $16.99 in a pre-order sale? Because yeah, that's how we've ended up here. Giving me adult money was a mistake.
Anyhow, I have been lurking on Alex Aster's success story for a while now because it's remarkable how well she's marketed her book. From BookTok to a 6 figure deal and an impressive following, Aster has likely secured herself a spot on every bestseller list. It's commendable, genuinely, I am impressed with how she and her team have generated hype for this book. So much, that I was willing to pre-order and receive the 5 free chapters. Read all 52 pages in one sitting.
I have thoughts.
This book has been touted as this Hunger Games x ACOTAR fantasy and I need y'all to manage those expectations because the writing makes it plainly obvious that this book is a debut. In fact, the writing comes off as a second draft that would have benefitted from closer editing:
A lot of the story (from what I read) relies on telling rather than showing and it leads to a lot of info dump so far. We are told that there were six realms, with six respective rulers, and six specific curses. We are told that Isla had a restricted childhood, who the perceived villains are, how the curses impact the different realms...
And the funny thing is that even with all this telling, the world-building is very confusing. From what I've gathered, there are 6 realms and the realms are countries?? Isla mentions there are uninhabited countries that she could escape to, but the focus is on the Wilding, Skyling, Moonling, Starling, Nightshade and Lightlark. We are told that Lightlark is an island that appears every 100 years, but it was also at war with Nightshade; but then we are also told that Lightlark was inhabited with people from the other 4 countries (Wilding, Skyling, Moonling, Starling) but then the rulers of the realm got killed after getting cursed - and everyone thinks Nightshade is responsible for the curses? Am I losing anyone yet??? These 6 rulers are supposed to compete in a 100-day game/battle called the Centennial in which one of them must die - note, this system hasn't worked in the past 400 years, but they still keep doing the Centennial because...reasons.
I feel like the author just made the rules very convoluted and hard to follow without the logic that we saw in the Hunger Games. For instance, in the Hunger Games, we understood that children were selected as a way to lower morale in the districts; in Lightlark, the rulers are selected...but they have been competing for 400 years (Isla is the youngest realm ruler while the others are like 500 years old lmao) so I don't get what's different about each time? In the Hunger Games, the competitors are sent to the Capitol; in Lightlark they are sent to Lightlark, the original realm with power, but also the King of Lightlark is cursed so does he also compete? In the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta meet with fashion designers to demonstrate how the Capitol demands pomp behind the tragic killing; in Lightlark, Isla has an appointment with the tailor...just because? I'm not sharing these parallels to demand the author make a carbon copy of the Hunger Games, but if you are gonna comp with such an iconic YA dystopia, you need to follow through.
(Also this is a minor thing but from the character reveals we've had so far and the general Eurocentric fantasy world vibes, I'm sensing the book is gonna be very white/white-passing. I know Aster is Colombian so I give her kudos for being a WOC author in such a difficult industry. But I also can't deny that she is very white-passing and that does play a role in the diversity we might see in this book.)
We are told that Isla feels dread, that her people are dying, but I never felt an urgency in the atmosphere of the story. The fact that Isla has time to go on a chocolate-eating date with one of the other realm rulers makes me doubt the stakes of the Centennial.
SPEAKING OF DATE, y'all...the ACOTAR really jumped out. Remember when I mentioned the 6 realms, let me repeat them for you: Wildling, Skyling, Moonling, Starling, Nightshade, and Lightlark. If there's a villain (as the author has heavily hinted at "villain gets the girl") guess where he's from. Let me make it worse, his name is Grimshaw LMAOOO.
Might as well have stuck a "Hello, Isla darling" in that introduction because that character is literally Rhysand in a different font. Tell me I'm wrong! You may argue that 5 chapters aren't enough to get a read on a character but all of the characters lack depth, most of all our main character Isla. She's also very inconsistent. Isla is supposed to be trained in battle/swordplay but she almost trips off a cliff, then she always falls over a balcony because the sound of someone's clapping startled her. She is supposed to have been isolated her whole life, but she's also very good at reading people (you can argue that she snuck out of her room using the Starstick so she's well-traveled, but I would think her personality would have traces of her anti-social, subdued/secluded background, though she is certainly naive).
I can already predict that Grimshaw and Isla are endgame. Apparently, there are all these plot twists in the end so I would wager Grim betrays her for savior reasons and the next two books are about them being enemies to lovers. I also bet that Isla's second love interest is the King of Lightlark. The curses resulted from something between the Lightlark and Nightshade realms, or maybe from all the rulers contributing, idk I'm trying to guess at what would be so good that people are raving about the last 30 pages...maybe Isla's mom and dad had some kind of hand in the curses?? I mean I'm gonna find out in a month since I've preordered the book so we'll see if I was right.
Okay let's pick up since I got an ARC. Oh boy. So much to unpack.
Last time I wrote this, I was up to the start of the Centennial. Now my thing about the Centennial is that it's the dumbest concept despite instigating the sequences of events in this book. It's 100 days but in the first 50 days, all the rulers have to do demonstrations for the people of Lightlark to observe. It's supposed to be like the training days in the Hunger Games where the tributes show off their skills to secure donors during the games but the idea falls flat in Lightlark because the people who live on Lightlark don't...do anything. They watch? They attend parties? But their role is so unnecessary. Another component of these demonstrations is for rulers to scope out each other's powers but the "winning" isn't always straightforward. For Grim's demonstration, everyone had to battle it out, but the King of Lightlark, Oro, had a demonstration where everyone had the chance to show their greatest secret. Like?? Oro ends up being the winner of these demonstrations and is allowed to choose who to pair up for the next 75 days.
Oh right let me break down this timeline: 100 days on Lightlark; can't kill anyone until after the 50th day. By day 25 or 50 (I think) the rulers pair up to solve the prophecy to break their curses. It's so dumb this entire book is about searching for relics. First Isla and the Starling ruler, Celeste, are searching for this thing called the Bond Breaker, then Isla and Oro are searching for the heart of Lightlark. I think day 50 also has some kind of banquet while day 75 has a carnival event? Genuinely, none of the things that happen are important; it feels like Aster is trying to contrive situations where Isla can be hot (in a revealing dress), fierce (holding a knife to someone's throat), or whatever.
This feels like a good place to talk about how Aster has weird anti-woman, slut-shaming sentiments in the book. All of Wildling is described as being warrior women temptresses. Their curse is that they have to eat the heart of the ones they fall in love with (and they need to eat a heart every month...because reasons?) Anyways, Isla is supposed to go into the Centennial to seduce the king of Lightlark but she's so morally pure, she could never seduce someone - wearing tight clothes for her perfect body stresses her out! She's nothing like her realm (she also doesn't have powers because her dad killed her mom out of madness since her mom refused to kill him. Others have pointed out that this feels like a cop out where Isla can fall in love with both Grim and Oro and get this love triangle going). I also have to mention that Isla is fixated on Cleo (the Moonling ruler) being this evil villain; all of Cleo's interactions with her come off so cartoony. She's building a whole armada in Moonling and we never find out why. The final villain is also a woman with motivations that are so cliche (she cast the curses by accident while trying to get revenge on Oro's brother for not marrying her and falling in love with one of Isla's Wildling ancestors).
I think it's kind of funny that Aster is touting the 6 overlay campaign with the 6 realm rulers because Isla never has a conversation with anyone beyond Grim, Oro, and Celeste. Azul (the only Black character...who is also named after a color...giving Topaz vibes a la From Blood and Ash), never has a one-on-one conversation with Isla. She finds out from Oro that Azul is mourning the loss of his husband but we never get more depth into his character. It's beyond annoying that Isla only has scenes with her two love interests or her friend who [SPOILER] turns out to be the main villain after all. Isla literally ends this book with two love interests and a vague, unfounded dislike for Cleo.
But I digress. Where were we? Right, the stupid demonstrations, the endless chapters of Isla's searching, and then Act 2 is where we have Isla paired up with Oro. You would think, the time they spend paired up would give insight into Oro's character. Nope. Nuh-uh, friends, his character is so bland.
To be fair, all of them are:
- Oro (angry blonde hot guy with sun powers)
- Grim (bootleg Rhysand - seriously, he comes from a night themed realm/court and can read minds - but somehow, 13239x creepier. Every time he's mentioned he's "raking his eyes over Isla's scantily clad body." Not at all swoony. I would not trust this man to hold my drink.)
- Azul (token gay & Black character - a two for one - who does nothing for the plot. Is actually off screen for 67% of the book. ACOTAR equivalent is Tarquin but without the personality.)
- Cleo (bitch queen with vague water powers? #BiRep from one throwaway line)
- Celeste (Isla's bestie with star powers. Very magical anime girl until she isn't)
Isla rounds out all of them by being the ultra-pure, morally-pure realm ruler who is devastatingly beautiful, well versed in swordplay and battle, and if you thought she was unique for not having any powers, buckle up because the plot twist is that she has powers from not just Wildling but Nightshade as well. Oh right [SPOILER] her dad was a Nightshade.
I am so terrible at this, I keep getting off track. It's because I'm writing this like 3 weeks after finishing this book during which I did everything I could to forget this asinine world and its equally dumb characters. But the summary of this book is so easy to break down: Demonstrations finish, Oro wins. Oro picks which rulers are paired together, he pairs himself with Isla (despite her and Celeste wanting to be paired together). He tells Isla that the way to stop the curses is to find the Heart of Lightlark, which is a plant. And she's supposed to be the plant ruler, so yeah. Act 2 is him and Isla just searching for this heart, with guest appearances by Grim telling Isla he's a monster who can't be loved or some bullshit. Oro gets Isla to tell him her secret then betrays her and teams up with Cleo, then he turns away and says he did it to search Moonling without raising Cleo's suspicions. I really think that dumb plot point was so Grim could swoop and be Isla's confidante while she was mopey about the King. You would think his betrayal would trigger a new series of events and change the trajectory of the story but no. Like three chapters later, Oro and Isla make up, and then out of nowhere she's like "OH, I KNOW WHERE THE HEART IS."
DRUMROLL: the heart is an egg. Like an egg in the sky?? And it can be grabbed at daybreak?? I really don't know by that point I was numbed. Defeated, if you will, because this world-building is just vibes, 12-year-olds on Wattpad do more justice with their setting and prose. Isla goes to grab the egg and then she gets shot and Grim has to save her. On the world-building point, there's legit entire other species living on Lightlark, which I don't think is addressed at all in the marketing. Oro mentions these Ancient Ones and then he and Isla meet with like "winged people" ($50 it's some variation of the Illyrians from ACOTAR). There's also this entirely other faction of Wildlings who don't eat hearts living in Lightlark called the "Vinterlands" or something, I was on the audiobook and idk the spelling, but they shoot her for getting the heart. But we never address that in the aftermath?? Like Isla gets shot, wakes up to Grim sniveling over the idea of losing her, then she and Oro discuss which realm ruler needs to be killed now that they have the heart. I feel like the prophecy is also so dumb because someone must die because...reasons.
The book ends with Celeste revealing that she's actually Aurora the original curse caster who's been shapeshifting all this time. (Sidenote: in addition to their realm's powers some people have a super secret additional ability called a Flair. Watch Isla get a damned Flair in book 2). Celeste/Aurora has been manipulating Isla to find this thing called the Bond Break because she wanted to absorb all the powers of the realms. She can do that because in this world if people fall in love, you can access your significant other's powers...yeah...it read as stupidly in the book as it reads in this review. No surprise that this plan works because both Oro and Grim are in love with Isla. But then Isla unlocks something inside herself and it turns out she's had powers all along but her guardians have been hiding it because Aurora threatened them. She defeats Celeste and banishes Grim.
Why is Grim making a Rhysand-esque exit? Well you see, Isla had been using her starstick to teleport to all these places and one of them happened to be Nightshade. A year before the Centennial, she and Grim actually had a very passionate love affair but he erased her memories because he and Celeste wanted to take down Oro (because reasons) and they thought the best way to do that would be having Isla seduce Oro (despite her repeatedly expressing to the reader that she doesn't have a seductive bone in her body). Of course, Isla is heartbroken and super distressed by all this information and he really seals in his charm by sending her a creepy mind message that's like: you will come back to me! I'm telling you this character is so fucking weird, there is nothing intriguing or hot about his obsession with her. Not to mention his plan was the most contrived thing?? Why did he think it was a good idea to set his supposed love with his enemy??? Where is the logic??? Of course, Isla is gonna dump your sorry ass, you 500-year-old Grandpa!!!
So yeah that's where we leave off, Isla with Oro but deeply traumatized, which leaves everything perfectly set up for the ACOMAF sequence in Lightlark 2 (where Grim comes to swoop in and save her from the broody blonde man). Going back to my earlier predictions, I'm pretty pleased that I clocked the following:
- Isla saved Lightlark (obvs)
- Both Oro and Grim fall in love with her (duh)
- Isla and Grim were past lovers in some sense
- Grim was in bed with Aurora. Oh I didn't really talk about this but like, the whole reason Aurora/Celeste even managed to spin the curses was because she promised to sleep with Grim if he found her the heart of Lightlark. Yeah the heart that took Oro and Isla like 50 days to find?? Grim found it in one night in exchange for sexy times.
- I also suspected Isla's dad was probably Nightshade so I'm glad Aster came through on predictability there.
Final thoughts: this book is gonna do well on Booktok. It's literally catered to include everything people like on BookTok (enemies to lovers, women with swords, vague fantasy) but without any of the bite to deliver on those tropes. This whole thing reads like a first, maybe second draft and it's a shame that no one at any point stopped to say, "let's go back and edit this" because it has both juvenile prose and plot. Maybe the former could be forgiven for a debut, but the latter seriously makes this book unenjoyable. You never feel immersed in the book because the entire time, you have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes at how stupid everything is made to be. I know everyone is talking about how Aster falsely advertised a lot of scenes and I can confirm: there's very little overlap between what she's been promoting and what made it into the final copy; the villain doesn't even get the girl in the end?? My bigger gripe though is the injustice done to tokenized characters like Cleo and Azul, what's the point of diverse characters when you don't even engage with them? Isla being a woman of color would actually send me into my villain era, that girl is a slightly tanned Feyra variant at best, an Alex Aster self-insert at worst.
Are you ever so nosy that you willingly invest $16.99 in a pre-order sale? Because yeah, that's how we've ended up here. Giving me adult money was a mistake.
Anyhow, I have been lurking on Alex Aster's success story for a while now because it's remarkable how well she's marketed her book. From BookTok to a 6 figure deal and an impressive following, Aster has likely secured herself a spot on every bestseller list. It's commendable, genuinely, I am impressed with how she and her team have generated hype for this book. So much, that I was willing to pre-order and receive the 5 free chapters. Read all 52 pages in one sitting.
I have thoughts.
This book has been touted as this Hunger Games x ACOTAR fantasy and I need y'all to manage those expectations because the writing makes it plainly obvious that this book is a debut. In fact, the writing comes off as a second draft that would have benefitted from closer editing:
"The snow villages of the Moonling new lands. The airy jubilees of the Skyling newlands. A few lands that hadn't been settled by any of the six realms at all."
A lot of the story (from what I read) relies on telling rather than showing and it leads to a lot of info dump so far. We are told that there were six realms, with six respective rulers, and six specific curses. We are told that Isla had a restricted childhood, who the perceived villains are, how the curses impact the different realms...
And the funny thing is that even with all this telling, the world-building is very confusing. From what I've gathered, there are 6 realms and the realms are countries?? Isla mentions there are uninhabited countries that she could escape to, but the focus is on the Wilding, Skyling, Moonling, Starling, Nightshade and Lightlark. We are told that Lightlark is an island that appears every 100 years, but it was also at war with Nightshade; but then we are also told that Lightlark was inhabited with people from the other 4 countries (Wilding, Skyling, Moonling, Starling) but then the rulers of the realm got killed after getting cursed - and everyone thinks Nightshade is responsible for the curses? Am I losing anyone yet??? These 6 rulers are supposed to compete in a 100-day game/battle called the Centennial in which one of them must die - note, this system hasn't worked in the past 400 years, but they still keep doing the Centennial because...reasons.
I feel like the author just made the rules very convoluted and hard to follow without the logic that we saw in the Hunger Games. For instance, in the Hunger Games, we understood that children were selected as a way to lower morale in the districts; in Lightlark, the rulers are selected...but they have been competing for 400 years (Isla is the youngest realm ruler while the others are like 500 years old lmao) so I don't get what's different about each time? In the Hunger Games, the competitors are sent to the Capitol; in Lightlark they are sent to Lightlark, the original realm with power, but also the King of Lightlark is cursed so does he also compete? In the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta meet with fashion designers to demonstrate how the Capitol demands pomp behind the tragic killing; in Lightlark, Isla has an appointment with the tailor...just because? I'm not sharing these parallels to demand the author make a carbon copy of the Hunger Games, but if you are gonna comp with such an iconic YA dystopia, you need to follow through.
(Also this is a minor thing but from the character reveals we've had so far and the general Eurocentric fantasy world vibes, I'm sensing the book is gonna be very white/white-passing. I know Aster is Colombian so I give her kudos for being a WOC author in such a difficult industry. But I also can't deny that she is very white-passing and that does play a role in the diversity we might see in this book.)
We are told that Isla feels dread, that her people are dying, but I never felt an urgency in the atmosphere of the story. The fact that Isla has time to go on a chocolate-eating date with one of the other realm rulers makes me doubt the stakes of the Centennial.
SPEAKING OF DATE, y'all...the ACOTAR really jumped out. Remember when I mentioned the 6 realms, let me repeat them for you: Wildling, Skyling, Moonling, Starling, Nightshade, and Lightlark. If there's a villain (as the author has heavily hinted at "villain gets the girl") guess where he's from. Let me make it worse, his name is Grimshaw LMAOOO.
"The face belonging to the man looking down at her was amused. And familiar, somehow. He was so tall Isla had to tilt her chin to meet his eyes, black as coal. His hair spilled ink across his pale forehead. Nightshade, no question. Which meant...
"Thank you Grimshaw," Isla said firmly."
Might as well have stuck a "Hello, Isla darling" in that introduction because that character is literally Rhysand in a different font. Tell me I'm wrong! You may argue that 5 chapters aren't enough to get a read on a character but all of the characters lack depth, most of all our main character Isla. She's also very inconsistent. Isla is supposed to be trained in battle/swordplay but she almost trips off a cliff, then she always falls over a balcony because the sound of someone's clapping startled her. She is supposed to have been isolated her whole life, but she's also very good at reading people (you can argue that she snuck out of her room using the Starstick so she's well-traveled, but I would think her personality would have traces of her anti-social, subdued/secluded background, though she is certainly naive).
I can already predict that Grimshaw and Isla are endgame. Apparently, there are all these plot twists in the end so I would wager Grim betrays her for savior reasons and the next two books are about them being enemies to lovers. I also bet that Isla's second love interest is the King of Lightlark. The curses resulted from something between the Lightlark and Nightshade realms, or maybe from all the rulers contributing, idk I'm trying to guess at what would be so good that people are raving about the last 30 pages...maybe Isla's mom and dad had some kind of hand in the curses?? I mean I'm gonna find out in a month since I've preordered the book so we'll see if I was right.
Okay let's pick up since I got an ARC. Oh boy. So much to unpack.
Last time I wrote this, I was up to the start of the Centennial. Now my thing about the Centennial is that it's the dumbest concept despite instigating the sequences of events in this book. It's 100 days but in the first 50 days, all the rulers have to do demonstrations for the people of Lightlark to observe. It's supposed to be like the training days in the Hunger Games where the tributes show off their skills to secure donors during the games but the idea falls flat in Lightlark because the people who live on Lightlark don't...do anything. They watch? They attend parties? But their role is so unnecessary. Another component of these demonstrations is for rulers to scope out each other's powers but the "winning" isn't always straightforward. For Grim's demonstration, everyone had to battle it out, but the King of Lightlark, Oro, had a demonstration where everyone had the chance to show their greatest secret. Like?? Oro ends up being the winner of these demonstrations and is allowed to choose who to pair up for the next 75 days.
Oh right let me break down this timeline: 100 days on Lightlark; can't kill anyone until after the 50th day. By day 25 or 50 (I think) the rulers pair up to solve the prophecy to break their curses. It's so dumb this entire book is about searching for relics. First Isla and the Starling ruler, Celeste, are searching for this thing called the Bond Breaker, then Isla and Oro are searching for the heart of Lightlark. I think day 50 also has some kind of banquet while day 75 has a carnival event? Genuinely, none of the things that happen are important; it feels like Aster is trying to contrive situations where Isla can be hot (in a revealing dress), fierce (holding a knife to someone's throat), or whatever.
This feels like a good place to talk about how Aster has weird anti-woman, slut-shaming sentiments in the book. All of Wildling is described as being warrior women temptresses. Their curse is that they have to eat the heart of the ones they fall in love with (and they need to eat a heart every month...because reasons?) Anyways, Isla is supposed to go into the Centennial to seduce the king of Lightlark but she's so morally pure, she could never seduce someone - wearing tight clothes for her perfect body stresses her out! She's nothing like her realm (she also doesn't have powers because her dad killed her mom out of madness since her mom refused to kill him. Others have pointed out that this feels like a cop out where Isla can fall in love with both Grim and Oro and get this love triangle going). I also have to mention that Isla is fixated on Cleo (the Moonling ruler) being this evil villain; all of Cleo's interactions with her come off so cartoony. She's building a whole armada in Moonling and we never find out why. The final villain is also a woman with motivations that are so cliche (she cast the curses by accident while trying to get revenge on Oro's brother for not marrying her and falling in love with one of Isla's Wildling ancestors).
I think it's kind of funny that Aster is touting the 6 overlay campaign with the 6 realm rulers because Isla never has a conversation with anyone beyond Grim, Oro, and Celeste. Azul (the only Black character...who is also named after a color...giving Topaz vibes a la From Blood and Ash), never has a one-on-one conversation with Isla. She finds out from Oro that Azul is mourning the loss of his husband but we never get more depth into his character. It's beyond annoying that Isla only has scenes with her two love interests or her friend who [SPOILER] turns out to be the main villain after all. Isla literally ends this book with two love interests and a vague, unfounded dislike for Cleo.
But I digress. Where were we? Right, the stupid demonstrations, the endless chapters of Isla's searching, and then Act 2 is where we have Isla paired up with Oro. You would think, the time they spend paired up would give insight into Oro's character. Nope. Nuh-uh, friends, his character is so bland.
To be fair, all of them are:
- Oro (angry blonde hot guy with sun powers)
- Grim (bootleg Rhysand - seriously, he comes from a night themed realm/court and can read minds - but somehow, 13239x creepier. Every time he's mentioned he's "raking his eyes over Isla's scantily clad body." Not at all swoony. I would not trust this man to hold my drink.)
- Azul (token gay & Black character - a two for one - who does nothing for the plot. Is actually off screen for 67% of the book. ACOTAR equivalent is Tarquin but without the personality.)
- Cleo (bitch queen with vague water powers? #BiRep from one throwaway line)
- Celeste (Isla's bestie with star powers. Very magical anime girl until she isn't)
Isla rounds out all of them by being the ultra-pure, morally-pure realm ruler who is devastatingly beautiful, well versed in swordplay and battle, and if you thought she was unique for not having any powers, buckle up because the plot twist is that she has powers from not just Wildling but Nightshade as well. Oh right [SPOILER] her dad was a Nightshade.
I am so terrible at this, I keep getting off track. It's because I'm writing this like 3 weeks after finishing this book during which I did everything I could to forget this asinine world and its equally dumb characters. But the summary of this book is so easy to break down: Demonstrations finish, Oro wins. Oro picks which rulers are paired together, he pairs himself with Isla (despite her and Celeste wanting to be paired together). He tells Isla that the way to stop the curses is to find the Heart of Lightlark, which is a plant. And she's supposed to be the plant ruler, so yeah. Act 2 is him and Isla just searching for this heart, with guest appearances by Grim telling Isla he's a monster who can't be loved or some bullshit. Oro gets Isla to tell him her secret then betrays her and teams up with Cleo, then he turns away and says he did it to search Moonling without raising Cleo's suspicions. I really think that dumb plot point was so Grim could swoop and be Isla's confidante while she was mopey about the King. You would think his betrayal would trigger a new series of events and change the trajectory of the story but no. Like three chapters later, Oro and Isla make up, and then out of nowhere she's like "OH, I KNOW WHERE THE HEART IS."
DRUMROLL: the heart is an egg. Like an egg in the sky?? And it can be grabbed at daybreak?? I really don't know by that point I was numbed. Defeated, if you will, because this world-building is just vibes, 12-year-olds on Wattpad do more justice with their setting and prose. Isla goes to grab the egg and then she gets shot and Grim has to save her. On the world-building point, there's legit entire other species living on Lightlark, which I don't think is addressed at all in the marketing. Oro mentions these Ancient Ones and then he and Isla meet with like "winged people" ($50 it's some variation of the Illyrians from ACOTAR). There's also this entirely other faction of Wildlings who don't eat hearts living in Lightlark called the "Vinterlands" or something, I was on the audiobook and idk the spelling, but they shoot her for getting the heart. But we never address that in the aftermath?? Like Isla gets shot, wakes up to Grim sniveling over the idea of losing her, then she and Oro discuss which realm ruler needs to be killed now that they have the heart. I feel like the prophecy is also so dumb because someone must die because...reasons.
The book ends with Celeste revealing that she's actually Aurora the original curse caster who's been shapeshifting all this time. (Sidenote: in addition to their realm's powers some people have a super secret additional ability called a Flair. Watch Isla get a damned Flair in book 2). Celeste/Aurora has been manipulating Isla to find this thing called the Bond Break because she wanted to absorb all the powers of the realms. She can do that because in this world if people fall in love, you can access your significant other's powers...yeah...it read as stupidly in the book as it reads in this review. No surprise that this plan works because both Oro and Grim are in love with Isla. But then Isla unlocks something inside herself and it turns out she's had powers all along but her guardians have been hiding it because Aurora threatened them. She defeats Celeste and banishes Grim.
Why is Grim making a Rhysand-esque exit? Well you see, Isla had been using her starstick to teleport to all these places and one of them happened to be Nightshade. A year before the Centennial, she and Grim actually had a very passionate love affair but he erased her memories because he and Celeste wanted to take down Oro (because reasons) and they thought the best way to do that would be having Isla seduce Oro (despite her repeatedly expressing to the reader that she doesn't have a seductive bone in her body). Of course, Isla is heartbroken and super distressed by all this information and he really seals in his charm by sending her a creepy mind message that's like: you will come back to me! I'm telling you this character is so fucking weird, there is nothing intriguing or hot about his obsession with her. Not to mention his plan was the most contrived thing?? Why did he think it was a good idea to set his supposed love with his enemy??? Where is the logic??? Of course, Isla is gonna dump your sorry ass, you 500-year-old Grandpa!!!
So yeah that's where we leave off, Isla with Oro but deeply traumatized, which leaves everything perfectly set up for the ACOMAF sequence in Lightlark 2 (where Grim comes to swoop in and save her from the broody blonde man). Going back to my earlier predictions, I'm pretty pleased that I clocked the following:
- Isla saved Lightlark (obvs)
- Both Oro and Grim fall in love with her (duh)
- Isla and Grim were past lovers in some sense
- Grim was in bed with Aurora. Oh I didn't really talk about this but like, the whole reason Aurora/Celeste even managed to spin the curses was because she promised to sleep with Grim if he found her the heart of Lightlark. Yeah the heart that took Oro and Isla like 50 days to find?? Grim found it in one night in exchange for sexy times.
- I also suspected Isla's dad was probably Nightshade so I'm glad Aster came through on predictability there.
Final thoughts: this book is gonna do well on Booktok. It's literally catered to include everything people like on BookTok (enemies to lovers, women with swords, vague fantasy) but without any of the bite to deliver on those tropes. This whole thing reads like a first, maybe second draft and it's a shame that no one at any point stopped to say, "let's go back and edit this" because it has both juvenile prose and plot. Maybe the former could be forgiven for a debut, but the latter seriously makes this book unenjoyable. You never feel immersed in the book because the entire time, you have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes at how stupid everything is made to be. I know everyone is talking about how Aster falsely advertised a lot of scenes and I can confirm: there's very little overlap between what she's been promoting and what made it into the final copy; the villain doesn't even get the girl in the end?? My bigger gripe though is the injustice done to tokenized characters like Cleo and Azul, what's the point of diverse characters when you don't even engage with them? Isla being a woman of color would actually send me into my villain era, that girl is a slightly tanned Feyra variant at best, an Alex Aster self-insert at worst.
