YMMV / The Lightlark Saga

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Alex Aster has stated that Lightlark was repeatedly rejected by publishers (according to Aster, sixteen publishers turned her down), who felt that it wouldn't do well because the market was already saturated with similar books. Aster stated her agent eventually dropped her as a client because she kept wanting to work on Lightlark rather than focusing on other books. Aster started promoting the book on TikTok in 2021, causing it to gain a massive following that finally got the attention of publisher Abrams Books. Lightlark became a bestseller, including reaching No.1 on The New York Times Bestseller List, and Universal bought the adaptation rights for a hefty sum before it was even published. That being said, Lightlark's initial success did have a damper put on it due to the controversy surrounding its marketing and release, which ended up overshadowing the book itself in some circles.
• Ass Pull: Lightlark has numerous examples wherein plot twists do get a bit of foreshadowing, but it's so obscure or vague - and often buried in mountains of other information - that by the time the payoff arrives the reader has likely forgotten about it or it went over their head completely. In some cases the twists also outright contradict previously-established information. Consequently, many twists feel like they come out-of-nowhere or make little logical sense. Alternatively, solutions to problems are only introduced as and when they're needed, which can feel contrived. The author has stated that few readers were able to guess the novel's biggest twists, but some readers have argued this is because the twists are set-up in a convoluted and confusing way. Some stand-out examples include:
  • Celeste is immobilised by a rare poison that Moonling healing powers cannot treat. Grim is able to find a super-rare, never-before-mentioned Wildling healing elixir that just so happened to be in an abandoned Moonling shop, which cures her. He also finds it completely off-page and tells Isla about it after-the-fact. To make matters more frustrating, Isla already has a powerful healing elixir she brought with her from the Wildling newlands which had been introduced earlier (Isla had demonstrated it to the other rules as evidence of what her realm could contribute), but this never gets brought up as a treatment option.
  • The Heart of Lightlark being a bird's egg that hatches at dawn and the way Isla figures it out. It was previously emphasised that the Heart always manifested as a plant (the term "blooming" is used repeatedly) and the only real foreshadowing it gets is Isla comparing the sun to an egg yolk a grand total of twice, which a lot of readers thought was just an odd choice of descriptive metaphor than a genuine narrative clue. Isla claims in her narration that she'd also thought the moon resembled an egg many times, but in actuality she never once makes this comparison until this moment. It's also unclear how she figured out that the giant blue bird following her would lead her to the Heart, as there's nothing clearly connecting the two.
  • Isla's powers not working because she's both Wildling and Nightshade; Celeste and Grim explain she has the abilities of both her Wildling mother and Nightshade father and they're cancelling each other out... but Oro previously explained to Isla that a child born of two realms would only receive one parent's magic. It's never explained why Isla is different or why this would block her magic, nor does it affect the plot much beyond adding another twist given there was already an explanation for the no-magic thing, namely that Isla's mother defied the Wildling curse and spared the man she loved long enough to give birth. It's also left unclear how her heritage caused her to be immune to the curses.
  • The reveal that Celeste is actually Aurora, is responsible for the curses and why she did it. Although it does all get explained, lots of readers mentioned feeling very confused at first because they couldn't remember who Aurora even was, which isn't too surprising considering that until this moment Aurora is a narrative footnote who had only been mentioned about twice, with no real detail provided for her character. The love triangle involving Aurora, Egan and Violet - which is Aurora's motive for cursing everyone - wasn't mentioned at all until the climax, nor was the fact Celeste/Aurora could shapeshift remotely hinted at. It also raises the question of why Oro couldn't sense she was lying given he has the power to detect when he's being lied to.
• Bile Fascination: After early reviews for Lightlark came out and were generally critical of the novel and the way it was marketed (with some calling it "The Fyre Festival of Booktok"), some people picked up the book mostly to see if it was really that bad. The same applies to Nightbane, with even readers who thought Lightlark was bad admitting they wanted to read the sequel out of morbid curiosity over what crazy direction the series would go in (less cynically, a few readers wanted to see if the author could actually build upon Lightlark's redeeming qualities).
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The book isn't too subtle regarding the twist that Isla and Grim had already met and Isla had somehow lost her memories of this; right from their first on-page interaction Grim is extremely flirtatious with and overly-fixated upon Isla, including trying to aid and protect her despite having no obvious reason to if they were strangers. Isla mentions during their 'first' meeting that she finds Grim oddly familiar and she later starts having unusually vivid erotic dreams about him, with Grim being cagey when Isla asks if he's responsible for the dreams. Sure enough, it's revealed that Grim and Isla met a year ago and became lovers, only for Grim to use magic to wipe her memories of their relationship shortly before the Centennial began. It comes as a big shock to Isla, but probably not the reader.
• Cliché Storm: Lightlark is essentially an amalgamation of almost every popular young adult Speculative Fiction and Romance Novel cliché from the past decade before its publication. This includes an angsty, inexplicably-badass heroine who is the only one who can resolve the plot, a forbidden love triangle involving a bad boy and a wholesome boy (both of whom are centuries older than the heroine), a deadly tournament that also involves parties, pageantry and luxury housing, worldbuilding that largely boils down to Planet of Hats, the heroine having a secret dark past she was unaware of and more.
• Designated Love Interest: More than a few readers and reviewers have commented that Oro and Isla come off less as love interests (as intended) and more as having an Intergenerational Friendship or even a father-daughter dynamic. Oro, who is much older and more experienced, takes the young and naive Isla under his wing, teaching her a lot about the setting and how magic works; Isla's youthful idealism also starts to break through Oro's aloof exterior and world-weariness. It's further noted that Oro was never able to have children because of the Centennial's rules, while Isla was orphaned as an infant and her guardians weren't the most nurturing, which perfectly sets them up for developing a surrogate father-daughter relationship. Many readers have found that there's very little romantic chemistry in their interactions, especially with Isla being obviously attracted to Grim for the majority of the book, to the point that some readers were genuinely confused when they reached the book's climax and realised they were supposed to be love interests all along (likely not helping this impression is the fact Isla and Oro are also confused that they're in love with each other).
• Escapist Character: Isla Crown appears to be designed as this for the target audience; she's a beautiful and multi-talented teen ruler, who is desired by two handsome kings (one of whom hasn't fallen in love in five centuries) and makes up for her lack of powers by being a badass warrior, even capable of defeating more experienced opponents. She's constantly praised for her beauty, wit and combat prowess. And then it turns out she's always had powers, namely the powers of both Wildling and Nightshade despite this being unheard of, and she gains even more magic after winning the Centennial. She's also completely unaffected by the curses that plague everyone else. Unfortunately, many reviews have pointed to Isla being an example of how not to write an Escapist Character, with it being argued her nigh-invincibility removes tension and suspense from the story, as despite the supposed "deadly contest" Isla is rarely in any true danger and easily overcomes most obstacles and limitations. It's also argued that Isla starting out in a position of power and privilege (and subsequently gaining more power) makes her less relatable compared to the protagonists of similar stories who go From Zero to Hero, with the attempts to make Isla seem like a disadvantaged underdog being unconvincing
• Hype Backlash: Lightlark was heavily hyped on TikTok and other social media platforms as being the next big thing in young adult fantasy literature, especially with a movie adaptation potentially in the works (it got a six figure movie deal before it was even published) and other prominent YA authors praising it. The hype got to the point that some people started to get suspicious it was partly manufactured by the publisher given the book had barely been read by anyone yet, while other people just got fed up of the book constantly being pushed at them. Then when more people in the general public finally got around to reading the book itself, it was widely agreed that Lightlark really wasn't worth the hype; while not everyone thinks it's completely without merit, most readers find that the execution is uneven and the plot is highly derivative of other fantasy works.
• Lost in Medias Res: The way Lightlark delivers information about the world that's vital to understanding the plot can be hit-and-miss. While the book establishes early on that there are curses and the Centennial is the method of breaking them, it also explains that the Centennial is based around a prophecy that hints at how to end the curses, but without going into any detail on what the prophecy says. In fact, the first time the prophecy is spoken is on page 135, nearly a third of the way through. Some readers have found this still doesn't help clear things up, given the emphasis on one ruler and all their people having to die to break the curses and the winning ruler receiving great power... none of which are actually mentioned in the prophecy (while it does state that a ruling line must end, this can be interpreted in multiple ways and there's nothing that hints at the winner getting ultimate power). It's never really explained why the Centennial is deemed the best way to solve the problem either, especially seeing as it still hasn't brought the rulers closer to a resolution in five centuries.
• Moral Event Horizon: While Aurora arguably retained some sympathy after casting the curses seeing as she'd originally intended to curse only her fiance and best friend after they betrayed her and never meant for everyone to be cursed, Aurora really crossed the line by concealing what had happened to the detriment of all the other realms, including murdering her own sister to fake her death rather than confess what happened and killing her former friend purely from spite and jealousy. Aurora went on to commit even worse crimes from there, all in pursuit of power, and expresses no remorse.
• Obvious Judas: Lots of readers stated they guessed that Celeste would end up betraying Isla, citing the fact that Celeste seems just a bit too friendly and helpful to Isla compared to everyone else, as well as her being surprisingly knowledgeable about things despite her youth yet simultaneously vague when explaining things to Isla (who blindly trusts everything she says and does); readers were especially suspicious of Celeste's claims about the bondbreaker, its supposed ability to break curses without following the prophecy and her fixation on finding it, feeling that it all seemed far Too Good to Be True and that it was odd none of the older rulers had ever mentioned or found it already. Sure enough, Celeste was lying about the bondbreaker's nature so that Isla would help her find it for her own nefarious purposes. The additional twist that Celeste is actually Aurora isn't so obvious, though some readers argue that's mostly due to the opposite issue of not having enough foreshadowing.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Lightlark became better known for the controversy around its author Alex Aster and the marketing, to the point a lot of people heard of it via the controversy first and some people are more interested in what it means for the publishing industry than the book itself. The controversy can be boiled down to accusations of false advertising and the author misrepresenting herself, and rumours of Aster being a so-called "industry plant". While there's no solid evidence for Aster being an industry plant (especially as she'd already had two other novels published) it wouldn't be inaccurate to say many readers felt the marketing was misleading, such as pointing out that several scenes, lines and tropes that Aster had promoted as being in the book are nowhere to be found in the finished product, not even in a rewritten form. Things then got even messier with Aster's editor going onto online book groups, including sub-Reddits, to defend the book, and Lightlark getting review-bombed on Goodreads by people who felt Aster had deceived them (some of whom hadn't even read the book yet).
• Padding: The various demonstrations and trials early in the Centennial don't add much to the overall plot progression, characterization or worldbuilding, and have little to no relevance to what happens later in the novel besides determining which ruler decides who pairs up with whom. Many of these scenes could've been condensed or removed without affecting much of the story. Given that the Centennial lasts 100 days but one of the rules is that the rulers can't start trying to kill each other until Day 50, these early sections of the Centennial are mostly there to fill up time.
• So Bad, It's Good: A large chunk of the series' readers find it entertaining because of its out-of-left-field plot twists, rampant cliches, convoluted worldbuilding and magic system, stereotypical characters and cheesy dialogue; some readers have mentioned they can enjoy the series by approaching it less as a serious fantasy story and more as a parody of YA romantasy literature.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Isla and Grim are instantly attracted to each other when they meet at the Centennial, with Grim acting extremely familiar and flirtatious with Isla despite them being strangers prior to this. Isla frequently reciprocates his flirting and confides in him, even though she's had a sheltered upbringing and is positively scandalised by the thought of seducing someone, she's warned by everyone (including Grim himself) that he's untrustworthy and she acknowledges he could be manipulating her. Their relationship mostly consists of mutual flirting and making out, with little development or explanation as to why they're into each other beyond basic physical attraction/lust, yet Grim is eventually proclaiming his undying love to Isla and saying he'd do anything for her. Grim suggests the reason for their attraction is that they're both perceived by others as monsters, but the story doesn't build on this much. It makes more sense when it's revealed Grim and Isla had already met and fallen in love a year earlier, only for Isla to have lost her memories of this. However, because this occurs entirely off-page and we only have Grim's word to go on - who has been lying to Isla this whole time - it doesn't help make their current romance convincing. It also doesn't help that Grim erased Isla's memories without her permission as part of a scheme (which makes his blatant attempts to seduce her even odder as it works against his plans) and hid things like her true parentage from her, making their relationship seem unbalanced and manipulative rather than truly loving; notably, Isla rejects Grim upon learning this.
  • Isla and Oro start out disliking and distrusting each other, but slowly develop mutual trust and respect as they try to break the curses together. They develop a fairly convincing friendship, only for it to be suddenly revealed in the climax that they've fallen in love, to the point Oro can use Isla's Wildling abilities to save her life. While this is supposed to be a surprising moment, for some readers it was shocking for the wrong reasons given that there wasn't much in Isla and Oro's interactions, nor Isla's inner monologue, to suggest they were falling in love beyond a few hints (with some readers missing the romance angle entirely); up until a few chapters ago Isla was fixated entirely on Grim as a romantic partner and only appeared to think of Oro in platonic terms, when she trusted him at all. Even in-universe, Isla and Oro are depicted as bewildered at the revelation they're now in love, which intentionally or not reflected many readers' reactions to the abruptness of their Love Epiphany.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many readers found Celeste/Aurora to be underwritten and underutilised, especially given they're the main villain. While Aurora's false identity as Celeste is present from the beginning, her personality is entirely faked so it tells us little about the real Aurora (Celeste also doesn't get much depth beyond being Isla's friend and does little of importance on-page; she even spends a few chapters comatose). Aurora only appears as herself for a few chapters at the end before being killed off and receives scant characterization beyond being a generic fantasy villain with no clear motive for wanting to Take Over the World besides For the Evulz. Aurora's backstory and original motive for cursing everyone (she was trying to curse her unfaithful fiance and backstabbing best friend for running off together but lost control of the magic, then lost her fiance again when he sacrificed himself trying to break the curses she cast) could've been used to give her more nuance (not to mention she initially shares the protagonists' goal of breaking the curses) but the story doesn't capitalise on this. Many readers found her motives to be underdeveloped, cliched and even a tad sexist given she's a female villain largely driven by romantic jealousy. A few readers wished that Celeste wasn't Aurora, seeing as she provided Isla with a close relationship with someone besides her love interests and it would've avoided making Isla the only significant female character who isn't a backstabbing jerkass.
  • Azul is widely agreed to be one of the most underused and undeveloped of the main cast. On the surface he seems interesting, using flashy clothes and a carefree persona to hide a more calculating mind and his heartbreak over the loss of his husband. Unfortunately, Azul never gets much development beyond this, is absent for large chunks of the book and is so irrevelant most of the time he could easily have been written out. His supposed cunning is also undermined given that he figures out Celeste is Aurora and poisons her to incapacitate her, but utterly fails to explain this or warn anyone, and was foolish enough to leave his ring as evidence. It's particularly frustrating for readers given Azul is the only ruler confirmed to be a person of colour, as well as being one of only two gay characters, but the way he's handled makes his inclusion feel like mere tokenism (especially given that Lightlark was marketed as having a "diverse" cast).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Isla being unaffected by the Wildling curse results in some missed opportunities for the story. For one thing, there could be a lot more tension in the romances if Isla knew she would potentially be forced to kill the man she falls in love with, or be killed by him in self-defence (this would also result in her entire realm dying, or it could potentially wipe out the Nightshades or Sunlings given her love interests are the rulers of these realms, so there's a great deal more at stake here in addition to the tragic romance). This would place added pressure on Isla to break the curses before things get to that stage. Having the main protagonist be forced to eat human hearts could also raise some interesting moral dilemmas for Isla and tie-in with the theme of what she's willing to do to survive and save her people, but because Isla doesn't need to eat hearts this issue is skirted around entirely.
  • Several readers have pointed out that the villain's plot would've been more streamlined and closely-connected to the main quest if Celeste had been manipulating Isla to find the Heart of Lightlark rather than the bondbreaker/bondmaker. Besides introducing the Heart, its powers and its connection to the curses much earlier in the story (as opposed to the midpoint) it would more clearly explain why Celeste needs Isla to help her, given the specification that only a Wildling, Sunling or Nightshade can find and properly use it. It would also avoid the problems with the bondbreaker plot, which a lot of readers found to be either so irrelevant for most of the story it felt like a dragged-out optional side quest, or that its supposed abilities were so overly-convenient and vaguely-explained it was obviously a trick.
• Uncertain Audience: Many reviewers have noted that Lightlark's plot and setting are better suited to a Middle Grade fantasy novel, as the plot has enjoyable moments (usually when it's being a straight-forward adventure tale) and some of the more shallow or nonsensical parts of the worldbuilding wouldn't matter so much in a fantasy novel aimed at a younger audience.^note notably, the author's previous works are middle grade fantasy books. However, the novel was marketed as Young Adult and contains teen/adult-oriented elements, such as strong violence, sexual content, the dark implications of the setting, a love triangle subplot and main protagonist Isla being around 19; the marketing was also geared towards readers who are fans of Sarah J. Maas and the like (Maas especially is known for "romantasy" books that are definitely aimed at older teens and adults). The mature content makes Lightlark inappropriate or unappealing for kids, but the story and writing can feel too contrived and simplistic to appeal to many older fantasy readers. Some adult readers also felt that because it was trying to appeal to a younger audience, it had to hold back on the sexual content (making the marketing feel misleading for promising "spicy" romance) and gloss over the truly grimdark moments such as the implications of the curses (Wildling's and Starling's are especially horrifying), leaving Lightlark stuck in an unsatisfying middle ground that couldn't truly realise its potential.
• The Un-Twist: Everything about Grim screams "bad guy" right from the moment he's introduced (he has darkness-based powers, wears black spiky armour, constantly goes on about killing people and being untrustworthy, is hated by everyone save Isla and even his name is sinister-sounding), to the point some readers assumed it would turn out he wasn't. Surprisingly, it's revealed he is actually a villain, albeit in league with the Big Bad as opposed to being the lead antagonist.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: A not insignificant number of readers aren't too clear on how to pronounce Isla's name. The official audiobook pronounces it as "eyes-la". However, Isla is also a given name from Scotland, pronounced "eye-la" (with the "s" being silent) and the Spanish word for island, which is pronounced closer to "ees-la".

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