#Nightbane spoilers

[incorrect-lightlark-facts]

The rest of the sticky notes:

- Kind of fucked up that the dreks used to be people. Fortunately they were Nightshades so it's okay.

- I love the idea of Nightbane as a potent drug with healing properties when processed correctly, because I'm a scientist. The metaphor for Isla as "both curse and cure," however, is incredibly forced. Also not a strong enough motif to justify having the book named after it.

- Please please please stop with the segues into the flashbacks. It reads like a fifth grade essay I'm begging you

- Being able to teleport everywhere kind of kills the tension and urgency

- All Of The Spicy Scenes Are The Same

- Also if the book is allowed to have this many straight-up sex scenes, I kind of feel like they should also be allowed to swear, or at least use less tepid insults. Isla calling Grim a bastard or a son of a bitch would soothe my soul

- I want to scruff Grim like a kitten and toss him in the ocean. He's still not a good character and he has no personality and he's awful. Every time I feel a shred of warmth for Grim I have to remember that it's because my version of him is so unrecognizable against canon that I probably need to start from scratch again just to be able to call him the same character

- Cleo ily never change (but also shoehorning in a dead son just to give her a reason to side with Nightshade is so bland I'm losing my sense of taste)

- GRIM MENTIONS GODS. WHO ARE THE GODS.

- And They Were Married (Oh My Unnamed Gods They Were Married)

- Is. Is this a normal amount of sex scenes for a YA novel.

- Some of this feels like borderline retconning (eg. Isla surviving being shot through the heart in the first book not just because of the Heart of Lightlark but also because of the ill-defined power of the love bond)

- No training montage for Isla learning to steal Grim's powers :(

- There Are Hot Air Balloons. The Event Is Called The Launching Of The Orbs.

- EGG CAMEO

- Grim and Isla have a moment where they both gush about everything they've learned about each other, and it's nothing. It feels like they don't know each other at all, but of course we're supposed to find their relationship heartwarming and intimate

- Am I going to have to make a spicy sideblog for this oh my god

- Pointless baby dragon. Did I zone out at the wrong time or did nothing become of that?

- The Terra fight is also nothing :((((

- Just like the first book, so many bombs are dropped at the end of the book because simply resolving the existing plot threads isn't enough I guess. Anyway the founders of Lightlark came from another world and created Lightlark in its image like reckless teenage gods but anyway GUYS there are HOT AIR BALLOONS

- Unearned final battle. Book once again lacks the guts to kill a major character and expects us to be moved by the deaths of interchangeable background cast members

- Damn crow-caller is right this REALLY aggressively sets up a third book. I'm wondering what middle book syndrome looks like for something like the Lightlark Saga and whether this is it

- This book was Not Good. It feels like poor fanfiction of the first book and I cannot stress enough that I enjoyed every second of it no matter how frustrating it was. Thank you Ms. Aster I owe you my life

[mossnrocksnbogwater]

Okay so I finished Nightbane, the lightlark sequel today. And I've uhm. Noticed something. (among many things)

Did anybody else notice how every queer character wasn't allowed to have a partner? I'm not saying that queer characters have to be married or something to BE queer, but it's a little strange to me.

Azul: His husband is dead and for most of Lightlark he was just. mourning that still? and in Nightbane there wasn't really any focus on him except for the beginning in which he was in a few scenes

Cleo: it's acknowledged that she's bisexual but she isn't allowed to have a partner. she has a son but he's dead. and just. She's Alone, again, she doesn't have that sense of community. (no one does in Lightlark/Nightbane, Aster seems to be. not great at writing characters who actually fucking like each other)

Enya: So it's mentioned offhandedly that she doesn't want to have a wife because she knows when she dies. That's kind of a lame reason imo but to each their own.

In isolation I think that this is fine. I mean, sure, people don't have to be in relationships. But together it feels a Little Weird that all the queer characters aren't allowed by the narrative to actually have a partner or like. romantic happiness

[loudcheesecakefan]

Spoilers for Nightbane below the cut

Just finished Nightbane for Alex Aster and what the fuck was that ending ! It felt like I was missing a couple chapters. Is there a third book that I'm not aware of or what ? Yes, there was the plot twist that Isla and Grimm are married, but it just felt anticlimactic for the end of that book.

[i-am-church-the-cat]

Okay no one talk to me bc I haven’t watched the race yet but I just finished Nightbane by Alex Aster and am currently Losing It. I need the third book rn.

[shiningtalons]

[bee-ina-boat]

Wen u hava a hyperfixation but the fandom for that thing is tiny and quiet .____.

[explodingsilver]

Book review: Nightbane by Alex Aster

Lightlark…2!

I’ve already made my thoughts on the first book quite clear (read that review first if you haven’t already; I don’t feel like rehashing all the context), and were I a bit more sensible, I would have stayed away from its sequel. I am, however, somewhat of a literary masochist, so of course I borrowed this from Hoopla the day it was released (November 7th, not too long ago). Very pleased that I was able to write this review much faster than the first one, though this review is shorter, at only 2,100 words long. Was the experience worth it? I don’t know, you tell me.

(There are spoilers ahead, on the off chance that you care)

The plot and style

After the events of the first book, Isla is trying to learn her several powers as well as get a hold of this “leading two different realms” thing while trying to move on from getting betrayed by four different people she used to love. At a celebration for a Wildling holiday (in which no Wildlings other than herself are in attendance), Grim magically crashes the party from afar and announces that the Nightshade army will destroy Lightlark in thirty days. The other realms start preparing for the invasion, and Isla tries to recover all her lost memories of being with Grim in hope that they will reveal what his goal is and how to stop him, especially after receiving a prophetic vision of him standing in the ruins of a village he destroyed with his powers.

Put simply, if the plot of the first book is split between “Isla and Celeste search for a MacGuffin” and “Isla and Oro search for a different MacGuffin”, this book is split between “Isla and Oro do basic defense building stuff” and “Isla remembers the time she and Grim searched for a third MacGuffin”. There’s also a subplot about a rebel group trying to capture Isla, but this is inconsequential and could’ve been dropped entirely.

It feels like there was an attempt to address some of the criticism of the first book, but not nearly enough of an attempt. On the one hand, metaphor usage has improved to the point where it actually feels like it was written by a human being and not a neural network (no throbbing and raw glaciers this time around), the book acknowledges that no longer having a power no one else had in the first place is less bad than having a maximum lifespan of 25, and Isla realizes that Grim let her win the duel in the first book and that she did not win against a 500+ year old army general on the strength of her own skill. On the other hand, it does not address questions like “how does Starling society even function if none of them ever live to 26?” or “if Oro always knows when someone is lying, why didn’t he call bullshit the moment Celeste said ‘Hi, my name is Celeste’?”

Speaking of that last thing: I didn’t mention it in my review of the first book because it didn’t really feel relevant to anything, but each ruler has a ‘flair’, a special power that is unique to them. Oro’s is that he can always tell when someone is lying. Grim’s is that he can teleport. This book reveals that Isla’s is that she is immune to curses. Glad to finally have an answer to one of my biggest questions of the first book (checks notes) 75% of the way through the second one, when this explanation should’ve been given the moment we learned the original stated reason does not apply.

Wildling elixir and its (lack of) consequences

Much of this book centers around the presence of the Wildling elixir from the first book, a potion that is super effective at healing wounds. As you might imagine, this kills a lot of the tension. Used in conjunction with Isla’s magical teleportation device, “teleport away, use Wildling elixir, teleport back” becomes an easy way to recover when the characters get their flesh ripped apart. And indeed, they do this all the time! The book tries to nerf this strategy by stating that the elixir is rare due to the flower used to make it being rare, but 1) this is at odds with Isla’s very liberal use of it, and 2) aren’t the Wildlings the “make flowers grow instantly” people? Why can’t they just use those powers on it like they do for every other plant?

There was a bit of potential for an interesting theme with these flowers: Isla eventually learns that while the Wildlings use them to make the healing elixir, the Nightshades use those exact same flowers to make the titular nightbane, which is basically fantasy heroin. I was intrigued by this motif (I like it when things have a dual nature like that), but unfortunately this doesn’t really go anywhere, other than some vague gesturing at “wow, just like Isla”. Speaking of Isla…

Isla

This time around, Isla is clearly traumatized by the events of the last book, trusts very few people, and is aware that she is in over her head with leading two realms full of subjects she barely knows while also being the king’s unofficial consort. Not a bad start for a character arc, but in effect, she has gone from naive and impulsive to naive, impulsive, and guilty about those things while making little effort to amend them. It feels like her attitude towards leadership is basically “I’m allowed to call myself a bad leader but nobody is allowed to agree with me on that.”

Much of Isla’s internal conflict in this book is based around her Nightshade heritage on her father's side. She is convinced that there is an inherently evil part of her because her father was from the Inherently Evil Realm. This may not come as a surprise, but I do not like when stories have such a thing as an Inherently Evil Realm. Not only does Nightshade fill this role, but the book never even gestures at pushing back against Isla’s conviction that her heritage taints her, and in fact ends up affirming it.

This book really told me to my face that Isla is the first person in millennia to have both Wildling and Nightshade powers. I do not buy that even for a moment. Maybe my disbelief is because the series discarded the “only one realm’s power set per person, even if their parents are from different realms” thing in the same book it was introduced, and I would expect there to be Wildling/Nightshade couples way more often than once per few millennia. But no, that highly plausible thing can’t happen because then Isla won’t be the most special person currently alive!

The other characters

Sadly, the rest of the cast did not improve, and in some instances, got worse.

Oro going from "world weary, distant king" to "official love interest" has unfortunately sanded down all his interesting aspects, and everything I liked about his character in the first book now takes a backseat to being overly protective of Isla and making stock Love Interests threats to kill anyone who hurts her. I swear, he turned so generic that some of his lines were indistinguishable from something Grim would say. But hey, if nothing else, he at least didn’t get character assassinated like I was sure he would!

While Grim actually does stuff in this book, he still has no personality traits other than what's included in the Sexy Villain Starter Pack. Like, it actually upsets me that he's such an absolute nothing of a character. Everything about him begins and ends with “what if the villain…was sexy?”, and there are about a morbillion stories out there that provide more interesting answers to this question. You’d think focusing on him this much would be the perfect opportunity to give him any unique traits at all, but Aster certainly did not take that opportunity, nor did she ever answer the question of why he likes Isla, despite the sheer number of pages dedicated to their relationship.

As for everyone else? Azul, our beloved token gay black man who runs his realm like a democracy, still receives woefully little page time. Cleo, the bitchy ruler who hates Isla for no reason, receives even less, but at least we get to hear about her dead son, I guess. Ella, Isla's Starling assistant, is mentioned so rarely I wonder if Aster forgot she exists. There are also several new average citizen characters introduced, but none of them are remotely interesting. They're all defined solely by whether or not they're on Isla's side. It says something when the best new character is Isla's new animal companion (a panther named Lynx, who rules because he does not give a shit about Isla).

The chili pepper emoji, as the TikTokers call it

Because I must do as the book did and address the topic of sex before I get to the final important bits.

This book is much hornier than the first one, but in a way that makes large parts of it feel like one of those dreams where you're trying to have sex with someone but your attempts keep getting interrupted. I regret that I did not count the number of times Isla was about to fuck someone and then got denied for some reason or another.

There are three times she actually succeeds, and luckily these scenes do not read like they were written by Sarah J. Maas, despite her obvious influence on everything else. This doesn't seem like much of a compliment, but this series needs all the W’s it can get. That's not to say everything is fine, though. There's one scene that's obviously using all the "first time" stuff for characterization, and I can't help but feel this would be more effective had they not already slept together a few short chapters beforehand? Like c’mon, all you had to do was switch the order of those two scenes.

The ending

Shortly before the Nightshade army is set to storm the island and destroy it, Isla learns Grim’s (and Cleo’s) real motivation for doing so: there’s a portal on the island leading to another world, one in which the original founders of Lightlark came from before making Lightlark in the image of the world they left. Grim and Cleo want to open that portal and reach the other world, which will just so happen to destroy the island. They’re not actually trying to kill everyone for the evulz. Isla, in her naivety, accidentally opens it for them before they even arrive.

During the final battle, while trying to steal Grim's powers so she can kill him and save Lightlark, Isla finally remembers the last two important memories: 1) she and Grim actually got married right before he memory-wiped her, and 2) what she thought was a prophetic vision of him killing an entire village was actually a memory of her doing so. Convinced that she'll accidentally kill Oro if she stays with him, she agrees to go with Grim, whom she just realized she is still in love with, in exchange for a promise that he'll withdraw the attack.

I cannot remember the last time I had this strong of an "are you fucking kidding me" reaction to the end of a book. But after some thinking, I decided that it actually makes for some great tragedy material. “Traumatized woman with a supportive partner becomes convinced that she’s too horrible to be with him and goes back to her terrible husband” would make for a good story if this was a more grounded book written by anyone else. Alas, this concept just had to be tackled here.

I also naively thought that because the deal was for two books, that means this would be a duology. But it feels like there will be a third book, and I'm hoping there is, not out of any desire for more (unsure how much more I can take), but because it would be straight-up authorial malpractice to end the series on that note.

Conclusion

This honestly wasn’t quite as bad as the first book, but the problems that persisted outweighed the ones that got fixed, and the severe case of Middle Book Syndrome certainly did not help its case. It’s a very small improvement stylistically, but when the nicest things I can say about it are “there were some concepts that could’ve made for an interesting story in the hands of a better author” and “the sex scenes aren’t atrocious” and “the cat is kinda cool”, then I feel justified in calling it terrible overall. It’s a good thing that Lightlark…3! is presumably a long ways away, because I will need all that time to recover from having read this.

[not-an-alien-i-swear]

thoughts on nightbane cuz i can’t rlly remember lightlark

spoilers ahead!!!!

okay this book was Interesting. i don’t really know how to feel abt it.

first of all, too much sex. maybe this is bcuz i hate reading smut or even slightly sexual scenes, but there was WAY too much unnecessary sex in this book. there are ways to show grim n isla’s bond(?) with eachother without using sex!!! sex ≠ love guys

+ the entire conflict of nightbane could have been avoided, or at least resolved much easier, had the characters just COMMUNICATED. i’ll elaborate more later.

also, i hate grim. i DESPISE him. fuck u grimshaw.

i feel like this book REALLY tries to get u to like grim, or at least not despise him. bcuz he’s Broken Boy!!!! he’s Misunderstood!!!! he’s Not Really A Villain, he’s Morally Grey!!!! and sure, some of these may be true. but in my humble opinion, grim is an irredeemable prick.

maybe i’m being too harsh. im gonna break down my thinking.

first of all, grim/isla and the general love triangle(?) between grim, isla, and oro sucked. i’m sorry, it was so bad. oro is OBVIOUSLY the better option. like, come on. he’s a MUCH better person. easily way better than grim.

another thing i DESPISED abt this book was the characters and relationships.

first of all, THE FUCKING AGE GAPS. ik, ik, WILD, 100s of years of age gaps r extremely common in fantasy books, and they always make me feel weird. but these ones seemed especially creepy, especially grim/isla

to put it simply, i HATE grim/isla. worst pairing in the entire series. its so unhealthy that reading them HURTS.

first of all, the imbalance of power is WILD bro. grim is SO MUCH MORE EXPERIENCED than isla at everything. bros been alive for 100s of years. ISLA IS LIKE 20. grim has seen wars, fought countless battles, seen countless deaths. isla, however, is 20ish and SHELTERED AF. girlie has barely even seen her own realm. before grim, i don’t think she’s fought anyone before, and certainly hasn’t killed. isla is young, she was naive. i have more thoughts but i think u get the idea.

oro/isla is WAY better once you get past the also horrendous age gap/power imbalance. bcuz oro cares SO MUCH. almost too much. you can tell how isla is everything to him. and sure, grim was the same way. but he doesn’t go about it the same way. oro is gentle, kind, and patient in a way grim was not. not only that, but he was morally a much better person than grim. wtf.

now, cleo’s character. cleo’s character had SO MUCH POTENTIAL. deadass i was ROOTING FOR HER at some points. but then she goes and joins the bad side(?) and she’s forgotten abt. she could have done/bee sm more, and she was, for a bit. but then it felt like the author just forgot abt her, and she was cast off. I LOVE CLEO.

finally, the main conflict. i wanted to slap the characters half the time. 99% of the conflict could have been solved through communication. this is bad on its own, but for a fantasy book this is HORRIBLE. honestly, i was confused af. i couldn’t even keep track of why the war was happening half the time. so, grim wanted to open the portal to the other world? i bet if he’d sat down with the rest of the rulers and talked he could’ve easily convinced them. and the whole “no isla im doing this for u bcuz i love u sm!” was POINTLESS. just SIT DOWN AND TALK IT OUT. these characters r killing me :(

i have so many more thoughts but i think this is way more than enough for one post.

ik these are all negative but the book wasn’t THAT bad. i actually enjoyed reading it for the most part. it just wasn’t anything even remotely phenomenal.

byebyeeee

[bookstoreb4be]

just finished lightlark and well..

SPOILERS AHEAD

ok i have a couple points so

- the plot to me was rather confusing as in how the world works, what isla was doing i understand but why im not so sure. We are given new bits of info bout the prophecy, curses etc from start to finish which made it hard for me to grasp it although i did semi get it by the end of the book

- grim. i mean he was pretty grim. he spent most of the book toying with isla and lying to her like r u joking 😟

- not a big fan of isla 🙂

- oro personally was my fav character as he actually had growth from being a untrusting person to actually falling inlove with someone compared to grim 🤢 who had the same thing going on the whole book pretty much and isla didnt rlly have any growth

- cleo was a massive missed opportunity to be a great character but we never learn any motives or rlly anything about her to say shes mentioned so often “cleos tryna kill me” “cleo made the curses”

-speaking of after cleo tried to kill isla we dont hear bout her or azul for the rest of the book i mean, azul?!? he tried to kill celeste but why didnt we get isla talking to him and following that up i mean give him smth

- i mistakenly read the nightbane extract and why did we get a flashback scene so early on talking bout some “ill remember” PLEASE 😭

like 2.5(or 3)/5 🤷‍♀️

[bookaddictedrose]

Lightlark Book Review ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is only the first book, I'm reading Nightbane right now, and I'll update it soon.

Overall: 3⭐

Plot: 4.8⭐

Characters: 3⭐

Worldbuilding: 4.2⭐

SPOILERS AHEAD

This book captured my attention immediately. The summary was really interesting, but it was honestly the book cover that did it for me lol

I loved the plot, it was just a bit of hard for me to follow along the entire time, and I had to reread a bunch cause it was so fast-paced.

Each individual character was written well, but I feel like they all...lacked layers? if that makes sense.

And character relationships/dynamics were kinda hard to figure out.

The setting was really descriptive though, and I loved it and the outfits.

Maybe I'm just really dense or oblivious, but I didn't catch any foreshadowing at all, or chemistry between Oro and Isla.

Wow, the amount of plot twists, and the way they just popped out so unexpectedly.

I was rooting for Grim SO MUCH. it kinda reminds me of Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone series (anyone ever read?) in the way there was a sunshine vs darkness love triangle, and sunshine wins.

Needless to say I totally liked the Darkling better. He really reminds me of Grim, and I kept expecting Alina to change her mind.

Overall a good book . . . VERY disappointed in character dynamics, but otherwise would probably? recommend.

Will update once I finish Nightbane.

[last-forkbender]

Nightbane review (book spoiler obviously)

I finished this like a day after I wrote my first lightlark review and the more I think about the series as a whole the more disappointed I am in it. Like I said perviously this book had so much potential and the concept was so intriguing.

Unlike lightlark it had the time to explain the world more giving world building that we should have seen in the first book but at least we got it.

But ultimately the book had so many plot holes and the narration was hard to follow. Slow and boring to rushing new information leaving me grappling and confused on what I’m supposed to be taking from the scene. I should have known that the dark mc was going to be the ultimate love interest but it still disappoints me. It was again just the same toxic book tropes that are most popular on booktok. I honestly don’t know if I can consider it even a good romance book either. The plot twist of the mc being the bride the whole time also irked me because it wasn’t well built and instead just given an immediate flashback of everything the author forgot to mention. As if the author didn’t have time to develop the scenes before the reveal so she just placed them in immediately. This is also a minor pet peeve but the map didn’t make sense geographically either which kind of hurts the world building. The female mc was so annoying in the first part of the book basically acting like a child and wanting to let an entire country be completely dismantled because she wanted to have fun. Its okay to have a childish mc because that is something to overcome or is a trauma response that can make a character feel real. This portrayal of the mc completely betrayed her character in the original book and there was no internal or external battle to overcome this flaw but just was another plot filler.

I am not looking forward to the third book but my stubbornness will force me to read it. I would not recommend this book to anybody who enjoys fantasy world building if you liked the first book vibe then read it but otherwise it’s not the best.

[incorrect-lightlark-facts]

I'm so delighted by how little was learned from the first book.

Three-quarters of the way through, suddenly there's a plot beat about Isla having a flair and being able to save all the realms from dying if their rulers die. People want her to kill Oro. Not having a flair is a curse. Nightshade is still a faceless evil.

There are so many plot points and none of them work and I'm slurping it up like a smoothie

[shiningnikki-addicted]

my sn opinions, bcuz I need to share 'em

A LOT OF SPOILERS Dodora is getting way too much sets Nikki is too cherished by everyone - the player is the god, not Nikki MOMO IS NOT A CAT RAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEUGH *growling noises*/satire we need to have some designing lessons in sn, because I want to be a designer in future, but I don't know how to design :') Qin Yi is the worst character, he was being sus in (also he was in a SECT) the cloud-water visitor event (which is not canon, luckily) and he was just weird all the time + he was k1ll1ng (censored, bc tumblr would be mad), Nightbane did it as well, but he at least didn't take away a life of a LITERAL FISH (also from what I heard, Qin Yi k1ll3d his goldfish when he was 10yo, Idk really) Desire is NOT Lilith's mother (I saw many people saying that she is like her mother and Nightbane is like her father), Nightbane did create Lilith/Ashley (he abandoned her/them tho) and Desire "created" Nightbane, not Lilith (also Desire wasn't in a relationship with her creation (sorry, I don't want to write his name for million times daily), she wasn't in a relationship with anyone, she only tried to seduce Leonid) Aeon x Loen is a mid (AVERAGE, NOT BAD) ship, Aeon x Modric would make more sense Lilith x Mercury is a proship, since Lilith is not adult thanks yall for reading that lol

[abyssaldissonance]

Tfw your daughter scolds you abt how bad your decorating is

[wingsofninewheels]

Does anybody know if Ashley has an SSR or UR Designer's Reflection? I know some designers have multiple rarities.

[megaera-of-pigeon]

If Nightbane and Desire are Lilith’s parents but Desire is also involved with Aphrodia that makes Aphrodia like… the opposite of Lilith’s evil stepmother. Lilith’s Nice and Supportive stepmother.