Rather, in the last few chapters, the main villain appears, gathers people together, and goes through a laundry list of twists more inexplicable than the last, some of which defy established rules of the world, and most of which make no sense. The book being something like a twisty thriller is not correct either. It’s unclear, as all the worldbuilding is.Īnd Isla… she does lie, yes, but can one cheat when there truly is no game? And betray– she definitely doesn’t do that. The Wildling curse is not quite as it sounds- rather, they go feral and try to kill whoever they fall in love with. A ruler dying to break the curses is not even in the prophecy. Each curse is far, far from uniquely wicked. The six rulers are not all hiding something. And it plainly is not deadly in the slightest. It doesn’t appear, it’s not uniquely magical, it doesn’t summon them. To survive, Isla must lie, cheat, and betray… even as love complicates everything.įilled with secrets, deception, romance, and twists worthy of the darkest thrillers, Lightlark is a must-read for fans of legendary fantasy writers Marie Lu, Marissa Meyer, and Leigh Bardugo.Īlmost every detail of the above is a lie.Įvery 100 years, the island of Lightlark is accessible. They are feared and despised, and are counting on Isla to end their suffering by succeeding at the Centennial. Isla Crown is the young ruler of Wildling – a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with. To destroy the curses, one ruler must die. The Centennial offers the six rulers one final chance to break the curses that have plagued their realms for centuries. The invitation is a summons – a call to embrace victory and ruin, baubles and blood. Normally I don’t bother sharing these, but you’ll see- Lightlark defies itself in every way, its plot thesis very much full of lies about its content.Įvery 100 years, the island of Lightlark appears to host the Centennial, a deadly game that only the rulers of six realms are invited to play. LightLark is a YA fantasy with the following premise. Saw early reviews were resoundingly negative and knew I had to hop on. I heard very suddenly about a bad book causing drama online and went poking. It was fairly suspicious too when many reputable established YA authors started promoting and praising the book, despite it being… what it is. For example, living without debt with her wealthy family is something many writers can’t afford to do, let alone people, and money also offers more opportunities for networking and advertising. People accused her of using nepotism or being an industry plant, which isn’t true, but it can’t be ignored that her very wealthy background offers a lot of privilege. She comes from extreme privilege and her twin sister is a young businesswoman worth over 200 million. She presents herself as a very self-made person, but she actually had two middle-grade books and an agent already- until poor sales and her obsession with Lightlark lost her the agent. People looked too at her claims- ‘ten years of rejection’ a key term. She sold it on tropes that don’t really apply. She hyped up a lot of the ‘spicy’ content and specific scenes, and readers found the actual book lacking. Not only is it bad (I have a whole review below this all about that), it also doesn’t deliver what she promised. So here’s the twist… or not really, if you know how TikTok and the world online works: LightLark is bad. It sold movie rights too, which is pretty common in book deals but added to the hype, and Aster also was pretty big on bragging about this fact. But still, it went viral, and soon she had a six-figure (aka 100,000 or more) publishing deal for two books of LightLark. It’s a pretty fine pitch for a book, but to me isn’t exactly gripping. You can view the original ‘pitch’ here– a fifteen-second slapshot of some basic images, her scrolling through a word doc, and a hair flip by the author. It was sold on and by that mysterious place. The Hype and Hate of LightLark onlineīut Lightlark is more than that. It would fit in on the dregs of an amateur writing site with eerie perfection. This is a book written by an author who is not a writer. Lightlark is joyless, a husk beyond parody, a checklist of every Island of Blood and Bone and Glass and Hearts that has come out in the last five years, built and sold on tropes and aesthetic boards. Even in quite bad books there’s a joy to them, in things that they get right, or have potential, or even the silliness. I’m not a ‘hater’: I go into any bad book with a very open mind, knowing bad is subjective, and I’ve been surprised before. I don’t really shy away from it in real life, online I tend to cloak it so I don’t get mauled in real-time. Or find it on podcast apps as audio only. You can listen/watch this review in a 4 hour video form if you’d prefer.
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