#every time i watch a video essay i need everyone to listen to me restate the video essay in my own worse words

[wander-wren]

today i am angry because lightlark keeps (kept? i think it’s dead) getting compared to the hunger games

i don’t know if tumblr saw the lightlark drama and i’m not interested in rehashing it especially bc some of it got uncomfortably personal towards the author at one point and also it was months ago so just! suffice it to say lightlark is a book by alex aster, it is a terrible book, and i did not put myself through the torture of reading it but i did watch a 7.5 hour video essay

(i think the essay could have been 6 or even 5 hours, and i think this person went a little too hard on the critique at some points, so that rubbed me wrong a little but it was also extremely thorough and i was bored.)

but anyway. one of the big things about lightlark is that it was marketed as “hunger games x acotar” which is….fine. but every time someone compares a book to thg i’m automatically suspicious because no one does it right.

and of course, neither did lightlark.

the book is a complete disaster so i will try to stick only to the relevant points but seriously. there’s so much.

the official premise of lightlark is that six realms in a fantasy world have been cursed for hundreds of years. each curse is (supposed to be) a twisted version of the realms magic, and the curses also cut them off from their main island of lightlark. except for once every century, when the island becomes accessible for 100 days and the six rulers travel there to try to break the curses via death tournament.

but then you get to the book and learn that the curses are only broken if a ruler dies without an heir, since their special ruler magic just transfers to the heir and no one gets anywhere. this was only a caveat so we could have a young protagonist ruler, i’m sure. ALSO, IMPORTANTLY, if a ruler dies without an heir, their entire realm also dies.

and obviously that’s bad so the rulers have to consider carefully who they want to kill, and they keep putting the killing off bc it’s not easy to condemn thousands of people to death.

so why, pray tell, the FUCK, are you doing a death tournament every century.

(they’re not, by the way. the first 50 days are dedicated to some demonstrations that are definitely hunger games inspired and meant to allow the rulers to forge alliances bc even though there’s only six of them they’re also required to partner up for some reason?? but there’s almost no fighting and almost all the fight scenes end very quickly with no real damage to the main character. it got really annoying really fast.)

but like, let’s pretend for half a second that lightlark IS about six rulers fighting to the death to break a curse. it’s still not even close to being like the hunger games.

the hunger games was about teenagers under constant surveillance forced to perform and then kill for the masses, many because they weren’t rich enough to buy their way out or into good training.

no one except the rulers and the essential staff is even allowed on lightlark, and no i don’t know why that is. and the characters spend the entire book trying to avoid killing each other as much as possible (well, minus two cases) bc they want to find another way to break the curses. i don’t understand why it’s billed as this big bloody dangerous battle even in-universe when everyone involved really REALLY doesn’t want to fight.

also, this isn’t related to the thg nonsense, but if i’m talking about lightlark i have to talk about That Twist. alex aster really loves her twists and is very proud that no one can see them coming but that’s because reading the twists is like watching the street for cars, then trying to cross and getting hit by an airplane.

as i said, the characters keep trying to find a new way to break the curse, even though it’s been 500 years and many of the rulers have been alive that long (no i don’t know if that’s normal or a ruler perk, it’s not explained) so they SHOULD have tried all of these fairly obvious methods by now but SURE, JAN. this book would make so much more sense if it was only the first century and everyone was still scrambling to figure the curses out. but whatever. alex aster wanted her protagonist to be in a love triangle with two 500yo men

(there’s nothing inherently wrong with that and i actually really loved grim, not for the reasons i was supposed to bc the writing was bad, but i liked him, until—well, put a pin in that.)

ANYWAY. THE POINT. our protagonist, who i guess i should say is named isla, needs to find “the heart of lightlark” which “blooms where darkness meets light.” everyone assumes they’re looking for a super special flower but they can’t find it. then, isla decides this random-ass bird that’s only almost gotten her killed twice is DEFINITELY going to show them the heart, so they follow the bird.

and at dawn, the bird lays a fucking egg. and it falls out of the nest. and cracks. and the yolk. floats. into the air. in time with the rising sun.

I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW MUCH IT IS A LITERAL FUCKING EGG

no foreshadowing. isla has an internal monologue where she thinks she always did see the moon as an eggshell and the sun as yolky, but the yolky sun description happens twice in 400+ pages and the egg moon description happens Never, so like. shoutout to aster’s copy editor??

i can’t take this book seriously bc it is a literal egg an EGG isla has to carry an EGG YOLK to break the curses. there are scenarios where i could accept that but this Serious YA Fantasy Book is not one of them.

and since i mentioned the one thing i did actually like, i will explain isla’s one love interest, grim. technically her only love interest bc nothing about the other guy struck me as romantic but idk maybe her inner monologue was yearning or smthn. anyway, grim.

grim is from the least trusted/most stigmatized realm. he’s described as a huge hulking nightmare of a man, a demon, every badscary description under the sun. but like. the times he is alone with isla? he takes her to a chocolate shop during their first meeting and hand feeds her truffles, which is a little weird and overly sexual but…still. chocolate. then he hides her from another ruler no questions asked even though he has every right to be suspicious. he opens up to her and shit. he calls her “hearteater” (it’s a reference to her curse, her people eat human hearts to survive, no that doesn’t make sense either) (also isla is magically not cursed so our protagonist doesn’t have to be scary and gross and worry about that during the novel haha!) (guess what else is never properly explained….)

anyway grim calls her “hearteater” but like, almost in a teasing/endearing way, which is fun, and when they start to fall in love he just calls her “heart” which is ALSO cute imo i’m weak for nicknames. he’s like. the narration and aster really really want me to think he’s the scary bad boy but he’s just such a soft dude.

and then. ohhhh, and then. one of the other hit-by-airplane twists is that the weird sexy dreams isla has been having all book about grim? they’re not dreams. they’re memories. the two of them used to be together for about a year before the book started, and grim erased her memories as part of a plot to betray her yada yada i was braindead by this point so i don’t fully remember all 17 elements of the betrayal. but like…..first of all that retroactively makes all of their interactions but especially the chocolate thing kind of weird and creepy? also WHAT was the FUCKING POINT pf making her forget she loves you if you’re literally just going to seduce her immediately anyway. like. the book makes a halfhearted effort at having grim avoid her but it really didn’t feel like he was purposely being mean to push her away. because every time they did interact he was so sweet! sir!!

anyway he betrayed isla probably mostly to keep up the ambiguity of the love triangle and so aster could brag about more twists and i hate that bc WHY. he was doing so well.

anyway. i got so far off track. lightlark is a wild fucking ride and i did not even scratch the surface of the plot-hole filled mess that this book is. my sister does own it and i did check a few things bc i straight up could not believe they were real (like the egg. i cannot get over the egg.) so.

also this book only got published bc it went viral on booktok so that kind of tells you everything you need to know. the good news is it does give me some measure of hope/an ego boost bc if lightlark exists in the world…..surely whatever i’m doing can’t be too bad.

#wren wrambles #lightlark #anti lightlark #thats a tag?? #DOES tumblr have a lightlark community?? #im so late to all of the discourse #booktok #booktok cringe #every time i watch a video essay i need everyone to listen to me restate the video essay in my own worse words #thank you