The Lightlark Series by Alex Aster

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

One POV, series, Young Adult

Isabella’s Rating: ★★

LightLark is a very controversial series that has circulated around BookTok for a while now. Every century, an island called Lightlark appears for a tournament called “the Centennial.” For 100 days, the rulers of 6 realms have to work together in order to fulfill the prophecy and get rid of the curses in each realm. While this sounds like a relatively simple plot, it is explained in a very confusing way throughout the book.

Lightalk is the first book in a fantasy series including Nightbane, and the newest release Skyshade. There is rumor that a fourth book is already being written, and the number of books going to be in this series is unknown. LightLark was Alex Aster’s debut novel, and got very popular because of her Tiktok promotion for this book.

This book has a lot of controversy online; most people either love it or hate it. After I first finished LightLark, I was indifferent toward it. But as I sit with the series, I’m on the hate side. When diving into the first book, you jump right into the perspective of Isla Crown, who is the ruler of the wildlings. And essentially all of the realms are dying because of their curses. For example, the night realm can’t go out at night anymore, and water is deadly to the water realm, and so on. But as the plot of the book is being explained, the first impression of it is very messy, like the author didn’t even know what she wanted from the book. I have read LightLark and NightBane and still don’t know how to win the centennial which is a very large part of the plot.

One thing I did like in LightLark was the different “trials” in the game. This game isn’t like The Hunger Games where a bunch of people are selected and all go into one arena, it’s more like a series of meetings that the rulers go to to show off their powers. I loved seeing all of the different things that the rulers can do, as well as how Isla goes about the challenges.
One other aspect I really enjoyed was learning about how Isla grew up and trained for the centennial. It was one of the most interesting parts, in my opinion.

Overall, LightLark was a waste of my time, and so was NightBane, but hopefully the series will get better as the author has more experience writing. I would recommend the books if you have nothing else to read, but don’t go into the books thinking they’re going to change your life.