 Lightlark, that's a name that's been thrown around a lot lately, mostly due to the massive amount of drama surrounding this book and its publication. And the TLDR of that is basically that the author, Alex Astor, is big on TikTok, which I don't have TikTok, so I didn't know that, never heard about it. And she used that fame to sell the book, and it got really big. And there was also some misleading marketing going on there, like some of the things she said were in the book wound up not being in there, and also she may have abused her family connections to get it published, and a lot of other people have covered it in much more detail than I feel like getting into. And if you want a comprehensive write up or whatever, go check that out. For what it's worth, I did not even hear about this at all until I saw Hello Future Me's video on this, so take that for what it's worth. But the thing about all of that is that it doesn't affect the quality of the actual book itself. Like, all the drama around it, it doesn't make it better, it doesn't make it worse, like whatever negative stuff that says about the publishing industry or about the author itself, the book itself stands alone, you know? And I wanted to give it a read and see if like, okay, is it really the most horrible thing ever or are people just exaggerating and getting upset because they don't like the author? And I just wanted to give it a fair shake, you know? And after reading it, I can confidently say that it is bad. It's pretty bad, but I've read worse. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. One quick thing I want to say is that I do think the cover of this book is really cool. Like, you know, it's just a human heart on the cover, but it's surrounded by a bunch of vines and thorns growing on it. And then on top, there's some flowers blooming. It just, it looks cool and it evokes, you know, mysticism and fantasy, which I like, you know? This is a fantasy story. Really? This is a fantasy story and I want fantastical things to happen in there and the cover evokes that. It's once you open it that things get bad. So this was billed as the Hunger Games meets a Court of Thorns and Roses, and kinda, yeah. I mean, I haven't read Akatar nor do I have any desire to do so, but it is definitely the Hunger Games in a fantasy setting. The idea is that there are these six island kingdoms which surround this bigger island kingdom named Lightlark. And Lightlark is constantly surrounded by a raging storm, which means no one can get in or out, but every hundred years that storm lifts and then they hold a centennial, which is a big tournament. And all of these kingdoms used to be one, but then whatever happened happened and caused the storm and it also cursed everybody. So each kingdom has a different curse and this centennial celebration, not celebration, the centennial tournament will allow people to lift the curse on their kingdoms, basically. And in order to do so, they have to kill one of the other rulers. And it's not explained super well and the rules are pretty vague to be honest, but that did catch my attention and I think that's a neat setup. And that's pretty much all I remembered clearly after reading. Like I'm gonna be honest, within like 10 minutes of finishing this, I had already forgotten the majority of what happened in the book. And then I went back over some of it while I was putting my notes together for this video and I kept coming across stuff like, oh, I guess that happened. And then it just went right out of my mind again. And then I looked over my notes again before filming this and went, oh yeah, I guess that is, I guess that's the thing that happened. I do want to say that this setup, while yeah, it is pretty clearly trying to rip off the Hunger Games, it is at least putting a new twist on the concept. You know, it's not just a bunch of people in a small area and then they kill each other and last one standing wins. Like it is a bunch of rulers who are trying to save their whole kingdom. You know, it's not just they're looking after their own lives. They are trying to lift the curse back home. And if when they kill people, they aren't just killing the other person. They're also screwing over everyone else who lives in their kingdom. Like thousands of other people are going to die because of their decision, which makes it a lot more morally questionable to participate in this. And that's interesting, you know. It's a moral question that the Hunger Games really danced around, you know, because like Katniss did kill people in the arena, but the only people she killed were the psychotic career tributes who were specifically there of their own free will. They were after the glory. They weren't forced into it like everybody else. And keep in mind the curses that were placed on all these people are super nasty, like the main character, her kingdom is the kingdom of the wildlings and the people there are cursed to always kill the people that fall in love with them. So, all right, that's that's a thing. And I wish they explored that a bit more, to be honest, because you'd think that if that were the case, then the entire society would just be a society of people being assholes to each other in order to prevent anyone from falling in love with them and in order to prevent people from killing them or them from killing others. And you would have to think like, OK, that would probably really strain their connections and they would have a lot of difficulty forming any sort of real human relationships. Could a society even function that way? And, you know, that'd be interesting, but we don't really explore it. So whatever. And then there's another kingdom where the people are hurt by sunlights. There's another one where they're guaranteed to die before the age of 25. Like there's there's some pretty unpleasant curses there. And the idea that you would be condemning thousands of people to that in order to save yourself and your own home is, you know, some something that could have been really interesting. But again, they do skirt around the moral question here. The main issue with this entire setup is just that the rules are weird and don't make a lot of sense. Like in the Hunger Games, it was very simple. Like you're in this arena, there's some traps and stuff around. And you also have to worry about, you know, starvation and the elements. And there's 24 people there. And the last one standing gets to go home. So get to killing or get to dying. In Light Lark, you, I think, have to kill one of the other rulers. And I think that, like, it has to be a ruler that kills one of the other rulers. So that's why the main character girl who is a queen has to kill one of the others. I think that's how it is. And they're all they're all staying in the same castle. And there's nothing really keeping them there. They can just wander around the entire city that's on the island. And they also the centennial lasts a hundred days. And for the first 50 days, they aren't allowed to kill anybody. And I don't know, it feels like it was trying to be more about politics and interpersonal relationships, which is fine. You could make a fine story about that. But it just seems weird. The setup doesn't call for it. Like you could easily, if you were in this situation, just wait until day 51 and then charge into someone's room and attack them and try and kill them. And if you succeed, then you win. Whereas if you're like a noble, trying to navigate to the complex world of politics and court intrigue, you couldn't do that. You would probably be punished or ostracized in some way. So it feels like it's trying to smash a genre in there that it just doesn't work with. There are so many scenes of the main character girl sneaking around or trying to form alliances with people and then getting betrayed or betraying people or just teleporting around with her magic wand thing that she just has at the beginning of the story for whatever reason and also hoping nobody finds out her secret, which is that she doesn't have any wildling powers for some reason. And I'll admit the twist around the reason why she doesn't have it. Did catch me off guard, but it's also it wasn't a great twist. But, you know, it could have been worse is what I'm saying. Like what I'm saying here is that there's just so many scenes that don't need to be there and don't work with this setup. And so that's why I kept forgetting what was even going on while reading and why it has passed out of my mind so quickly after finishing. Now, you'll notice I haven't really talked about the main character. There's honestly not a lot to say about her. Her name is Isla Crown or maybe it's Isla Crown. But I'm calling her Isla because there are several characters in this book whose names are just random Spanish words. And I think it's funnier like Isla is Island. And then there's another character named Asul, which literally just means blue. And look, I know that in the world of young adult fiction, a lot of characters just have very stupid names. I don't know why, but a lot of them do. And they're basically impossible to parody at this point. You know, like years ago when the dystopian YA novel Twitter account was still active, which if you haven't found that account, just like go scroll through some of their tweets. They're really funny. It's basically just making fun of all the books that tried to ape on the Hunger Games' success. But in that fake book that the author was writing, it's the main character was named Valentine Neverwoods. And they chose that name specifically because it was so stupid and over the top that no one would ever actually do it. But then you have names like, well, Isla Crown and Bethany Church and Melencia Vale and just like. It is impossible to parody these things at this stage. I hate it so much. Now, pretty much all there is to say about Isla is that she's a wildling with no wildling powers, which also means she isn't affected by the curse, seemingly. And she wants to help out her people by winning the tournament at the Centennial. And that's kind of it. You know, there's not really any definition to her character. She doesn't even really fit into any sort of archetype or trope or anything. There's just there's nothing there. All the characters in this story suffer from that same problem. They all lack any sort of definition. I can't really tell you anything about their personalities, their backstories or even what they do over the course of the story. You know, and I'm not saying when they lack definition, I'm not saying that they aren't deep characters or they aren't complex characters and they're not. But that's not what I mean by it. Like you can have a character in like a movie or something who is just, OK, he's the British guy who is an asshole to the main character and then gets blown up at the end. Like that character may not be super likable or super complex or interesting or deep, but you at least can say who and what he was. Whereas all the characters in this book, you can't. Like I don't even remember the names of most of them. Like I remember Asule just because that name is so stupid. And I remember Grimm, who is the King of Lightlark. Again, that's a very stupid name. And I really only remember it because he's in a lot of the story. But beyond that, I can't tell you anything about these people or what they do over the course of the story. Like there's just nothing there. It's not even that they're two dimensional. It's like someone drew an outline and then erased the outline. And the story I've already complained about, but it suffers from a similar problem where like, what is it even about? You know, we have the setup and then stuff happens. And like near the end, there's a twist and a climax of sorts, which I kind of remember at least. It's just not very good. But other than that, there's like there's nothing here to even critique or talk about. Like it's just that there's nothing. There's no definition at all. And it feels like the setting of this book, while it was flawed, yeah, it has issues with it. It was at least defined. Like the author thought about it and what she wanted it to be and what she wanted to do with it before she started writing. And so because of that, I can tell you at least like, OK, yeah, Light Lark, it's all these kingdoms which used to be one. And then the curses happened and that big storm came in and that has largely defined their cultures and everything. This feels a lot like it was a first draft by an inexperienced author. You know, an experienced good author can write like a first draft and have it be at least presentable. It won't be their best work, but it is presentable. Whereas a new coming author will often not really have any idea what they're doing. And so their first draft will be like, OK, yeah, I have the set up and the setting. I don't know what I want it to be about. And then by the end, she has an idea of it. So she needs to go back and rewrite stuff. But it feels like that just didn't happen for whatever reason here. And quite frankly, the prose of this book is just shit. I mean, like even by the standards of young adult fiction and books written for kids, it is just it's not good. It is not like the sun is described as looking like an egg yolk multiple times throughout the book. The main character I was about to call her, Melencia. These characters all just blend together. But Isla Crown glares meanly at people a whole bunch of times. Like it's just just dumb turns of phrase, you know, and even beyond that, I just don't really have a great sense of what anything looks like or what's going on during big scenes, including action scenes. So it's just it's not good. Like I said, it's a new author who really needed somebody to go back through and help her polish this up and sand off the rough edges to make it presentable, and that just didn't happen for whatever reason. So, yeah, Lightlark, it's it's not good. So, yeah, Lightlark, it's it's not good. Good concepts with horrid execution and young adult novels go together better than tasteless food and conceit go with British people. You know, it's just they're a match made in heaven, but it is kind of disappointing to see something that did catch my attention at first turn out to just be so bad, like just just so bad. And one last thing I do want to mention before I go is that part of the marketing for this is that apparently the film rights for this book have already been bought, like they've already I don't know if they started production on it or anything. I don't think they have, but they are at least considering it in some capacity. So if a movie does get made, then a decent screenwriter who's given a bit of flexibility and is allowed to change a few things up could actually clean this story up quite a bit and make it kind of fun. You know, like he could give some definition to the events and to the characters and everything. And obviously the quality of a movie depends on a lot of other things like the directing, the acting, the visual effects. But still, I see potential here. And I think that if we ever do get an actual adaptation, which we might, this thing has a lot of buzz around it and it's sold. Well, it's negative buzz. But, you know, when I when I bought this thing, this was the last copy of the store. So it it's made money. And if the executives think it'll make them more, then they will throw some money at it. But yeah, it's some it's weird. But I am almost looking forward to the film adaptation because it might draw out the true potential of this story. And yeah, that's about it. Lightlark is mediocre, nothing really worth getting upset about, although, except for maybe what it says about the publishing industry. That's all. Goodbye. 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