Book Review: Lightlark by Alex Aster

‘Lightlark’ by Alex Aster was released in 2022 and is the first book of a duopoly, the sequel to which is due to be released in late 2023. The concept for her book was a hit on TikTok, her viral video pitching the concept in 2021 amassing over 400,000 likes.

I read this book from my local library. I personally have an aversion to hardback books so I avoid buying them as often as I can, but that doesn’t stop me from grabbing dozens of them from the library. I was incredibly excited to finally read it, especially since I’d been following Aster on the app since early 2022, and was one of those 400,000 accounts that liked the original pitch all those years ago.

I enjoyed this story and the conventions that Aster used and subverted throughout, particularly found family. However, I felt like, as engaged as I was, I couldn’t help but feel like it needed more. More description. More of those classic in-between moments, particularly between Isla and her friends and love interests. We as the readers are swept along with an unreliable narrator and yet we see very few glimpses of what is happening to build upon character relationships, we’re being steamrolled by plot.

Perhaps it is cruel to compare the finished product to the pitch in the video, but the impression I had of what I was getting into versus what I read was significantly different, like when you compare the photo of your McDonalds to the portion on your tray. You aren’t disappointed but it’s not as good as it looks. The linguistics behind the original pitch implied that the Centennial is an event that six rulers, each bearing an individual curse, go to Lightlark to compete, mass slaughter ensues and as a reward for surviving, the last ruler standing is rewarded with their curse being broken.

I read this pitch as meaning this book would have bespoke curses that only impaired their rulers, similar to how in Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’, Maleficent curses Aurora. But with much more imposing and horrific results. I imagined ‘Beauty and the Beast’ level curses, instead of ones that impaired the way people lived their lives. Instead, these curses are cast to inflict suffering unto six nations’ entire populace. I was almost disappointed that this insatiable bloodlust that had been cast onto the Wildlings had not been consistent among the other races and rulers. Needing to eat hearts is a grotesque curse and adds to the reasons there is friction between the Wildlings and the other cursed nations within the story. Yes, it adds tension, but perhaps my expectations were of monstrous afflictions that restricted everyone’s power and freedom and sense of humanity. With this in mind, I’d argue it would have been more interesting as a concept had Isla been cursed in a similar vein to her people, but her trying to break these curses, without powers added to the gravity of the situation and I can’t have it both ways.

I did enjoy ‘Lightlark’, and I intend to read the sequel, and although I am mindful not to have such astronomically high expectations, my hope is instead that there will be more instances of worldbuilding, and more depth to the characters after what occurred in this book. But, it wasn’t exactly what I expected. If you’re going in expecting ‘The Hunger Games’ blended with Amarantha’s trials from ‘A Court Of Thorns And Roses’, you may be disappointed, but it was a fun story.

Yes, ‘Lightlark’ wasn’t everything that it said on the tin, it does say something: Alex Aster can write one Hell of a synopsis, because in reading what awaits in ‘Nightbane’, I am looking forward to seeing what lies ahead.