I am a person who followed almost all the controversies surrounding the author of this book, Alex Aster, from her controversial app to all the stuff that happened in BookTok. Diversity? An attempt was made. As we learn more about the world, we see more people, and they're more diverse than in the first book. I have my criticisms about how in books like this, race only feels skin deep, but an attempt was made. Is it a successful attempt? It was a step in the right direction that's for sure. We are told that Isla feels dread, that her people are dying, but I never felt an urgency in the atmosphere of the story. The fact that Isla has time to go on a chocolate-eating date with one of the other realm rulers makes me doubt the stakes of the Centennial.

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I only made it 25% into this book. Not because I was too busy or too lazy, but because I refused to give this book any more of my time than that. I am actually insulted that YA publishing thought they could get away with this. I’m angry, flabbergasted, and extremely disappointed.With maybe one of the most interactive cover reveal processes ever (letting readers vote on TikTok and then revealing the winner on a Times Square Jumbotron), it’s probably safe to assume that the early hype around Lightlark is going to be enough to propel it to the top of many people’s TBRs. But these kind of super popular YA Fantasy books are usually hit or miss for me, so I went into Alex Aster’s debut excited, while also managing my expectations. Last time I wrote this, I was up to the start of the Centennial. Now my thing about the Centennial is that it's the dumbest concept despite instigating the sequences of events in this book. It's 100 days but in the first 50 days, all the rulers have to do demonstrations for the people of Lightlark to observe. It's supposed to be like the training days in the Hunger Games where the tributes show off their skills to secure donors during the games but the idea falls flat in Lightlark because the people who live on Lightlark don't...do anything. They watch? They attend parties? But their role is so unnecessary. Another component of these demonstrations is for rulers to scope out each other's powers but the "winning" isn't always straightforward. For Grim's demonstration, everyone had to battle it out, but the King of Lightlark, Oro, had a demonstration where everyone had the chance to show their greatest secret. Like?? Oro ends up being the winner of these demonstrations and is allowed to choose who to pair up for the next 75 days.

First and foremost, it's impossible to get a real grasp on stakes. These lands have been suffering with their curses for five hundred years. And some of the curses are gnarly! The wildling's curse is that they have to eat a human heart every month to survive. But then, the people here live to be very old? Which, presumably means that they don't have very many children. The population can't be that high, because it wouldn't be sustainable if people are living longer. So how do they have even a year's supply of hearts? It's explained to us that the wildlings are dying, that their realm is losing power, that they don't have enough hearts to sustain them, but it's so hard to have a good grasp on exactly what's going on because there are so many variables that are vaguely explained. Are they at half their power, a tenth? How big are they compared to other realms? How many people do they lose a year? We need to understand the stakes! Please! I mentioned in my Lightlark review that I listened to an arc on audiobook. I read Nightbane with my own two eyes, so... I do think that made a lot of the structural issues and prose issues more relevant. But before I get into the negatives, I'd like to discuss the positive A hundred hints that say they actually care about you? I still think you want to kill me and I refuse to consider anything else. Throughout the book, Isla keeps asking herself, "What is love?" (baby don't hurt me), Grim brings up the value of pain, and they both examine being a source of life and a destroyer of life, a simultaneous cure and poison. Examine is a strong word. I feel like these ideas were raised with no real commitment to exploring them. The book does not have much to say about love or pain or the cure/poison other than reflecting how Isla loves, how Grim feels pain, and uhhh. Uhhhhhhh. I'm actually not sure about the last one, but maybe that's a next book thing. It's obviously supposed to be a big deal but the symbolism doesn't have any root to an idea or an emotion. Maybe how Isla is self-destructive? If that's it it's really flimsy. I know that sometimes just having ideas only serves the romance works fine in books, but I really kept expecting to have at least something meaningful come out of the book, and for how often those ideas were introduced, I thought that'd be it. Alas. Listen, I am a seasoned fantasy reader. More than that, I was a Supernatural fan in my heyday. I have made sense of many things that do not make sense.In the hands of a more competent author, this could've been an intriguing high fantasy. Maybe it could've been written in multiple POVs and really intereacted with its characters as rulers of dying kingdoms, and the character motivations that go along with it. I want to see what Cleo's secret was! I wanted to see how Azul faced his fears! I wanted to see how the world's consequences and the rulers' motivations interacted and intersected and led to unlikely alliances and power plays. Or, at the very least I wanted to see some cool action scenes. Even within the context of what it is, as a female-led YA book, I would've wanted... something new. Something different. Something other than another sheltered girl who's really good at fighting and falling in love. Lean into the fantasy, lean into what makes this book different. Because it just feels the same. At least define the atmosphere to be unique or noteworthy, because for all that convoluted worldbuilding, nothing feels new.