Nightbane is just as bad as Lightlark: Full Summary and Review

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Hello. Welcome back.

[00:00:04]I have been going through this series and suffering the entire way. If you want to read a book [clears throat] that hardly furthers the plot, has a very weak explanation for the conflict, and is half flashbacks, then you might like Nightbane.

[00:00:23]I, however, hated it. I'm going to waste as little of your time as possible, so without further ado, we're just going to jump right in. Book one ended with Isla entering into the vault after using her crown as a key.

[00:00:38]I have no clue how this works. But she enters the vault, she ends up hitting her head on the floor, and having a very strange vision about darkness spilling over and tons of dead bodies, and Grim is there, and then the vault just yeets her out.

[00:00:56]It rejects her. Oro is there with her, and he basically tells her that the vault will only accept somebody who has mastered their wildling ability, and then he goes on this tangent about how her abilities have remained dormant.

[00:01:10]I don't even know if we get an explanation for why, if it was Poppy and Tara's fault, or what was happening there. But yes, Isla had power the whole time, somehow, and never knew it. Oro and Isla go to attend this um grand feast with all the rulers, except Cleo isn't there.

[00:01:27]Um Isla wants to look like a sword.

[00:01:31]That's literally how chapter three begins. She says, "Make me look like a sword." Isla had told the starling tailor Lido, "One that's more blood than blade, a mixture of wildling and starling." That was what she wore as she swept into the dining room.

[00:01:46]I am not sure why at this point it is being shoved down our throats that Isla somehow needs to appear strong, or she'll get torn apart by people. I mean, she literally just broke all of the curses and everyone should be grateful, but strangely enough they're still looking at her like they hate her for reasons unknown. Right out the gate in chapter three, we are already retconning things. If you remember from book one, Isla had to dye her hair light blue to get onto the skyland isle and then white to get onto the moonling isle and she had never experimented with this hair dye before.

[00:02:20]They weren't sure if it was going to turn out right, but it did and she was able to break onto the isles into the libraries, right? Well, then in chapter three of Nightshade we read that Azul's hair is as dark as his skin.

[00:02:35]So why would her dark brown hair have given her away as a wildling who didn't belong on either isle? I'm going to go ahead and say that Alex Aster did not think this part of her world building through because, you know, half of this book is flashbacks and Isla just traveling wherever the heck her dumb starstick takes her.

[00:02:56]So, obviously, the dark brown hair and her never experimenting with hair dye before would be a glaringly huge plot hole.

[00:03:05]So, instead, Aster was just like, "Yeah, they don't actually all have the same hair color."

[00:03:11]For some reason at this dinner, there seems to be this underlying concern for what Nightshade is going to do moving forward. I am not sure why. We are just told they're villains, so they're going to do something bad, I guess. We have no motivation or reason to believe that the Nightshades are going to do anything, but yes, they're all definitely concerned, I suppose. We end chapter three with Isla proclaiming, "I will be the starling ruler."

[00:03:35]>> [clears throat] >> Which is funny and she says, "I'm going to have a coronation." And then the very next chapter begins with, "I don't know how to rule." she admitted. Which is just the epitome of Isla. And you know, let me tell you something. As somebody who's almost finished Skyshade, I can tell you Isla Crown does like everything but rule her people. Why she's volunteering for this I have no clue.

[00:03:57]So following her proclamation, she goes to Azul for advice, which to me seems very out of pocket because they hardly had any interaction at all in Lightlark, but for some reason Isla is just like, "Oh, I know I can trust Azul."

[00:04:12]Based on what? I love reading lines in this book that make no dang sense like this one. Ever since the end of the Centennial, she had felt a wall harden around her. If she wasn't careful, it would become impenetrable. This is hilarious considering that she just immediately falls in love with two different men.

[00:04:26]I mean, you'll see what I mean. But also like she's already in a relationship with Oro right now, so this kind of seems ridiculous. During their conversation, um Azul tells her what it was like when the curses were cast.

[00:04:37]And it's very comical, honestly. Not being able to fly for 500 years certainly must have been terrible for for a society that had clearly woven their power through the fabric of their day-to-day. But it wasn't nearly as bad as dying at 25 or eating hearts to survive. That didn't mean it wasn't deadly though.

[00:04:56]Azul, the day it happened, we lost many of our people. They all just fell from the sky.

[00:05:03]Flying comes naturally to us. Even those with the smallest shred of power can do it. Those who aren't skilled enough or quick enough to use wind to cushion their fall perished. Oh my. I have questions immediately following this passage because this is what it reads next. They had reached the castle.

[00:05:20]Instead of landing in the clouds, which Isla didn't trust in the slightest, they continued floating right through the entrance. The ceiling was nonexistent.

[00:05:28]One could float right in and through the palace in one smooth motion. The castle had hallways, but no stairs.

[00:05:36]Questions. So I feel like this castle should be littered with dead bodies.

[00:05:42]I mean, what happens to the people who were not flying when the curses were cast, and instead were in this floating castle, and then had no way to get down.

[00:05:53]I feel like that's a very valid question, but we're just going to ignore that possibility and move right along. We end this conversation in this chapter with Azul basically telling Isla to go and face her people.

[00:06:05]And honestly, good for him. Her visit to the Wildling people is very short and sweet. She goes there. Um she asks them questions. There's like not a lot of them. There's a note about how some of them have their animal companions, and um yes, I was eventually going to get an animal companion.

[00:06:22]Of course, because she's Isla.

[00:06:24]We end this very short visit with the Wildlings telling Isla to go and visit Starling instead, because they're resourceful and they will be fine.

[00:06:32]>> [laughter] >> And I think this is just put in here so that Isla doesn't have like an obligation and or urgency to visit her people often, because she won't be doing that throughout most of this book.

[00:06:44]Immediately following this visit with the Wildlings, we just cut right to the coronation of her being crowned the ruler of Starling.

[00:06:51]Um and it's pretty much summarized in this one line. As King of Lightlark, I name you Isla Crown, the ruler of Starling. He placed the crown on her head. It was done.

[00:07:02]Riveting. Right after Isla is crowned ruler of Starling, we get these um winged beasts called Drex that break up out of the ground. The ground kind of like splits, and then there's a bunch of bloodshed, a bunch of people dying. Isla tries to repair the rift in the ground, fails miserably because she has no way to control her power for some reason.

[00:07:22]Um and at one point, one of the Drex faces her down, but doesn't kill her before they all finally take off and fly towards Nightshade. Oro ends up repairing the ground, and everyone immediately starts turning on her and claiming that this is her fault, because one of the Drex didn't kill her. I'm sure you can already guess why that is.

[00:07:46]The Drex are all controlled by Grim, and of course Grim is obsessed with Ayla for reasons that are going to be made clear throughout this book in the most annoying way possible. I got to hand it to Alex Aster. She loves finding every opportunity to make people hate Ayla.

[00:08:03]To just make Ayla seem like, "Oh, she's just such a poor, poor little girl. Everyone hates her.

[00:08:10]Everyone hates her for no reason."

[00:08:12]After the attack, Cleo finally shows up to help heal the injured. There's conversation about how there's going to be a war, clearly, because this was an attack from Nightshade. And Cleo indicates that she will be on the winning side.

[00:08:28]And then, a 100-ft wave crashed against the cliff, spilling onto its lip, right over the moonling ruler. When the water pulled back, she was gone.

[00:08:38]A 100-ft wave. How did this not take out like everybody standing there?

[00:08:45]>> [gasps] >> Thank you for being helpful, Cleo. They all just survived a Drex attack, and she also brought on a tidal wave immediately after.

[00:08:52]After the attack, Ayla goes to sleep, and then the next chapter begins in the most ridiculous way possible.

[00:09:00]It was the middle of the night when the balcony doors to Ayla's room burst open.

[00:09:04]The ocean rose like a hand, and it dragged her out of bed. She gasped in shock, salt water scorching her throat and nose and lungs. Her shirt scrunched up, her stomach raked against the stone terrace, and she had enough good sense to cling to the balcony pillars, but the sea was too strong. It pulled her hundreds of feet down, straight to its depths.

[00:09:25]Turns out a group of random nothing rebels attacks her. Why we are dealing with rebels now is a whole other problem that I have, but we'll get to that later. They kidnap her, they have some nonsensical argument. Are you sure?

[00:09:41]Perhaps if we had waited. There's no time. The Drak attack is just the beginning. This happens now. Of course.

[00:09:46]Kidnap the person and have no clue what you're going to do with. Just give them enough time to kind of understand what's going on, I suppose.

[00:09:54]It makes no sense. But luckily enough for Isla, this is when her power chooses to do something useful. The second they touch her, the world exploded. That's what it says in the book. And they're all thrown back and Isla runs through these tunnels she's been brought to and makes it out up into the top world where she encounters a guard who ends up giving her his cloak and contacting Oro.

[00:10:18]Oh, and this is the perfect opportunity for Oro to show up and say, "Who did this to you?"

[00:10:25]I love it. I love tropes.

[00:10:27]Not. Let me be clear. I like some tropes when they are well written. But it is so blatantly obvious that this series was written like with a trope checklist.

[00:10:39]Alex Aster inserts them wherever she can. Light Lark, for example, was an enemies-to-lovers between Oro and Isla, and also Grim and Isla in some aspects.

[00:10:50]And now we're reading Nightbane, and it is also an enemies-to-lovers through all the flashbacks we are forced to read. Oro makes a statement in front of his throne about how treason has been committed because Isla has been attacked.

[00:11:07]And anyone who is found associated with this group of rebels will be strung across the cliffs in the Bay of Teeth. It was a torturous death, according to Azul. Sea creatures as large as entire parts of the castle live there in water so deep it was rumored no one had ever seen their bottom.

[00:11:25]It's a very weird way to describe sea creatures.

[00:11:30]Now, here's a tidbit I need to insert.

[00:11:33]Apparently, the reason Isla cannot control her powers is because the Nightshade and the Wildling side are tangled.

[00:11:42]What that means, I have no clue.

[00:11:44]I don't know what that means.

[00:11:47]But, Oro and Isla have a conversation following his very, um, you know, extreme throne room declaration. And, um, she asks him if he knows a way to untangle her powers, and he says, "Yes, but you're not going to like it."

[00:12:03]Thus ends chapter seven. Oro's solution is to take her to Remlar. I don't know if perhaps I missed something as far as Remlar. I thought he was the leader of those cannibals who were former Wildlings, but here, uh, Isla, in her thoughts, this is what we get from the book. He had dark hair like Grim's. Was he truly a Nightshade? How was that possible? Oh, he's also described as being an ancient creature, and Isla didn't know the extent of his abilities, which is really convenient based on what he's about to do for no explanation at all. He also has skin that was blue, the color of a bird's egg.

[00:12:45]I mean, what is What is this thing? What is this thing?

[00:12:49]But, yes, ancient creature Remlar with cryptic powers just presses his hand against Isla's forehead, and then she explodes in pain, and magically her powers are untangled.

[00:12:59]How they got that way, I have no clue.

[00:13:01]How they're now rectified, I have no clue. It's all weird. It's all extremely just whatever Aster wants it to be, I guess. Isla, of course, blacks out from this very painful process, and then we are thrown into her first flashback memory thing. The way that she meets Grim is hilarious in that there are just so many just convenient factors to it.

[00:13:27]It's It's honestly astounding. This is how the chapter starts. Isla took the steps two at a time. She really shouldn't have come. How had she been so foolish? Okay.

[00:13:38]I have a problem because originally in Lightlark we were told that the star stick can only reliably take her to places she has seen before and can envision clearly in her head.

[00:13:48]She has never been to Nightshade prior to this instance when she first shows up here.

[00:13:53]So, how did she get here? Intentionally?

[00:13:56]No clue, but the book is acting like she did, like she intended to come. Why would she intend to come to Nightshade?

[00:14:01]It makes no sense. How did she get to Nightshade without actually knowing how her star stick works, how to use it effectively? It doesn't make any sense.

[00:14:10]Now, I believe her intention for even coming to Nightshade is that she wants Grim to help her survive the incoming Centennial. He had been invited to attend the event for the first time according to her own invitation. Why had they not invited to the Nightshades previously? It's still a plot point that I think is ridiculously stupid.

[00:14:30]So, she shows up to the Nightshade castle. She's chased by guards.

[00:14:35]I have to assume she's wearing her wildling colors and that would be a dead giveaway as to her identity. But eventually she comes to a room, it opens, there's a woman there, the woman's like, "You're late. Put this on and join the rest." I don't know why the woman doesn't look at Isla's clothing and go, "Hey, you don't belong here."

[00:14:53]But alas, Isla gets dressed into I'm assuming a Nightshade dress and then she's put in a line of women.

[00:15:00]Uh Grim then comes and overlooks all the women.

[00:15:04]Isla thinks this is like some strange uh torture tactic, like they're about like they're pulling a trick on her. I I have no clue why. Oh, when Grim enters we get this lovely descriptor.

[00:15:17]Her own shoulders were small, tiny slopes. His were wide cliffs.

[00:15:26]Alex Aster, get your bag, girl, but at least hire a better editor because what what the heck is this? Grim looks over the line of women. Of course, he looks at Isla and says, "You." She has no clue. What?

[00:15:40]What her? What what what is he doing?

[00:15:42]What why her? What does that mean?

[00:15:45]Um he takes her to his room and they immediately begin making out. Isla is alerted at first, but then she's like, "Well, I've never done this before, so why not?" And then she remembers herself and stabs Grim through the chest.

[00:16:03]Which is funny because we have a scene in Star Side where the female main character stabs the male main character through the chest.

[00:16:12]We can tell you like From Blood and Ash.

[00:16:13]We can tell. We can tell. It's okay.

[00:16:16]After stabbing Grim through the chest, or I'm sorry, it's inches from his heart, her star stick finally works again. Previously, she couldn't get the dang thing to work, and she portals out of there and is gone. And that is the end of her first memory flashback. Isla wakes up from the flashback next to Oro.

[00:16:33]They have a conversation. She wants Oro to take her somewhere so that she can exercise her power.

[00:16:39]And she feels sick. She's like nauseous and throwing up. And they have this kind of heartfelt talk about how he loves everything about her and she is just I don't even know what her problem is.

[00:16:54]She's like really powerful and the prettiest girl and she can sing really well, but for some reason she's insecure and she says, "Do you wish I wasn't everything I am?" No, Isla. It's the parts you don't seem to like about yourself that I love the most.

[00:17:11]Yeah, moving on. We are then thrown into another flashback. I'm pretty sure the flashbacks happen every other chapter.

[00:17:17]They're really annoying. In this flashback, Grim comes to her room.

[00:17:22]He shows up. He's angry. He's like, "How the heck did you get into my realm?"

[00:17:25]Iyla is furious for some reason because I don't know. She literally did break into his realm and stab him. She holds up a dagger to his throat and says, "Get out of my room." And then he vanishes.

[00:17:40]And uh you know, this this chapter just seems like it's solidifying the fact that they are very much enemies. But don't worry, they will turn into lovers.

[00:17:50]After this flashback, Oro takes her to Wild Isle and he's trying to get her to be able to control her powers more efficiently. Right now, she can't really do anything with them unless she's emotional. Oro's whole thing is that he's trying to emphasize that emotion undoes control. And he's trying to teach her a way to have a controlled mastery of her power, I suppose. In short, the next few chapters are just a lot of time spent her trying to train. Oro enlists the help of this woman named Anya who apparently helped the Sunlings adjust to only being allowed outside during nighttime. She's going to help the Wildlings sort of rebuild and teach them how to cook and um other things, which seems kind of weird.

[00:18:35]I mean, I know that they had to survive off of parts, but would they not have still eaten other food like Iyla who ate chocolate?

[00:18:44]I mean, and even though she wasn't tied to her curse, I don't think she would have revealed that she could eat chocolate because that would then tip off the fact that she wasn't tied by her curse.

[00:18:55]Anyway, Oro also enlists these two um Sunling people.

[00:19:03]Um Evo and Ciel. I've no clue if I'm saying their names right. They basically they're going to be her bodyguards for the foreseeable future because there's this giant fear that Grim is going to come and start a war and take Isla, I suppose. We have no reason to to believe this, but everyone believes this. On to chapter 15, we are met with this character, Wren. I don't actually know if she was introduced here a couple chapters back, but she wasn't really important till now. Wren is sort of like an acting leader of the Wildlings while Isla is absent, which is basically all the time. Isla gets it in her head that she wants to finally take a bonded animal companion, and Wren kind of tells her about how to do this and how to um achieve a an animal bonded. Apparently, what you have to do is go into this deadly forest and hunt one.

[00:19:54]And the animal that wants to bond with you will allow you to put an arrow in them, which sounds very counterproductive, but okay. This part is kind of hilarious because um Isla is chased by this ginormous bear, and she climbs up a tree to get away from the bear, and she thinks the bear couldn't climb. It was too heavy. It would break the branches, which is just a wild thought to have because aren't you like the ruler of nature?

[00:20:25]And you don't know that bears can climb.

[00:20:28]The bear climbs after her. She is forced to run along the branches. The bear eventually uh steps on a branch, and the branch breaks. The bear falls, and the bear dies. And then she encounters this enormous leopard.

[00:20:42]It is so big that standing, she wouldn't even reach the top of its leg. I do believe that it is actually meant to be that big. The leopard wants her to get on its back, and then it rides back to where the Wildlings civilization is, I I suppose.

[00:20:59]And then we find out, "Isla," Wren said, "Lynx was your mother's." Yes, the leopard's name is Lynx.

[00:21:09]More riveting creativity from Alex Aster.

[00:21:12]After pondering over the fact that Lynx once belonged to her mother, we get a notification that the rebels have been spotted, so they all hop back to Lightlark.

[00:21:22]And we're given information that the rebels are using the crypts below the island, these tunnels, this tunnel system.

[00:21:30]Also, we have a conversation with Isla, somebody from the Starling, and Isla for some reason thinks all the Starlings must hate her, which is weird, and Isla's like, "No, you saved all of our lives." And for some reason this is shocking to Isla. I I don't know why.

[00:21:46]Um and then this chapter ends with her staring in the mirror and she sees Grim for a second, and you know, she turns around and he's gone. Isla finally pays a visit to Star Isle. There we meet a Starling representative, Maren, who has a little cousin named Cinder. Cinder is 8 years old. She will be important later. This visit is mainly just Isla seeing what she needs and trying to provide it for them.

[00:22:13]Not much else happens here. When she returns back to Lightlark, Oro it seems all concerned and he wants her to go to sleep.

[00:22:21]And she does, which of course opens an opportunity for her to have another flashback about Grim. This flashback is honestly more ridiculous than all the others, although I know that there have only been like two.

[00:22:32]But Isla decides to go back to Nightshade for very stupid reasons. And she makes it to Grim's room, and when he enters, she hides in his shower.

[00:22:46]He asks her why she's here and has she lost her mind. Clearly she has.

[00:22:51]She says she's here to offer him Wildling elixir in exchange for him trying to help her survive the Centennial.

[00:22:59]He kind of growls at her, tells her to leave, And she says, "Let's settle this with a duel." Why she thinks she can beat him, I have no freaking clue. They go back to the Wildling Newland to duel. He beats her, and then tells her that he never wants to see her in his lands again.

[00:23:17]And I'm sure you already know that that's not going to happen. She's going to go back because Isla just can't help but having lapse judgment all the time. When Isla wakes up from this memory dream flashback, she has a realization that Grim must have let her win their duel during the Centennial.

[00:23:38]Now, I can appreciate the effort to make Isla seem like less of a Mary Sue.

[00:23:44]However, she was also beating Oro and decided to let Oro win their duel. So, it doesn't really matter.

[00:23:52]Oro is 500 years old. I still don't accept that she should have been able to beat him or any of them or any of these rulers who are way older than her. Isla is a little frustrated that she continues to have memories of Grim against her will. And in response to this, she decides that she needs to go to Oro and make out with him.

[00:24:15]This is a YA book, by the way, but we are right on the edge of being extremely explicit. During their little intimate scene there, Isla tells Oro she would like to celebrate Copia. It's this Wildling celebration. Oro asks her if she would like to invite her people onto Lightlark to celebrate this holiday, and she says, "No." Because she's worried it's still unsafe for them.

[00:24:40]I don't know what the logic here is because I thought the Wildlings were first and foremost warriors. Why would she be concerned?

[00:24:49]Oh, well. After Oro agrees to celebrate Copia on Lightlark, they immediately go back to making out. Seems excessive at this point. Oro finds out that she's been wearing his shirts to bed. And um he says, "Don't you dare. Don't you dare wear anything else."

[00:25:07]She had never heard him so possessive before. It made the bottom of her spine curl.

[00:25:18]What?

[00:25:21]Just the I >> [gasps and sighs] >> I have no clue what this means. Even though Isla is just like begging to be laid, Oro is like, "No, not yet."

[00:25:34]I don't know.

[00:25:36]It's kind of funny. He keeps rejecting her.

[00:25:38]Um probably because it's YA and Aster needed to tone it down. After this chapter, we immediately go to the Copia celebration, right? And um Isla wants to demonstrate how much control she has of her powers now because, you know, it's been like I don't know, a third of the book? And obviously, now her hindrance of using her magic is no longer hindrance.

[00:26:00]We're done with that. She can use her power now. This whole scene where she enters the Copia is a little confusing to me. Isla stood. She was barefoot.

[00:26:07]Flowers bloomed with her every step to the center of the celebration.

[00:26:12]You know, she makes some speech and and and then we get this. This was it. This was the moment. Everyone knew she had been powerless. They knew she didn't know how to wield.

[00:26:21]This seems kind of weird to insert here considering she just made flowers bloom with her every step. You kind of already like blew the magic trick right there.

[00:26:30]I'm going to highlight this scene so hard because it's very important for the rest of this bloody book.

[00:26:35]Isla unraveled her hand, revealing a rare seed she had gotten from the Newlands. She tossed it in front of her to the ground below, and everyone watched as it was sucked into the dirt.

[00:26:45]A moment later, the ground rustled and a tree formed in front of them. Years of growth in just seconds.

[00:26:53]Isla goes on. She said, "Its fruit is often called enchanted because of its sweetness." This is just wild. I mean, sweet fruit, who knew? I mean, mind-blowing. Isla can grow things very quickly from just a seed.

[00:27:10]This is important. Remember this.

[00:27:13]Please remember this. While this celebration is ongoing, there is an illusion that is given to everyone in attendance. Everything is dark and in the garden it's turned to ash. And then in a blink, everything is back to the way it should be and we end the chapter like this. "Consider this a warning," it said. "A glimpse at the future. You have 1 month to vacate the island. In 30 days, I am coming to destroy it." Shouts, screams, "Nothing will be left. You can choose to flee to your new lands or join me in a new future. The choice is simple. Fighting is futile. The ruin coming is inevitable." This is of course the voice of Grim warning them all that he's coming to annihilate everything.

[00:27:58]And we are given absolutely no explanation as to why Grim does not see it fit to tell anybody his motivation, which is really convenient. Immediately following Grim's warning, the rulers are scrambling. Isla makes a plea with Cleo to stay and help them fight.

[00:28:14]Um we get this random realization here. For a moment, Oro's eyes flicked to Isla.

[00:28:20]She knew what he thought. Grim wanted her. No, if this was about wanting her, he could have appeared at this very moment and taken her. She agreed with the jewel. There was a purpose for Grim's destruction. If they knew what it was, perhaps they could stop him.

[00:28:33]This seems like such a stupid like, okay, Isla has the jewel that summons Grim whenever she touches it, right? So, why doesn't she just touch the dang thing and ask him? Why does nobody think of this as a possible solution?

[00:28:50]Later that night, Cleo goes to visit Isla and um she asks about Isla being raised in a glass house. I'm not sure why it's relevant. Cleo then reveals that Isla reminds her of her son and Isla is like, "Oh, Cleo had an heir. That can't be right. Heirs weren't allowed at the Centennial." Again, with the freaking heir rule in the Centennial and all the rulers. I've no clue how any of this makes any sense because we have rules and and apparently just anybody can break them at any point in time.

[00:29:19]Oh, and get this. Her son was killed by the curse. That's right, the easily avoidable curse of just not being outside during a full moon or being, I don't know, maybe like in a basement or somewhere underground where the ocean can't reach you. That's how her son died. I had like I'm sorry. Um Alex Aster just made Cleo seem like the most negligent parent I can think of. Cleo apparently came to Isla to inform her that the Oracle is awake and wants to see her and um and then leaves. And then later on we find out that all of the Moonlings have fled because because they're going to join the Nightshades and uh that's it.

[00:29:57]Goodbye. Bye to the Bye to the Moonlings. Isla and Oro then go to the Oracle on the Moon Isle that has just been abandoned. Um the Oracle is injured because I guess Cleo's last act was to um murder the Oracle slowly. The Oracle is just like, "Oh, I die slowly." I guess that's the excuse or explanation we are given.

[00:30:19]Um she tells Isla that the key to saving Light Lark is to remember everything. And then she tells her that before the Oracle dies, Isla is going to visit her one last time, though she's got to do it alone. After this visit, Isla then goes to Remlar and Remlar tells her that the key to remembering everything is to master her Nightshade side of her magic.

[00:30:43]Uh so, yeah, she's not really happy about it, whatever. And then we're thrown into another flashback. And once again, Isla is back on the nightshade aisle in the marketplace.

[00:30:56]Um here she is looking for the skin gloves that they needed to break into the library aisle. Now, this was originally a task that uh the starling ruler was going to achieve. I don't know if they decided this later on or not, but that's what she's looking for here.

[00:31:12]And um oh, we get this lovely piece of text, "With mastery, one day she might be able to portal anywhere she wanted.

[00:31:19]For now, she could only return to places she'd been before."

[00:31:23]How did she intentionally end up on nightshade the first time? Okay, okay, we have to move on. I can't dwell on it.

[00:31:31]She gets caught like an idiot by the guards. She's strung up in the dungeon.

[00:31:35]Grim shows up. He's like, "What the heck are you doing back here?" And Isla Crown is like, "I have no self-preservation."

[00:31:43]Okay, okay, moving on. Um they have a conversation about how Grim will help her survive the Centennial. She's like, "You You've decided to attend?" This sounds kind of um stupid. Don't they Like, aren't they required to attend? I don't understand this piece of text. Also, she's making it sound like he had an option before.

[00:32:02]He didn't. He'd never been invited before. It's It's just very weird. Turns out Grim actually wants her help. He wants Isla to help him find this random sword, I guess, and um in exchange, he will help her during the Centennial. And she says, "Fine, but only if I if you return my star stick." And then he goes, "Your what?" And honestly, that that has been my my reaction every single time I've had to read the word star stick.

[00:32:30]I still don't know what this thing looks like.

[00:32:32]And this flashback ends with, "That was how she had made a deal with a demon.

[00:32:37]You're going to be driven to madness with how many times Isla refers to Grim as a demon. It's so overdone. I am pretty sure Alex Aster just thinks that demon is the ultimate insult. And she drives the point home to death. After coming out of this memory, she informs Oro that there was a sword, some sword.

[00:32:57]She doesn't know if Grim had gotten the sword yet. That's all she knows. There's a sword that exists. And she was going to help him find it. And um then she goes to Wildling, tells them that there's going to be a war. She asks that they continue to make the elixir that has ad- advanced healing properties. And um we get this bit from Ren. "It's not something that can be rushed," Ren said.

[00:33:20]"We only have one small patch of the flower left."

[00:33:29]If you are like me, you're probably asking right about now, "Why can't Isla just grow more?"

[00:33:36]And that is a question that will never be answered.

[00:33:40]She's the Wildling ruler. She can grow things out of a seed in seconds. But no, for some reason, this specific flower that they need to make the elixir magically is out of her hands. She just can't create more. Oh, no. It just creates this unneeded conflict. It's a huge plot hole throughout the series. I have a feeling that there will be like some very weird weak explanation later on, maybe in book four. I don't think we're going to get it in book three. And I'm going to laugh when I read the part where Alex Aster realized that she created this plot hole by having Isla not not able to grow the flower for for some reason. We get some long conversations about the upcoming war. We meet Oro's friends. I don't even really think that they're relevant in any way. There's talk about whether or not Azul will fight, because apparently his realm controls him and everything that he does. Um, later, I don't know if it's revealed later or now that they don't want Azul to fight. So, he just doesn't. And then Isla goes back to Remlar to learn more about her power. And after kind of destroying things and then turning it back into uh living growing nature that's healthy again, we're thrown into another flashback. This flashback begins with Grim appearing in her room.

[00:35:01]Um, oh, we get this lovely thought box from Isla. Nightshades were villains. Theirs was the only realm that drew power from darkness. I don't know why this just inherently makes them evil. I No idea. Grim is like, we're going now.

[00:35:18]We need to find the sword. Isla says, wait. She said, if my guardians come in and see I'm gone, they usually granted her privacy after training, but it wasn't night yet. And I have more questions because what do you mean?

[00:35:30]I'm I love that we're bringing this up now and we're supposed to accept this flimsy explanation of why she has never been caught. But you are telling me that Isla Crown travels with this star stick as often as she does and she has never been caught. Not even when she was strung up in Grim's dungeon for hours.

[00:35:48]And it it did say hours. I I read it.

[00:35:52]But yeah, let's just move along. Grim portals them to this cliffside, ocean crashed hundreds of feet high, so close she could smell the sea spray. This seems like a huge hazard, and then he's like, we have to climb up this cliff.

[00:36:05]Also, it's r- It's raining, too. Also, it's raining.

[00:36:10]Um, but don't worry. She squinted through the rain as she fought to grasp the next rock, the next. Her shoes were made with special bark at the bottom that had a good grip, at least.

[00:36:24]Guys, she has the shoes with the special bark. The shoes with the special bark.

[00:36:30]That makes so much sense.

[00:36:32]As they climb, Grim tells her, "Don't get cut. Don't bleed." But of course she does because she's an idiot and she cannot help it. Every single chapter something is injuring this woman.

[00:36:42]They get to the top and then Grim is like, "You fool, he will try to kill you." And then he vanishes and just leaves her. She is chased by this blacksmith. She ends up stabbing him in the eye.

[00:36:54]And um then he just kind of like calms down as soon as he sees Grim. Uh we get this, "After a moment, he said, 'The sword was cursed, so no nightshade ruler can claim it. If the sword so much as senses his ability, it will disappear.'"

[00:37:10]Which I just think is just the funniest, most convenient explanation ever. I love it when Alex Aster just pulls these things out of a hat because really I I I do think that's what what it is. She just "Well, why does he need help during to find the sword?" Oh, because no nightshade ruler can claim it. There we go. Just easy peasy, fix it all up with tape. After having this conversation with the blacksmith, she gets all mad and she's like, "You demon, you almost got me killed, you" and he's like, "I was there. You were never in any danger." This kind of feels like the cabin scene when Reese sends Feyre into the cabin with the weaver to get the ring.

[00:37:47]But um yeah, I'm sure that's just coincidence.

[00:37:51]Possibly.

[00:37:52]Isla is concerned that the blacksmith will somehow impede their journey to find the sword and Grim tells her, "Oh, it's okay. I took his memories. He won't remember." And um she's like, "That's something you can do?" He nodded as if it were not the cruelest power in the world. I mean, surely there are crueler things, right?

[00:38:11]Like cursing people to die at the age of 25.

[00:38:16]But okay. And then they leave and they're like, "Yep, let's begin the quest to find the sword.

[00:38:23]It's I don't know why every single book feels like a side quest on top of a side quest on top of a side quest. But this is our side quest now. In the flashbacks, it is to find the sword. After this flashback, Erla goes to to the Starling Isle, the Star Isle. She wants the most powerful Starlings to build a shield and to pool their power together. And then that's when we find out the most powerful Starling wielder is the 8-year-old girl Cinder.

[00:38:53]And I have to tell you, I am almost done with Skyshade and I don't know if this little girl ever becomes important again.

[00:39:02]Um but yeah, she's super powerful. You find out that the Skylings uh voted to not allow Azul to fight. And she has a premonice a premonition that Grim is going to kill her.

[00:39:15]And then she falls into another memory.

[00:39:17]In this flashback, Grim appears at nighttime so that Erla will not be caught by her guardians. And um he's not supposed to be able to go out at night, but don't worry. Alex Aster inserted this magical necklace that will protect him from the curse.

[00:39:31]Just uh willy-nilly fix up that uh that plot hole right there.

[00:39:36]Um they end up going to this band of thieves because Grim is like, "Yeah, they're probably the ones who stole the sword." They end up killing them, a couple of them. They question one that's kept alive and he tells them, "Oh, you need to go find this man named Victor. He has a snake and you'll find him at Creton's Crag." And luckily enough, there's going to be a celebration in Creton's Crag in 2 weeks.

[00:39:57]So, um that's when he'll return. He leaves her in a room and then that's the end of that flashback. When we come back to the present, Erla is going to plead with the Venderland. I believe the Venderland were actually the cannibal group who put an arrow through her heart. I can't even remember why.

[00:40:13]Which now I'm like, I don't even remember who Remlar was. There's too much going on in Lightlark. There's too much going on here. And we're just going to roll with it. She goes to plead with these people to help them fight. And in short, they say, "No."

[00:40:27]And then we get another flashback. This flashback is hilarious. Isla sneaks out of her room, gets kidnapped by her own people.

[00:40:34]Uh they try to cut out her heart.

[00:40:37]She manages to get her star stick and go to Grim.

[00:40:40]And that is when we get a "I didn't know where else to go" moment. Another freaking trope, of course.

[00:40:47]He uh pulls off her gag. He grabs this elixir, the magical elixir, from her room, puts it on her wound. For some reason, it does not patch her up right away. She's still bleeding. I have questions about that.

[00:41:00]And um then Grim just like gets her a cup of hot chocolate.

[00:41:04]I'm not sure what that's going to do for her. Uh Grim stays with her while she heals. And uh they have conversation about her mother, about how her father was Nightshade. I am not really sure why the elixir did not cure her right away because she needs to heal from this wound.

[00:41:24]I thought it healed the wound but left the pain. Why why is it not working like this?

[00:41:29]But um yeah, that's that's that flashback.

[00:41:33]Honestly, at this point, I am losing my patience for the story. So, I'm going to just try to heavily summarize the next few chapters of events. It's basically a back and forth between Isla prepping for the battle and all the other people on Lightlark prepping for Grim to come and destroy everything. She's trying to enlist the help of the Venderlin, some other creatures in the woods, some weird stuff going on. And then we flip into flashbacks every other chapter with her and Grim looking for the sword. They go to the thief, Victor. They they find out more from him. At some point, Isla is like ganged up on by these men and then Grim comes and murders all of them. You know, just the usual "Who did this you moron?"

[00:42:14]again. And um at some point she adopts a dragon for him, Wraith, that Grim now has to keep. And uh Yeah. And it's incessant. It's like a tennis ball, back and forth, back and forth. Um in the present, Grim also ends up taking all of the wildling people to Nightshade, and she's angry and she's like, "Why would you do this?" And he's like, "Oh, it's because I love you."

[00:42:38]which it just is the most toxic thing, honestly. The sword ends up being located in a cave.

[00:42:44]Grim can't use his power, otherwise it will scare the sword off.

[00:42:48]Uh Isla tries to get in the cave, it's triggered, it's rigged with traps that she triggers. Um one of which is like an arrow trap. She takes one arrow to the leg and then Grim takes like 12 to the back. And I guess this is just why everybody loves Grim.

[00:43:04]Oh, look at him, he's so sweet. I don't know how he didn't die here, by the way.

[00:43:07]I guess we'll just ignore that little detail. Oh, we get a flashback where night bled into early morning and Isla decided she couldn't sit in her room and wait. She had to do something. She portals to Grim's room and um how does she not get caught doing this?

[00:43:23]I thought she could only go out at night. We have another plot hole. Why is she venturing out during the morning time? It seems like her guardians would be there bright and early to train her and make her, you know, a killing machine or whatever. And during these incessant flashbacks, of course, Grim just slowly falls and falls and falls in love with her because he cannot help it.

[00:43:44]I'm so annoyed.

[00:43:46]Also, you find out that the magical wildling elixir is made from a flower called nightbane, and apparently it is abundant on Nightshade.

[00:43:53]So, this solves their little um shortage crisis.

[00:43:56]Luckily, I don't know why it couldn't have been solved by Isla herself, but uh yeah, I guess we're just supposed to ignore that. The most important things to remember come at the end, when Isla eventually goes back to the vault, her guardian Tara is there. They have a fight and the fight ends with Tara being like, "Thank you for opening the portal for us." And you find out that the vault is housing an enormous portal that leads to some other world. This altercation with Tara leads to Isla having another important memory about her actually finding the sword somewhere else because they couldn't get the sword out of the cave and it ended up disappearing. Isla later finds it and then Grim sees it and asks her where she found it.

[00:44:39]And then you find out that he needed Isla all along for her flare because it turns out Isla has the same flare, which is like a special ability unique to each person, but she had the same one as her father, which was that she was immune to curses.

[00:44:53]So, this is the part where you find out Grim's whole motive for wanting to find this sword and wanting to use Isla. He tells Isla that Light Lark is a miniature and they actually came from a much larger world that Grim's ancestor wanted to go back to.

[00:45:09]Why did he want to go back? Not really sure. He also tells her that he wanted to use Isla because he discovered what her flare was to break the curse on the sword, even though he knew what the cost was. The cost was going to either be her life or a significantly reduced lifespan. Isla gets angry at him, tells him to leave, he does, and then we're thrown back into the present where Isla realizes, "Oh my gosh, I've just opened the portal for Grim. This is what he's wanted all along." And now we get an insert of Isla finally receiving the last prophecy from the Oracle, which is that she's going to either kill Oro or Grim um and her heart decides the future. So ominous, so just awful, dreadful. Oh, no.

[00:45:53]Thus ensues afterwards the giant battle of Light Lark. Grim comes, they're out of time, and a bunch of fighting happens.

[00:46:01]When Isla gets pinned between the Nightshade forces, Grim appears and he says, "Even think about touching her and I'll kill you."

[00:46:08]Which just seems like Why are you doing any of this then, Grim?

[00:46:14]Like Isla could obviously get hurt, but yes, here we are. We're given another flashback in the middle of this battle of Grim coming back to her, telling her that a scar has opened up, Drex are flying everywhere, and he has to go fight them and he might die doing that.

[00:46:27]And Isla wants to go with him and he tells her, "Okay, you can come." And then he grabs her star stick and portals away without her. And then we're thrown back into the fighting. And Isla, it was a plan set in place that Isla was going to access Grim's power and try to drain drain him of it during the fight so that he would be weakened and he could be killed. So she reaches for it and then we're thrown into another flashback.

[00:46:48]This flashback, Isla again accesses Grim's power because, you know, that reveals that Grim loves her. She portals to him and then she uses the power of love to unleash all of her magic onto the Drex and I think like tons of people surrounding them and kills them all and then she passes out and Grim is like urging her pleading with her to wake up. And then we're thrown back into the present. Oro and Grim are fighting and right when Oro is about to strike down Grim, Grim reveals that if Oro kills Grim, he will also kill Isla. And this is where you find out that in the past, Isla had died from her ginormous expenditure of power.

[00:47:30]Because of this, Grim ended up binding their lifelines together. So now if you kill one, you kill the other.

[00:47:37]Classic. Isla then remembers all the people she had killed from that huge burst of power, and then Grim also calls her wife and then she remembers, "Oh yeah, we got married, I guess."

[00:47:49]Which is just wild. And um and then you find out that Grim, the whole reason he wanted to access the portal was to take everybody He wanted to take everybody back to the other world because there he could find a way to save Isla because she is dying, I guess.

[00:48:08]Um yeah. I don't know why we had to have this huge battle in the first place. It seems like there was just a conversation there that could have been had, but of course not. Of course we get the over-dramatic conflict for no reason. I mean, this are sort of cryptic. Auro says, "It was only a temporary solution." Grim nodded, "The other world offers a permanent one." How he knows this, I don't even know. Like how does he knows it? How does he know this?

[00:48:39]But um yeah, and then to stop the fighting, Isla says, "I'll go with you if you retreat." Grim agrees and um the book ends with her saying, "I love you, Auro." She closed her eyes tightly, felt tears sweep down. She took Grim's hand, "But I love him, too." And because of his flare, he knew it was true. And then they disappear and the fighting ends and and that's the end of the book.

[00:49:04]Thankfully.

[00:49:05]Anyway, thank you for watching this video. I will be back probably in about 2 weeks with a review of Skyshadow.

[00:49:13]And then we will have the Grim and Auro novella. And then we will have Crowntide. And when will we have book five? I have no clue. I'm guessing Alex Aster was told by her publishers that they were not going to publish this book until 2027.

[00:49:29]Just to build the anticipation, I am assuming.

[00:49:32]As I have been in the midst of editing for this review video, I realized that there is so much more to talk about with the cryptic magic system that Alex Aster gives us.

[00:49:44]For example, um the the sword that Grim goes to find. The reason he wanted it was to control the Draks, the beasts that tear up out of the ground, okay?

[00:49:56]And at some point he does end up using this sword, but I don't know why he wasn't using it in the flashbacks when Isla goes to save him.

[00:50:05]I am not sure if the cost of using it was going to weigh on her at all, or if Grim just said, "Oh, I don't need it anymore." I don't know what the reason was. And and now I'm questioning everything because it does get used later on in Sky Shay. And um now I just feel like that's a really weird jagged gaping hole in the plot. Also, just the cryptic excuse of how tying Isla's life to Grim was like, "Oh, it only allowed her to live for so long." We have no estimate on how long she'll live. Um but we know that there is a cure in the other world. How do we know that? No no clue. Alex Aster doesn't give us any explanation for this.

[00:50:47]Also, as I have now finished Sky Shay at this point, um the whole breaking the curse on the sword would be at the cost of Isla's life or a significantly reduced um lifespan is so confusing because you find out later that the necklace Grim has that just nullifies his curse was made using Isla's father's blood who had a flare for nullifying curses.

[00:51:12]So, that was an easy fix, but for some reason when it comes to the sword, you can't just take Isla's blood and break the curse with it, which is what the blacksmith did with her father's blood to make the pendant to nullify Grim's curse. I'm so confused by this magic system. None of it makes any sense.

[00:51:35]Before we close out, I need to talk about the rebels that are kind of not in this book a lot, but their whole presence is so stupid because we're told that their whole goal is to bring an end to how the magic system works. But they're also angry about how long it took to break the curses. And I just think this is a very stupid thing. Like we had 500 years of the Centennial being unsuccessful and there were no rebels then?

[00:52:09]Like why is it after the curses are broken that's when the rebels show up?

[00:52:14]And we're told that um they want the nexus like it's called a nexus is apparently what ties all of the realm wings to their ruler. And so when the ruler dies the realm wings die. You find out in Night Bane that this was apparently not always the case and they want to find a way to break that. Now I don't know why they wouldn't have pursued this earlier on because obviously even though the prophecy in Light Lark said that a ruling line has to come to an end well a whole realm didn't come to an end because of the whole bond breaker bond maker situation. So I feel like they would have thought about this prior to the curses being broken as a way to evade everybody dying if a ruler dies.

[00:53:08]But no, instead it's thrown in here. I really feel like the rebels are just tossed in just because just because just so way to maybe further the plot in some areas. I I personally think you could have taken them out and it it would have been fine. You would have hardly noticed a difference. Anyway, thank you for watching. I hope you will continue to watch and I hope you have a great rest of your day and avoid these books like the plague. Go read something else like One Dark Window or A Dance of Lies or The Wind Weaver. Go read something better than this. There are plenty of options, after all.