Nightbane

Nightbane is the second installment in Alex Aster’s Lightlark series, which opens with Lightlark (2022). The third book is Skyshade, published in 2024, and a yet-untitled fourth book is set to be released as the conclusion to Aster’s series. Inspired by works like Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series and Karen McManus’s One of Us is Lying, Lightlark is set on the fantastical island of Lightlark and centers on the character of Isla, a young woman who is the ruler of a people known as Wildlings. She, along with five other rulers with different magical abilities, come together for the Centennial, an event during which they attempt to break the centuries-old curse that has been plaguing their realms. Although she was secretly born powerless, Isla participates in the Centennial’s deadly games to save her people while relying on alliances and navigating betrayals to survive.

After being orphaned as a young girl, Isla was brought up on the island of Wild Isle by her mentors, Terra and Poppy, who kept her isolated from the world to keep her lack of magical abilities secret. After finding an enchanted starstick that enables her to transport herself across the realms, Isla befriends Celeste, the ruler of Starling, and they decide to help each other during the Centennial.

Lightlark is made up of six realms, each led by a ruler whose life is tied to their people and characterized by specific magical abilities. After a mysterious curse was brought upon Lightlark, each realm was affected differently and the residents’ powers were limited in particular ways, leading to most of them fleeing to individual islands away from Lightlark itself. Every 100 years, a Centennial is held for the six rulers to find a way to break the curse together, and Lightlark focuses on Isla’s trials as she attends her first Centennial. There, she meets many of the characters who reappear or are mentioned in Nightbane. At the novel’s end, she learns that Celeste’s true identity is Aurora, the powerful sorceress who originally cursed the realms and that she used her friendship with Isla to exact further revenge on her enemies. The first book in Aster’s series concludes with Isla feeling betrayed by her best friend, falling in love with Oro, and learning that she and Grim previously had a relationship that he magically erased from her memory. The latter then becomes one of the main plot points of Nightbane, as Isla gradually recovers her memories.

Notably, the six realms that make up the people of Lightlark are as follows:

• Sunlings, ruled by Oro. They have fire magic and can turn things into solid gold, and their curse is the inability to be in direct sunlight.
• Moonlings, ruled by Cleo. They have water and healing magic, and their curse is to drown if they are at sea on a full moon.
• Starlings, ruled by Celeste, then Isla. They have energy and telekinesis magic, and their curse is to die when they reach 25 years old.
• Skylings, ruled by Azul. They have wind magic, and their curse is to be unable to fly.
• Wildlings, ruled by Isla. They have nature and healing magic, and their curse is to only be able to survive by eating human hearts.
• Nightshades, ruled by Grim. They have a variety of powers associated with darkness and illusions, and their curse is the inability to be outside at night.