Lightlark- The Most Vibrant Display of Overhyped Failure 

Me, watching a seven and a half hour video on a book I've never heard of from a channel I've never watched before, nodding and acting like I have a stake in any of this: Yes, call her ass out, get her.

Bill was a sad boy. He got bullied a lot and cried after school. So, one day, he turned into a tree. There, I made a twist none of you predicted. I am therefore an amazing author.

"even Twilight got people to read, and once they started reading, they learned to read something better" this is gold lmaoo

The fact that the ruler of an island is called Isla Crown is so lazy it's actually funny Like calling a lawyer Mr. Law

Imagine thinking your book going to be made into a 150 minute long movie, and what you get is a singular RU-vid rant with thrice the length.

Bragging about no one guessing the twist is like a professor bragging that everyone failed his class.

The fact that Isla is in her 20s while most of the other characters are hundreds of years old, yet she still managed to hold her own against them, genuinely bothers me. They have had HUNDREDS OF YEARS to master their skills. Imagine facing someone in combat who has had centuries of practice. No twenty-something can beat that. This is something that the worst-thought-through vampire novels have managed to get right and brings Mary Sue who a whole new level.

I think I can see what Aster is trying to do by constantly listing the qualities each realm has. It’s like Hogwarts houses (Harry Potter), godly parents (PJO), courts (ACOTAR), etc. Theyre all categories that fans can imagine and subdivide themselves into. Aster probably wrote her world imagining all the buzzfeed quizzes people will take to determine what realm they are

"She ran like she was running from something." The editor was underpaid or not enjoying the work by this point, huh?

The poorly defined "if you love someone they get your powers" mechanic makes me want to write a Lightlark fanfiction about Oro's ridiculously overpowered pet dog. The best little good boy.

"I don't eat hearts. But pull that again, and for you? I'll make an exception." is actually a pretty raw line. I know it's one line out of seven hours but it struck me that that's actually pretty cool in a vacuum of heart-eating people.

i find it hard to believe that in all her years of training, isla was never prepared for having to eat human hearts in front of others

This channel feels like an English professor got his tenure and decided to exclusively study and give lectures on terrible books. I'm here for it.

Me: I can't start a new TV show, they take too long to watch. Also Me when I see a 7 hour book review: Don't mind if I do!

just realized it would be so fucking easy to fix the double curse thing: just make wildlings crave the taste of their beloved's heart in particular. make it a self control thing

Honestly just hearing an author say 'no one guessed the twists of my book' this proudly is just a huge red flag because it usually means that the twists weren't set up properly and or just thrown in for shock value

this books biggest crime is going "the protagonist comes from a people that eats hearts. she doesn't do that tho" just disappointing, think of all the good heart gore it could have had

all the obstacles just feel like a bunch of kids playing an imaginary game and where one says "i fireball you!!" the other just goes "nuh uh, i actually have fireproof armor 😌"

I literally imagined Oro as an old man the entire time. It just kept becoming more and more uncomfortable lmao

When you said the nomenclature was very immature and childish, I was like “Oh wow, that’s really hyperspecific, I wonder what stuff is named to generate that comment because I’ve never heard someone say that specifically about a book before.” I was not fucking prepared. Literally Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde, residing on Ink Island, Blink Island, Pink Island, and Clyde Island. I named shit like this when I was EIGHT and saving my stories to a FLOPPY DISK.

She started querying at TWELVE?! Yea, no wonder she got rejected. The agencies and publishers are not gonna risk anything on a kid. I was published at 17 and got rejected repeatedly just because of my age. I started to query at age 15 and it was a very hostile environment. Now I'm 29 and still working on getting books published and when people ask me if I think they should try to get published as a teenager I tell them: *"No. Spend a few years tweaking, beta workshop in your manuscript and learn about the industry. Wait until you're a bit older and then try to get published. The industry is not kind to young authors and agents and publishers can and will take advantage of your inexperience. I know personally how it can go."*

"Where darkness meets light" is clearly Isla as Oro and Grim plow her at the same time.

Why couldn't Celeste just be a villian by herself? Why did it have to be Aurora? She already had the motivations, her curse really is the cruelest one, it makes sense for her to become greedy and not only break her own curse but also obtain everyone else powers, its all there and it makes sense. It also makes sense for her to know about the original offense since she loves hidden libraries so much.

This technically should have been released on Sunday. "And on the third day, Book Jesus rose again."

I find it amusing that Isla is revolted by a glove made out of human skin while her entire realm sustains itself exclusively on human hearts.

At this point, I’m convinced Aster saw Divergent and really liked the scene with all the kids pouring their blood into different bowls of stuff: rocks, coal, water etc. and figured she would use something like that in her book. And then forgot about the elemental blood when it was inconvenient for the plot.

I'm so sick of reading these stories where any other woman outside the main character is either the mean bully/the secret villain pretending to be your friend or basically non-existent

I can vividly imagine Krimson stumbling out of his editing room covered in blood after all of this was done and just groaning, "Well that was tedious."

I'm really amused by how much of Isla's outfit is apparently secret knives. I have this mental image of her tripping and accidentally killing herself and everyone else in the room.

Isla could have been soooo interesting if she was affected by the curse. It would be so refreshing to see a monstrous protagonist in YA. I wish everyone was a little stranger and more unnerving. The vibes would be so great. And the "killing the people you love" thing could have brought such tension to the romance! And the "eating human hearts" thing could have been a way to say that, even though she does something many would consider horrifying and disgusting, that she's still just a person affected by the poor circumstance of the curse, and would make us root for her to break it. Instead, having her be the only one not affected by the curse makes her the peak of "I'm not like other girls".

A better moonling curse would have prob been a werewolf situation. Once a month, everyone morphs into mindless beasts. The culture could be intricate; every household had reinforcements from strong doors to sturdy prison cells. Women and children, though also beastly, would be sparse and require even greater protection. Staying inside wouldn't be enough. They would be powerful but lack control. Other clans could try to exploit them, even, or traffic them for war purposes. So much potential but nope. Just... spooky ocean tides.

Everytime she wrote "Fisted" to mean someone is making a fist is a curse even Lightlark won't break

I feel like authors sometimes get so wrapped up in their ships they forget the reality of boundaries. It's actually very invasive for a stranger to press chocolate up against your mouth and feed you from their hands, no matter how attractive they are. Like I get it, we wanna get to the cute stuff, but it's very strange for something so sensual to be happening right away. I wouldn't buy this level of physical comfort even if they'd slept together immediately.

The biggest problems with this story are: 1.) The worldbuilding is like YandereSim, adding a bunch of cool shit cause it's cool without making sure you have something that actually works 2.) The plot regularly possesses the characters to make them say or do whatever it needs 3.) I could describe every character with a single word

I love how the comments have come together and literally written a better book than the one being reviewed.

So Lightlark is basically the literary equivalent of when the Powerpuff Girls tried to make themselves a new sister by throwing everything they liked into a pot, only to come out of it with a deformed mess of a person no one really wanted to put up with?

2:47:09 Every TTRPG player knows a story of a game master who really just should've written a book. Aster is an author who really should've just ran a D&D campaign.

Isla: “Hey Oro, have you ever heard of the bond-breaker?” Oro: “No- wait, don’t you mean the bond-MAKER?” [Roll credits]

When Krimson mentioned that the rulers (except for Isla and Celeste) are hundreds of years old, I pictured them to look like they’re 50-70. I imagined them with wrinkles, some of them with greying hair, and that Cleo had a cane, even though one was never described. This mental image of the characters worked against me as soon as Grim started flirting with Isla and later Oro joined the love triangle.

Krimson: makes a 7+ hour video Also Krimson: So you gotta watch this at least twice

When I hear "star stick", I think those cheap gold glitter star wands they sell to go with fairy and princess Halloween costumes.

According to a study the human heart contains roughly 650 calories. According to the math each adult actually does need to eat three human hearts to reach their daily caloric needs. The requirement is *literally* three square hearts a day.

The story would've been so much better if there was another realm that had been destroyed in a previous sentinial. It would make Oreo's whole "the hard part is choosing who dies" thing have weight behind it, and would make Isla's age more important as she wouldn't have seen the fallout firsthand.

The idea that Aster kept pressing on her story to be published so much that her agent literally quit (according to her) is incredibly funny

Have I read Lightlark? No. Will I watch every BookTube video talking about it? Yes. Will I tell my whole family I'm sick so I can stay in bed and watch a 7 hour Krimson video? Absolutely.

As a HoH person, I really appreciate that you speak so clearly that the auto-generated captions are pretty close to a perfect 1:1 of what you’re saying. But I’m CACKLING at the fact the auto-caps spell Isla’s name a different way every time it pops up 😂

this feels like the kind of book I'd find at the Scholastic Book Fair when I was 11 years old and read it front to back in 2 days and then gush about it to my parents and have them feign interest because they can tell its bullshit but don't wanna squash my love of reading

"Aurora was so pissed off she damned everyone in the world" honestly, best character in the book from that description. we stan a petty queen. iconic behavior.

"An immortal Kung Fu Monkey; _weird,_ but there's something you could do with that" This really do be a Journey To The West moment.

2:27:00 this honestly reads to me like she loved that scene from Hunger Games where all the contestants display their unique abilities before a bunch of judges so they can get a score, and Katniss shoots the apple from the roasted pig's mouth. It's like she loved that scene so much that she thought up the moment with the throwing star and king's crown, then worked backward from there to create the rest of the scene to justify it, never realizing that it makes no sense in context. The whole scene only makes sense when you as a repeat-reader (or author) already know that it's just a framing device for that single throwing star moment.

While there are many, many, many problems with the magic system in Lightlark, the one that strikes me as the most frustrating is the Wildling curse. The heart-eating aspect is dead in the water and only relevant for shock value and the Wildlings reputation, while the need to kill someone they love comes across as a contrived obstacle for the love triangle. Since the connection to animals is never utilized, I think it would've been much stronger for the Wildling curse to be that their presence drives animals into a violent frenzy. Although the civilization of Lightlark is very poorly fleshed out, it seems likely that they would be dependent on animal power for agriculture, transport, etc. Magic can't replace everything. In this way, giving the Wildlings a curse that makes them incompatible with wildlife could simplify the story without changing much. They could still be outcast and hated for disrupting the flow of every day life every time they get too close to work animals. It could explain their harsh training, which would be necessary to defend themselves against wild animals. Or you could go the other direction, creating a cultural belief that wildlings are too delicate to defend themselves. This could also add depth to the Wildling emphasis on natural beauty, functionally objectifying themselves as an attempt to prove some sense of worth. While I don't understand or like Oro, his motivation to protect Isla from beasts on the island can remain mostly unchanged. It's pretty stupid that Isla's exempt from the blessing and curse, but even if you wanted to leave that in with these changes, why not make her an animal lover? It appeals to the audience, but it provides opportunities to create conflict between Isla's personal desires and the secrets she needs to uphold. For example, you could set up a scene where a stray animal approaches her with interest, but she has to shoo it away before someone realizes it's being friendly instead of violent. Doubt anyone will read this but it's fun to talk (or type) these things through. Aster's complete disinterest in internal logic is simultaneously painful and my new favorite playground. Who knows, maybe I'll go off the deep end and try to write LarkLight, where I just try to fix everything I hate.

7 hours? Holy mother of all that is holy, KrimsonRogue is truly sacrificing his life and blood and tears for us

Reading this book is like being invited over to that annoying kid in your class's house and when you start playing pretend, he starts making up a bunch of shit that gives him more powers than you in order to beat you and then progressively throws more of a fit when you outsmart him and you're not old enough to drive so you have to stay there until your parent picks you up.

I've only made it to 3:24:14 but I've just realized that Isla having no powers also relates to how she has no actual governing powers, despite being the "ruler". She's being watched and controlled all the time, so who's doing the actual ruling?

THE MIRROR TEST IS LITERALLY A STORY ELEMENT IN DIVERGENT LMAO. did the author just take plot points from every ya book in existence ??? LOL

Thinking how the rulers have overall remained constant throughout the centennials makes it all so much funnier/worse. Just the same people in the same room showing off their powers which are the same as last time they went through this weird summer camp talent show

"They are ONE WET FLOOR away from a realm wide GENOCIDE" is now officially my new most favorite out of context quote. Thank you Krimson!

You know, a story like Lightlark would actually make for a hilarious isekai or reincarnation story. You have the big bad who lays out all the plot twists meant to shake the main character, but the protag is like 'That doesn't make any sense according to the rules of this world' and ends up unravelling the whole plot.

from how overstated it was that celeste and isla are "like sisters", I could see that twist coming from a mile.

The fact that the sequel got announced so close to the release of this video has me deeply worried for Krimson’s sanity.

I always find it weird when writers brag about how not a single reader guessed the twist in their story. If done right a plot twist consists of clues and foreshadowing throughout the story, the final piece given right before the reveal in the narrative so the reader can puzzle the whole thing together themselves and feel vindicated. Not just... not giving any information and being smug about it. Like, I'd guessed the Celeste is the final boss twist, but only because "bff turns on the protagonist" is such a recurrent theme in female lead stories that the moment Isla and Celeste were described as "juming in a small cirkel, laughing" and "having slumber parties" I just knew.

Sometimes predicting the twist before it's reveal is just as exciting as being blindsided with it. I've had plenty of moments while reading where the, "I KNEW IT All ALONG," was better than the, "I never saw that coming."

This whole story feels like someone flicked thru a recipe book and picked every single ingredient they liked the sound of, and tried to bake it into a cake. There are individually a lot of intriguing ideas and aspects to this story but it's lost in the hodgepodge of a recipe cut and pasted together like a ransom note

New fear unlocked: writing a book and ending up in a KrimsonRogue video 😅 these are great advice on what not to do.

Every time Krimson explains more of Isla's 'training', I think the 'training' was actually a series of elaborate assasination attempts that she survived through plot armor and dumb luck.

"If you play D&D enough, you'll come across metagaming." My very first campaign had a metagamer and a rules lawyer; it was the same guy. We didn't finish that one.

Aster never bragged about A movie. She bragged about an entire damn movie FRANCHISE 😂 I'm not kidding, I lost count of how many times she mentioned a "movie franchise by the producers of Twilight!" on her sm. BEFORE THE FIRST BOOK EVEN CAME OUT!

I always hate the “no one can guess my plot twist” having the murder in a true crime story be a dragon is also a twist no one can guess. It also ruins everything

"She can travel to all these different places endlessly, meet new people, and has to get back before her guardians find out" This sounds like it should have been a book series with that being the first book so we see her learn about the world and then build up to the larger plot where that knowledge gives her an advantage over others

I remember looking at some passages describing the island of Lightlark, and it honestly sounded really cute and whimsical, houses held up by trees, quaint shops styled to look like teacups and chocolates, shimmering street lamps that attract fireflies... this revelation that she originally did fantasy for children makes it all click for me. I bet if she pivoted into writing short stories for kids, she'd be a lot more comfy than writing about sex and murder.

Back again to throw hands about how the author deliberately picked a name that is commonly pronounced as is (Eye-la) says "I pronounce it differently" (eyes-la) and then has the audacity to say "I didnt expect so many people to get it wrong."

Weird thing I noticed that confused me: Wildlings supposedly wear cloths that emphasize their natural beauty so why would she roll her eyes or be aghast at revealing clothing? For her that should be the normal wardrobe and wouldn’t be anything of note it be like me being scandalized about getting a t shirt as a gift

Let's appreciate how "Hearteater" must sound to wildlings. And imagine same plays-on-their-curse names for other islanders? Sun-coward? Wave-victim?

Imagining someone just hanging out and all of a sudden they sneeze and start their period and just like fireworks or fire erupting from their crotch is hilarious to me

just found this guy's channel and the visual of just being surrounded by piles of books is so calming and comforting to me LMAO

I'm not the only one who wanted to tear their hair out every time Aster started listing stuff about the realms, right? "The Sunbutts had X, the Moonlips had Y, the Borlings had Z." Infuriating.

As a hobby writer myself, I think of writing as the study of everything. There's a saying "Don't make characters who are smarter than you", which I think is just off base; It should be "Don't make a character who knows more than you." You can make a character smarter than you, by just having them put the pieces of a problem together faster than you would have done it. If you make a character that knows more than you, you have to make stuff up, and you run the risk that whatever you make up will actually be stupid. When writing a character, who was a heart surgeon, I read a bunch of medical text books, so that I could make sure that he knew what he was talking about, and knew what he was doing, whenever he did something related to his job. I still remember some stuff from reading about a double by-pass surgery, though only enough to know how to kill the patient faster.

The thing about Lightlark is that it has a very strong idea that has too much added into it. I think that the story could work if the curses were just spun *very* recently, and the realms are in shambles. Make the curses *unlivable*. None of this avoidable crap. The Wildlings, consumed by bloodlust, are ripping each other to shreds in the streets, the Starlings are experiencing a mass extinction event, the Moon Isle is being decimated by natural disasters each phase of the moon, etc. Then, the prophecy comes. And all the rulers must now come together with the solemn understanding that they have to decide which of them will die if *any* of the realms are to survive. It could set the stage for a really interesting intrigue plot. Have the rulers opposed on what should be done-- most of them agreeing to seek out an alternative solution to the problem while some scheme to assassinate one another just to put an end to it. Idk, I'm not a writer. I just think the entire concept becomes so much more interesting if the threat of the curses is immediate and pressing.

I stand by the belief that she ignored Azul to avoid the unfortunate implications she created, because if the curse is passed only by biological children, and he can't have biological children the old fashioned way (unless they have magical in vitro fertilization) then he basically risks his entire kingdom's existence just by being himself.

Krimson single-handedly keeping Post-It and Staples in business.

Authors never wanna think about how periods work for their characters with wacky blood effects, and for that, they are all cowards.

As somebody who worked in a bookstore when lightlark came out, I promise you your book isn’t a dud. The curling on the edges was a HUGE problem we had with the books when we got them in on the trucks, and I also have never seen covers do that before or after those books were in the store. They were a nightmare to shelve without ripping too, all of us refused to buy it out of spite

The brooding loner love interests make me think back to Hunger Games, because Peeta wasn't that at all. He's just a sweet & kind boy who survives by hiding and being friendly. Actually having contrast between him and the other love interest who is a lot closer to Katniss in disposition makes things more engaging. It's not about the flavor of loner, but about choosing whether your partner is built similarly or as an opposite.

I will NEVER get over feeding her chocolate with 'two ENORMOUS fingers' it's SO UNNECESSARILY DISGUSTING way to describe that moment holy shiiiiit

I’d like to hear this story from Azul’s perspective, lol. Mostly clueless, figures out a twist, but forgets to tell everyone about it. Generally just hanging around wondering where the other rulers are.

Another plothole that (I think) hasn't been brought up yet: Isla's ancestor lost a hand and therefore had to produce an heir lest their disability put them at a disatvantage and risks killing houndreds of people, but Oro's poor health literally caused a palace to crumble, and nobody, not even he himself thinks "hey maybe 500 years were enough, you should have kids and die my dude." ????

Isla is *100%* a Mary Sue; even when she fucks up due to her own stupidity, the plot bends over backwards to make sure she gets out as cleanly as humanly possible. She ends the book with ALL OF THE POWERS by ACCIDENT

Are we all going to ignore the fact Krimson saw a man die, and not just that, but that man was underwater for 10 minutes and they managed to revive him????

One of my many throw-the-book-across-the-room moments with this book was Oro's flair being that people cannot lie to him, and yet Celeste/Aurora, a walking, talking, living lie, exists.

This book sounds to be about 95% exposition and 5% backtracking

A good twist is one you almost see coming. A great twist is one you didn't see coming. A bad twist is one you couldn't see coming.

King: *coughs violently* The people: "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!" King: *gets papercut and starts a fire in the library*

So let me get this straight... the first page of this story STARTS with a protagonist with a questionably-unpronouncable name (unpronouncable because not even the book keeps it straight) using an item of unlimited magical teleportation with few restrictions on range and for no cost? And you're telling me this thing WON'T be solving all the problems? **checks timestamp** There's still SEVEN HOURS of review to look forward to?! **straps self into cockpit** My body and soul are ready.

I think a good way to describe the lore and world building of the story that was said by another RU-vidr who reviewed this book is that it's a collection of Pinterest aesthetic images, it's just supposed to be very cool or pretty without much substance.

I love how one feature film's length of the way in, we're still at chapter four. This is scratching a very specific itch for me. (Also, the "training to survive stabbing" could actually be pretty cool. Reminds me of that scene in Our Flag Means Death- when Blackbeard's tactic to survive a stabbing is to let himself get stabbed, but at a place of his choosing, where it avoids all vital organs. It can be cool.)

Concerning the rags to riches story she touts, it has to be stated that her parents own one of the biggest and most successful car dealerships in the country and both she and her sister grew up being in their commercials. The loan you mention her sister got to start Newsette came from her parents. Alex received a similar loan herself. There’s also the fact she treats this book as her debut when this is her third trad pub book.

Re: the dressmaking scene. I'm a dressmaker and there is a precedent for draping the clothing directly on the person who will wear it. However, it is of course done with a lot of care and there are still trial-and-error steps where you take the fabric off, assemble it, test the fit again, and so forth. Making a dress (especially a fitted one like Isla's) is a complex endeavor. If the Starling magic is purely about telekinesis, there's no way a regular human being could keep track of all of those components simultaneously, especially without accidentally stabbing the client with needles. But then, having the magic handle all of that could also explain how a society of only young people can manage the expertise necessary to have master tailors. Remember, this dude also can't be older than 25. You can find a few master tailors or dressmakers at that age, but they are rare, and they're not going to get there without plenty of older masters to learn from. As for a technical quibble, she mentions that the dress has a built-in corset, but it's also implied to be made of nothing but fabric and ribbon. Corsets by definition are a structured bodice that use a strong, inflexible layer of fabric (the satiny stuff mentioned does not qualify) supported by boning (flexible steel is the common modern choice for boning). It's *possible* that the boning and strength fabric just wasn't mentioned, but given the amount of detail given to the rest of the garment, it seems a large oversight to me. But my secondary specialty is corsetry, so I'm inclined to pay attention to those details.

An author breaking the rules of their own universe for plot convenience would be like Hitchcock turning off gravity every time Stewart had vertigo.

seamstress/dressmaker here. It sounds like from the book the starling tailor was draping the fabric on her. Draping fabric on a mannequin or dressform involves a LOT of pins. If this is correct then yes she'd defiantly be a pin cushion and wouldn't be able to move at all. Love watching your long videos while I work Krim. I look forward to anything you post.

Convinced that the author has never seen any sort of blade before. She cuts vegetables with a sharpened spork. Possibly, she's never seen metal before, either.