dbguide2's Reviews (863)

I love it when book characters do enemies-to-lovers well. I want to not only see but believe that they dislike each other. How they’re annoyed with each other and how that turns to tolerating each other… And then love. Hart and Mercy do it so well – how could I not love it? One thing I love is pet names in books. I like them even more with enemies-to-lovers as you can be SURE the irritating nicknames will turn into being said lovingly. In here Mercy uses Hart-ache, and Hart says Merciless and my heart practically soared.

Bannen did a great job with Hart and Mercy’s personalities. Even though I know I don’t like communication like this, I still wanted them to work it out, to not be mad at each when it would eventually crash and break apart. I liked how they poured their hearts out to each other in the letters (not knowing it was the other, of course) and then disliking each other when meeting physically. I kept yelling at them “DON’T YOU KNOW (but of course they don’t).

I’ll admit the world-building is quite confusing and I certainly didn’t understand everything, nor do I intend to understand everything. I’ve learnt there’s an art in letting yourself not understand books fully and it can be great! Honestly I could in fact write a whole post about that . Maybe I’ll understand it a second or third time around, but it took a while to wrap my head around the dead and their rules? Appendixes? Basically I just told myself “right, they’re zombies”  and that was enough for me! Not understanding the world-building luckily didn’t stop me from enjoying it – which I’m so glad about. It is quite an interesting world, though, so absolute kudos to Bannen that even though she made a confusing world (for me); it was still enjoyable all the way through. The plot goes hand-in-hand with the world-building, which I liked. I was able to understand the plot a bit more because there was a whole mystery subplot.

The audiobook is great if you’re an audio fan like me. I liked both narrators and I felt like they really brought the book and world to life. I think that’s especially something seeing as I definitely wasn’t really planning to read this at the start. If you’re looking for a world-building and romance heavy book I recommend this one! Now and then I did find fault with their communication issues – I just want everyone to talk to each other properly! Thankfully that and the Western setting wasn’t an issue and I’m glad I overcame that because Bannen cemented herself as a favourite now! 

So first of all – Lightlark was written in the morning, before Aster had her breakfast. She had a word goal and then she could eat (which must’ve been eggs every morning because why was the sun being referred to as a yolky thing etc). Nightbane was written late at night. Aster must’ve had to hit her word goal to be able to go to sleep – because it was boring and I wanted to SLEEP after every chapter. I want to speak to Aster’s editor because what does Aster HAVE over you or WHAT is written in that contract. Why are there so many ellipses? Sometimes it was THREE IN ONE PARAGRAPH.

A lot of the chapters just ended and I don’t like it – like there was meant to be more or Aster just wanted to get to the next chapter. It just makes me feel as if the author isn’t doing their due diligence in ensuring the chapters flow from one to the next. The ease of chapter flowing is something I’ve only recently picked up on and I’m not a fan. Some choice words/phrases were used and I wonder why. His eyes had been hollow as honeycomb. Someone was built like a tombstone and then referred to like being carved out of a mountain – which I’m used to seeing. It’s just… tombstone. Okay, I could argue Aster had been watching Twilight but Edward was never likened to a tombstone. My favourite sentence – “her own shoulders were small, tiny slopes. His were wide cliffs.”

Isla goes back to Wilding Isle (because remember, she’s actually the ruler). The text mentions that Wildlings have animal companions, her tutors had them, she’s always wanted one. That was entirely new to me because she had never mentioned this before but apparently it was mentioned in Lightlark? One time I think. You’d think if she really really wanted a companion that it would have been mentioned more, no? Adding on to this new information – other information of the other isles are given. And while a lot of sequels do this (of course, it’s totally natural to add on to the world-building); the way Aster did it made it sound like this info was given on like page 267 of Lightlark and we just weren’t paying attention. You can’t put brand new information in the second book and act like the readers should’ve known this in the first book. 
 

Maybe I’m cynical, maybe you’ll say I’m a romance hater (which I’m not) but EVEN TWILIGHT has literally a better love story/love triangle than this. And that’s saying something as it’s Twilight. All three of the characters of the love triangle are absolutely horrible and Isla shouldn’t end up with either of them. She should just stay single, on a deserted island, so nobody (me) has to look at her. They’re all so boring – I don’t care for any of them. Either romance is extremely unbelievable, their personalities are so bland. I don’t understand the allure of this love triangle in the slightest. Also please read this line about Oro and Isla: The love between them was like a bridge. It went in both directions. I read a bunch of romance and I’ve been reading forever – I know about chemistry between characters – whether platonic or romantic. I can tell what works and what doesn’t work. It’s not only the romance that doesn’t work in here. Literally nothing at all worked for like even a second in here.

Grim is not a person, he’s not a ruler, he’s not even a fictional character. He’s just 3 badly written tropes in a (black) trench coat. You cannot write characters made up of tropes. They won’t work like that. They fall flat, they feel boring, and they don’t work. Not as interesting characters and not as believable love interests. You want me to root for them, you want me to care for them? I can’t care for characters that aren’t even fully fleshed-out characters. Oro… I don’t even know what to say about him because he was so incredibly bland and boring in here. Aster stuffs so many tropes into Grim that poor Oro only receives scraps and then has to figure out how to create a personality from that.

If I thought the world-building didn’t make sense the previous book, then basically all the work that had possibly been done had unravelled for this book. It was a mix of just loose world-building and plotlines flying around. A war was going to happen but the reason for it happening was never addressed? Oh no, wait, it was only addressed at like 98% and that still didn’t make a lick of sense. There’s a lot (like every other chapter and I groaned when I saw it) of flashbacks and I guess that and the “incoming war” were supposed to be the plotlines? Except they weren’t because they were both written so dully. The first book (and I can’t believe i”m saying this) actually had a plot (well multiple and Aster didn’t do a good job of juggling them) so it’ll be interesting to see what the third book will be like.