Alex Aster

Nightbane is book two in the Lightlark series.

Book two picks up right where book one ends, so its a smooth transition. Isla remains on Lightlark with Oro. The curses are now broken and eveyone knows that Isla was the one who broke them. Even with the curses broken the realms are not united.

Even though she broke the curses Isla is finding it hard to win the hearts and the respect as the ruler of not only her wildling realm but the starling realm as well. Its not only the subjects who are finding it hard to trust or respect Isla, the Rulers are not quite ready to let her in.

During her coronation , Lighlark is attacked by the drek. These are large vaguely human-like beasts. They have short necks and long limbs with wings, black scales, with reptile faces. They are ruthless and kill anything in their path. The attack brings upon a vision of dreks attacking , killing hundreds of people, with Grimm surrounded by the carnage.

Along with the vision Isla starts to remember, it comes slowly and at times she doesn’t want it to, but she remembers. Isla is trying to stop a war, stop the future she saw in her vision, and stop a prophecy told by the oracle.

We get flash backs in the chapters labeled before, where Isla recalls her past, the past that was taken from her before the Centennial. They fit in well with the timeline shes in now, her memories help progress the story and bring a clarity to her actions and the actions of those around her.

We finally get a little more backstory on how her mother was wildling and her father was nightshade and what that truly makes Isla. We still dont have the full story on what happened between them but we have bread crumbs that Im hoping will lead us to more information in the next book.

Not only do we get more of the past from her but we start to learn there is more to Lighlark than we had thought, there are more creatures, ones that are as old as lightlark itself still on the isles, and they too have stories to tell.

The pacing of the story is pretty even throughout , there is constant plot progression as well as character development for Isla and Oro as well as their friends. We even get more back story on Grimm and what really happened before the Centenial.

Overall I enjoyed book two even more than book one. The way it ended set up for book three perfectly. I like the fact that Isla wasnt just a Chosen one winning a game, The story here feels like were building up to something much bigger than the curses.