As someone with aphantasia (the inability to imagine) who loves writing, while her writing style is probably influenced by her lack of imagination, shes also just. a bad writer. You can definitely write a good fantasy without imagination, it’s just more difficult because it doesn’t come as naturally to us. You can read more to get a sense of how people with imaginations prefer descriptions, or you can lean into the aphant experience, it’s all up to the writer. It’s often just a case of making an effort to understand the world from a perspective you don’t have, which is what a writer should do for any character they write that doesn’t share their experiences Alex just doesn’t put any effort into her writing, which we already knew from book one lmao
Hi! Aphantasia doesn't mean we don't have any imagination. I think that's a bit harsh xD It just means our minds cannot visualise. I mean, there is even different levels to it as some people can visualise while dreaming but not awake, some can't have visual dreams at all. It is a spectrum. Our brains are beautiful complex things that are truly fascinating. We understand very little of the brain overall, especially when it comes to the bigger picture. And Imagination comes from our brains and is therefore more complex that one might immediately assume. I don't think it can be boiled down to no visual images = no imagination as imagination can involve sounds, touch, taste. It's not all visual. It can be descriptive words, seeing nothing but hearing two people acting out the situation you have conjured up. I can describe my loved ones in paragraphs, without seeing them inside my mind. I can give you wonderful description paragraphs of a fantasy world while my mind is seeing nothing. All of this is imagination. People without sight can imagine. I do think Aster is very weak in this area though. Sometimes I truly don't understand the publishing world! Hope you have a lovely day or night and I hope none of this came out too wrong :)
Yep. Also have Aphantasia and I write. I have no visuals in my mind, but since I was a kid I used words to develop my imagination. The more I read, the more words and ways I had to imagine.
*Another girl with aphantasia has joined the chat* I'm an artist and writer, so even though i can't see the things I'm making in my brain b4hand. It's much more a feeling or a vibe that is translated to page and when written or drawn down I always find myself surprised that is really really good cause I couldn't see it before but here it is now. Also for anyone else with this problem. REFERENCES, REFERENCES, REFERENCES. it's so easy, if only Alex Aster used a Pinterest board we might have had something good
23:27 Yes, I get it! I think what you're trying to say is her writing style lacks variety and complexity. Almost every sentence is structured as subject - verb - object, with a few fragments sprinkled in. Straightforward sentences are fine, but when you use too many back-to-back, the writing gets repetitive. Or dead and textbook-like, as you said. It reminds me of this quote from Gary Provost, who wrote tons of books on writing craft. (Let's be honest, Alex Aster could stand to read a few, or at least use better editors! lol) “This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals-sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
In the Skyshade acknowledgements, Aster thanks her "entertainment lawyer", who believed in her before all of this (Lightlark) happened. Further proof that she just wanted to get famous, by any means necessary.
My husband came in the room halfway into me listening to this and he’s like “between this and you ranting about Lauren Roberts (my arch nemesis), you need some kind of hate on books club.” 😂 he was so close.
Watching a rant about Nightbane, it occurred to me that Azul might die in the book. Because. Mentor. Gay. Poc. Now I'm realising that there's another opportunity for him to get killed now there's more books lol
I KNEW there would be more books and I was still baffled when she announced it. Next year, Aster is publishing a direct continuation of the Lightlark series alongside a Lightlark novella (supposedly of a similar length to the other books, which will be 400-ish pages). What she is going to write is beyond my mortal knowledge
I'm not even halfway through this video and everything you're saying feels like a kid's fantasy fever dream. "Isla has a dragon" after no other mention of dragons -- What?? "She can chase storms and find the origin with a magical ring" eXCUSE me?? I'm cackling 😂😂
I don’t understand people who frame “I would kill the whole world to save you” as a good thing. That’s not romantic, that’s pathological. Bro needs a psychiatric intervention, not a girlfriend
I was just thinking about that too, because I absolutely hate the 'I will burn the world for you' trope. I also believe that this is linked to the notion that nobody matters except us, which I've commonly seen in books where a character runs away with their lover, leaving everyone in their life behind. In a historical romance, a woman running away with a man could ruin her entire family, but the book glosses over this, implying that love is more important than the survival of a whole household. Historically, love was seen as a detriment to relationships because it can drive people to do incredibly foolish, selfish, and even illegal things. I can absolutely understand why. One of the reasons I love the book 10 Rules for Marrying the Duke is that it subverts my hated tropes; in this book, the heroine's sister runs away with the stable hand, and the heroine feels intensely resentful towards her, which isn't portrayed as a positive outcome for the family. The sister's actions force the heroine to marry the Duke, thereby giving her younger sister a chance at a good marriage and her father some peace of mind. I've even come across the 'I will burn the world for you' trope in HRs, which is mostly found in fantasy romances; as I've mentioned, it often goes hand in hand with the 'let's run away together' theme, which sometimes results when the characters don't run away together. In one of the books I actually like, the ex-boyfriend of the main male character tells him they should run away together, threatening to destroy everything if they can't be together. Luckily, the MMC does end up marrying someone else, but his ex tries to convince him one last time.
I didn’t expect Isla to be so edgy in this one. I lose focus for a moment and then the next second she’s strutting around naked and covered in snakes, waking people up in the middle of the night so she can show them a severed head.
I'm currently suffering through this book, for some reason I chose this series as one that I have to finish at all costs but I also only signed up for a trilogy so I won't be picking up on the next one even just to hate read. What really got me about it, though, was the amount of TYPOS in the book - even ignoring the piss poor writing there were a lot of typos that I caught in the copy that I read (just the ebook version from Libby in English) - one of which was on PAGE ONE OF THE BOOK! "Take methere." One of them was funny as hell though: "Grim frowned and wiped her ears away". Page breaks also do not exist and it makes reading some of the scenes really confusing.
By listening to your review it was as clear as the sky the books were heavily influenced by Maas and ACOTAR. And then I realized: the colors on the covers: Lightlark - red (acotar), Nightbane - blue (acomaf), Skyshade - green (acowar). If the novela's cover will be lightblue and the the sequel's orange, for me it will be the proof that Aster tried to create a book using Maas' successful formula. But failed trying.
I genuinely thought my Libby version was missing formatting because of the random first-person intrusions and text passages but looks like Aster just forgot Italics exist??? Did her editor ctrl + A and unitalicise everything the press print??
Glad im not the only one who noticed the GMA host pronouncing Oro's name as "Orah", lmao Thank you for your sacrifice. I tried reading this, got maybe six chapters in before I had to give up. I won't be able to continue this series BUT i will certainly watch anything you post about it to see how this trainwreck ends. Dear lord, there is so much pointless filler! It's almost like she's a panster who didn't go back and edit anything (as a panster myself, I can see this quite easily). There's no love triangle. I hate love triangles, but she didn't write a love triangle here. I think it was clear from how she wrote Oro in book one he was probably never meant to be a love interest originally (he always came off as a mentor-figure if anything) and the "romance" was just shoved in there. Oro keeps getting sidelined so much while Grim keeps getting center stage, so its pretty obvious who endgame is. She isn't even trying to make it difficult on who Isla will end up with, lol. Let's not forget her amazing way for naming things. We had "starstick", in this book we got "shademade" to describe something else (i think the cuffs the blacksmith made?). Ugh. I can't. This book came for my braincells. I don't know how you made it through.
It's crazy that now I heard that she has a further two installments in this series. How does this even happen? Hi Sophie thanks for your videos. I find them very enjoyable to watch.😜
32:08 I understood exactly what you meant but a more correct way to say it might be “interiority”, i.e. “Maybe if she had some interiority” etc. Also, you’re so funny. I laughed out loud at the fuckass ACOTAR novella nobody cares about 😂😂😂 Please PLEASE make a video about the next Lightlark book coming out in 2025!!!! ❤
Hier für die:"Hä?!" What a wilde ride this series... maybe AA should have stopped after the 999th publisher said no to her... Lots of lofe from Bayern!
Yes! I was waiting for your take on the recent news. I read Lightlark. Thought it was good for what it was. Own Nightbane but haven't read it yet. Wasn't top priority. So many indie books surpass this series. After reading Nightbane, I'll probably pick up the next one. Not one to prejudge books but seeing your perspective is so refreshing. It's always refreshing. I don't mind a few spoilers on this one considering it is what it is. Yeah, I feel like it's a bit ridiculous from what you just described.
never read it only watched/listened to video reviews about it because i don't think it's a good series and your ranting proves as much. thanks for your sacrifice btw
This sounds mean, but I'm gonna have to say it. People who keep praising and hyping up books like this on Tik Tok/TH-cam, like Alex Aster's works, SJM's, Colleen Hoover's, whatever shitty YA/NA romances that would get published in the future, are the equivalent of people who keep buying those yearly releases of sports video games. The quality of those games get worse and worse every year with terriblt predatory monetization schemes, but they keep buying them like that's the only thing they can comprehend as consumers. And the publishers keep making them with nothing really changing between each of those releases, because they know people will keep buying them and whaling in the games.
do you think there is a niche to be filled where someone can read the tiktok girlie books and try to communicate the revolutionary, progressive themes that they are missing out on? not that these books are typically good or groundbreaking, SJM and Hoover in particular have horrible things in them, but they arent without themes that are anti-war or feminist or about oppressive systems...
So you are her biggest fan, if ironic :P I dont think she is a n industry plant, but boy is whoever markets doing her no favour, because, i dont know if she could be good but she could have tried to really get a better editor who is harsh to her to make he rless bad. And why is it published when its clearly not ready and needed reworking? She isnt good but wwho the hell isnt giving her the needed harsh critoicism and editing. Damn Sophie should have been paid as her editor. Ok thats the third book? and she hasnt improved into making a plot that like makes sense or is interesting and works together, and why that fast to make it definitly not well edited or worked over? I think you know my father and that my cousin is alive and didnt tell me, would be a betrayal, does she need to get along with the cousin , no but its fair, butnot the worst grimm is. Her cousin, fine, ok mad, but how can she not get why they would keep a secret sealed dangerous ancestor :(
As someone with aphantasia (the inability to imagine) who loves writing, while her writing style is probably influenced by her lack of imagination, shes also just. a bad writer. You can definitely write a good fantasy without imagination, it’s just more difficult because it doesn’t come as naturally to us. You can read more to get a sense of how people with imaginations prefer descriptions, or you can lean into the aphant experience, it’s all up to the writer. It’s often just a case of making an effort to understand the world from a perspective you don’t have, which is what a writer should do for any character they write that doesn’t share their experiences
Alex just doesn’t put any effort into her writing, which we already knew from book one lmao
I'd say it's more of a lack of being able to visualize than a lack of imagination itself (I have the same thing so I do know the struggle tho)
Hi! Aphantasia doesn't mean we don't have any imagination. I think that's a bit harsh xD It just means our minds cannot visualise. I mean, there is even different levels to it as some people can visualise while dreaming but not awake, some can't have visual dreams at all. It is a spectrum.
Our brains are beautiful complex things that are truly fascinating. We understand very little of the brain overall, especially when it comes to the bigger picture. And Imagination comes from our brains and is therefore more complex that one might immediately assume. I don't think it can be boiled down to no visual images = no imagination as imagination can involve sounds, touch, taste. It's not all visual. It can be descriptive words, seeing nothing but hearing two people acting out the situation you have conjured up. I can describe my loved ones in paragraphs, without seeing them inside my mind. I can give you wonderful description paragraphs of a fantasy world while my mind is seeing nothing. All of this is imagination. People without sight can imagine.
I do think Aster is very weak in this area though. Sometimes I truly don't understand the publishing world!
Hope you have a lovely day or night and I hope none of this came out too wrong :)
@ true lol I’m just a full aphant so i don’t have anything at all and I was very tired when I wrote that
Yep. Also have Aphantasia and I write. I have no visuals in my mind, but since I was a kid I used words to develop my imagination. The more I read, the more words and ways I had to imagine.
*Another girl with aphantasia has joined the chat*
I'm an artist and writer, so even though i can't see the things I'm making in my brain b4hand. It's much more a feeling or a vibe that is translated to page and when written or drawn down I always find myself surprised that is really really good cause I couldn't see it before but here it is now.
Also for anyone else with this problem. REFERENCES, REFERENCES, REFERENCES. it's so easy, if only Alex Aster used a Pinterest board we might have had something good
23:27 Yes, I get it! I think what you're trying to say is her writing style lacks variety and complexity. Almost every sentence is structured as subject - verb - object, with a few fragments sprinkled in. Straightforward sentences are fine, but when you use too many back-to-back, the writing gets repetitive. Or dead and textbook-like, as you said. It reminds me of this quote from Gary Provost, who wrote tons of books on writing craft. (Let's be honest, Alex Aster could stand to read a few, or at least use better editors! lol)
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals-sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
In the Skyshade acknowledgements, Aster thanks her "entertainment lawyer", who believed in her before all of this (Lightlark) happened. Further proof that she just wanted to get famous, by any means necessary.
My husband came in the room halfway into me listening to this and he’s like “between this and you ranting about Lauren Roberts (my arch nemesis), you need some kind of hate on books club.” 😂 he was so close.
Bookhaters was right there but he said it in such an awkward way, he completely lost it 😂
Watching a rant about Nightbane, it occurred to me that Azul might die in the book. Because. Mentor. Gay. Poc. Now I'm realising that there's another opportunity for him to get killed now there's more books lol
I KNEW there would be more books and I was still baffled when she announced it.
Next year, Aster is publishing a direct continuation of the Lightlark series alongside a Lightlark novella (supposedly of a similar length to the other books, which will be 400-ish pages). What she is going to write is beyond my mortal knowledge
...has anyone told her that's not what novella means?
@@sourcandyspiteI don't think anyone has told her what a semi-colon is let alone a novella
chat gpt maybe, she clearly doesn't care what she writes and people who read it don't care either
I thought Isla’s guardians killed her parents. I thought they admitted it at the end of book one. 😭 What is Alex even doing?
How much do y'all wanna bet that she added a dragon randomly because fourth wing is popular?
I'm not even halfway through this video and everything you're saying feels like a kid's fantasy fever dream. "Isla has a dragon" after no other mention of dragons -- What?? "She can chase storms and find the origin with a magical ring" eXCUSE me?? I'm cackling 😂😂
I don’t understand people who frame “I would kill the whole world to save you” as a good thing. That’s not romantic, that’s pathological. Bro needs a psychiatric intervention, not a girlfriend
I was just thinking about that too, because I absolutely hate the 'I will burn the world for you' trope. I also believe that this is linked to the notion that nobody matters except us, which I've commonly seen in books where a character runs away with their lover, leaving everyone in their life behind. In a historical romance, a woman running away with a man could ruin her entire family, but the book glosses over this, implying that love is more important than the survival of a whole household. Historically, love was seen as a detriment to relationships because it can drive people to do incredibly foolish, selfish, and even illegal things. I can absolutely understand why. One of the reasons I love the book 10 Rules for Marrying the Duke is that it subverts my hated tropes; in this book, the heroine's sister runs away with the stable hand, and the heroine feels intensely resentful towards her, which isn't portrayed as a positive outcome for the family. The sister's actions force the heroine to marry the Duke, thereby giving her younger sister a chance at a good marriage and her father some peace of mind.
I've even come across the 'I will burn the world for you' trope in HRs, which is mostly found in fantasy romances; as I've mentioned, it often goes hand in hand with the 'let's run away together' theme, which sometimes results when the characters don't run away together. In one of the books I actually like, the ex-boyfriend of the main male character tells him they should run away together, threatening to destroy everything if they can't be together. Luckily, the MMC does end up marrying someone else, but his ex tries to convince him one last time.
EXACTLY
I hate that trope, it's so disgustingly misanthropic
Like, you'd kill innocents just for your white bread ahh girlfriend? Please
I didn’t expect Isla to be so edgy in this one. I lose focus for a moment and then the next second she’s strutting around naked and covered in snakes, waking people up in the middle of the night so she can show them a severed head.
1:01:09 IT WAS ME, ME MENTIONED (it’s a huge pet peeve of mine and when I write I make deliberate choices to NOT start sentences with a pronoun)
I'm currently suffering through this book, for some reason I chose this series as one that I have to finish at all costs but I also only signed up for a trilogy so I won't be picking up on the next one even just to hate read.
What really got me about it, though, was the amount of TYPOS in the book - even ignoring the piss poor writing there were a lot of typos that I caught in the copy that I read (just the ebook version from Libby in English) - one of which was on PAGE ONE OF THE BOOK! "Take methere." One of them was funny as hell though: "Grim frowned and wiped her ears away". Page breaks also do not exist and it makes reading some of the scenes really confusing.
50:46. This one moment was more unexpected and exciting then anything in this book
Can’t wait to clean my whole room to this
💅 queen is serving, glowing and cooking10/10 👑
Going after her lack of knowledge of subordinate clauses. Brutal.
By listening to your review it was as clear as the sky the books were heavily influenced by Maas and ACOTAR. And then I realized: the colors on the covers: Lightlark - red (acotar), Nightbane - blue (acomaf), Skyshade - green (acowar). If the novela's cover will be lightblue and the the sequel's orange, for me it will be the proof that Aster tried to create a book using Maas' successful formula. But failed trying.
first time I’ve come across your channel, girl please you’re hysterical, the Isla hate is so real 💀💀
1:00:08
"His other what?!"
Eyebrow, obviously 😂
Alex Aster is a prime example why we shouldn’t give participation trophies.
Damn, that was a burn😂
Off topic but your whole look is soooo slay! The sparkle eyeshadow is everything 👏✨
I genuinely thought my Libby version was missing formatting because of the random first-person intrusions and text passages but looks like Aster just forgot Italics exist??? Did her editor ctrl + A and unitalicise everything the press print??
i haven’t read lightlark and i’ve been thinking the guys name is “oral” this entire time 😭
Glad im not the only one who noticed the GMA host pronouncing Oro's name as "Orah", lmao
Thank you for your sacrifice. I tried reading this, got maybe six chapters in before I had to give up. I won't be able to continue this series BUT i will certainly watch anything you post about it to see how this trainwreck ends.
Dear lord, there is so much pointless filler! It's almost like she's a panster who didn't go back and edit anything (as a panster myself, I can see this quite easily).
There's no love triangle. I hate love triangles, but she didn't write a love triangle here. I think it was clear from how she wrote Oro in book one he was probably never meant to be a love interest originally (he always came off as a mentor-figure if anything) and the "romance" was just shoved in there. Oro keeps getting sidelined so much while Grim keeps getting center stage, so its pretty obvious who endgame is. She isn't even trying to make it difficult on who Isla will end up with, lol.
Let's not forget her amazing way for naming things. We had "starstick", in this book we got "shademade" to describe something else (i think the cuffs the blacksmith made?).
Ugh. I can't. This book came for my braincells. I don't know how you made it through.
I couldn't complete Lightlark, its middle grade trying to be adult.
I’ve been looking forward to this one ❤️
i usually skip аdds but you deserve the money back
Oh I’m so ready. Queuing this up to play first thing when I get home tonight❤
It's crazy that now I heard that she has a further two installments in this series. How does this even happen? Hi Sophie thanks for your videos. I find them very enjoyable to watch.😜
girlie i had no idea the third book was out.... im no happy about it.
I HAVE A TEST TMRW MORNING I CANT WATCH THIS NOW
petition for you to read when the moon hatched
Mark Lawrence has the thing where you can’t imagine images, and his books tend to be quite well regarded, so Alex really has no excuse.
It's called aphantasia, and yeah, no excuse ata all.
YESSSSS ITS HAPPENING
0:21 that sounds like a threat
32:08 I understood exactly what you meant but a more correct way to say it might be “interiority”, i.e. “Maybe if she had some interiority” etc.
Also, you’re so funny. I laughed out loud at the fuckass ACOTAR novella nobody cares about 😂😂😂 Please PLEASE make a video about the next Lightlark book coming out in 2025!!!! ❤
ayo i wont lie i did join membership for this video like 15 mins ago 😎
Hier für die:"Hä?!"
What a wilde ride this series... maybe AA should have stopped after the 999th publisher said no to her...
Lots of lofe from Bayern!
Sophie, your eyeshadow is so stunning!!!
i didnt even know this was supposed to be a trilogy
Yes! I was waiting for your take on the recent news. I read Lightlark. Thought it was good for what it was. Own Nightbane but haven't read it yet. Wasn't top priority. So many indie books surpass this series. After reading Nightbane, I'll probably pick up the next one. Not one to prejudge books but seeing your perspective is so refreshing. It's always refreshing.
I don't mind a few spoilers on this one considering it is what it is.
Yeah, I feel like it's a bit ridiculous from what you just described.
Another world?? Portal people? Like Crescent City? Girl, I know there’s no original thoughts but if you’re going to copy at least try a little harder…
I think the only thing that can save that love triangle she likes to drag out is to make them a throuple
never read it only watched/listened to video reviews about it because i don't think it's a good series and your ranting proves as much. thanks for your sacrifice btw
“War and hate” 😂😂😂
I've never read them and I've only watched your videos about them so of course I agree 100 percent with your take 😂
I honestly thought you were exaggerating about her sentence structures at first, but NOPE. She is really doing that, huh
You are indeed a brave woman
3:42 i am moving to the Netherlands next year so I’ll be close 😂 not German but Dutch. Better bike paths I hear
i was waiting for you to come out with this video 😂
Wdym or is it?? How could there be more 😭
11:30 I'm LOL at this rant bc it's so true
Wait, where did dragons come from?
I love your yapping.
This sounds mean, but I'm gonna have to say it. People who keep praising and hyping up books like this on Tik Tok/TH-cam, like Alex Aster's works, SJM's, Colleen Hoover's, whatever shitty YA/NA romances that would get published in the future, are the equivalent of people who keep buying those yearly releases of sports video games. The quality of those games get worse and worse every year with terriblt predatory monetization schemes, but they keep buying them like that's the only thing they can comprehend as consumers. And the publishers keep making them with nothing really changing between each of those releases, because they know people will keep buying them and whaling in the games.
You look too beautiful for this awful book😂❤
Wow, that books sounded ass lmao i am not surprised it's not finished but nonetheless unimpressed
Omg I've been waiting for this
do you think there is a niche to be filled where someone can read the tiktok girlie books and try to communicate the revolutionary, progressive themes that they are missing out on? not that these books are typically good or groundbreaking, SJM and Hoover in particular have horrible things in them, but they arent without themes that are anti-war or feminist or about oppressive systems...
YK... She's just put together popular books' tropes in these horrid books and they aren't even good😂
So you are her biggest fan, if ironic :P
I dont think she is a n industry plant, but boy is whoever markets doing her no favour, because, i dont know if she could be good but she could have tried to really get a better editor who is harsh to her to make he rless bad. And why is it published when its clearly not ready and needed reworking? She isnt good but wwho the hell isnt giving her the needed harsh critoicism and editing.
Damn Sophie should have been paid as her editor.
Ok thats the third book? and she hasnt improved into making a plot that like makes sense or is interesting and works together, and why that fast to make it definitly not well edited or worked over?
I think you know my father and that my cousin is alive and didnt tell me, would be a betrayal, does she need to get along with the cousin , no but its fair, butnot the worst grimm is.
Her cousin, fine, ok mad, but how can she not get why they would keep a secret sealed dangerous ancestor :(