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52 pages 1 hour read

Alex Aster

Lightlark

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022

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Chapters 10-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “Juniper”

Isla spends her nights watching people in the marketplace to learn about the different realms and their rulers. She meets a barkeep named Juniper who deals in secrets. In exchange for her telling him that she let Oro win the duel on purpose, Juniper tells Isla that Moon Isle will not be guarded during the full moon.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Fear”

Celeste hosts her demonstration, which will provide the last piece of information Celeste and Isla need to break into the libraries and find the bondbreaker. Celeste uses an enchanted mirror to make each ruler face and conquer their deepest fear. Cleo takes the shortest time; Celeste and Azul take the longest. Then it is Isla’s turn.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Shattered”

When Isla steps through the mirror, she is pulled into a world that looks just like her room at home in the castle at Wildling. Her deepest fear is being trapped there in a shrinking room without any contact with the outside world. As her room shatters around her, Isla pulls herself free and finds herself back in the hall again with the other rulers. The demonstration is over, and after the hall empties, Celeste pulls out the pair of enchanted gloves and touches them to the mirror, soaking up the energy each ruler left behind when they completed the task. Now these gloves are ready to grant Isla and Celeste access to every protected part of Lightlark.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Tower”

Isla colors her hair and goes to Sky Isle to visit the Skyling library. At first, she can’t find a protected section, but then she touches an enchanted skylight with the gloves and finds a room full of scrolls and relics. There is no bondbreaker, however. Isla’s disappointment makes her careless when she returns to the Mainland castle, and Cleo almost catches her wearing her disguise, but she runs into Grim, who makes both of them invisible, eluding Cleo. Grim flirts with Isla again, but she rejects him and escapes to her room.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Azul”

The next day, Isla goes in search of Grim but encounters Azul, who takes her to a special Skyling spot on the mountain. On the way, he tells Isla about the history of the past Centennials and that his own hope for breaking the curses is fading. He also reveals that Skyling, as a democracy, has no nobles. When they reach the mountain, Isla sees seven tunnels dug through it, revealing sky on the other side. With his power, Azul shoots air through the tunnels, playing a song on them like an instrument. When she returns to the Mainland castle, Isla goes to Grim’s room and tells him her plan for her Centennial event: to ask every ruler to show something valuable their realm can give to Lightlark.

Chapter 15 Summary: “Elixir”

At Isla’s event, the rulers offer innovations to Lightlark, and an audience votes for their favorite. Azul shows that Skyling’s air powers can be used to send messages. Cleo simply states that Moonling has many ships. Celeste demonstrates that Starlings can use their power to create weapons out of energy. Oro creates self-contained balls of light and heat. Grim announces that his realm has nothing productive to add and then leaves, which angers and confuses Isla. Finally, Isla reveals her own realm’s innovation. In front of the crowd, she burns all the skin off one of her arms and then heals it immediately with an advanced healing elixir, stunning everyone who previously thought of Wildlings as dangerous and evil.

Chapter 16 Summary: “Shadows”

Grim surprises Isla in her room as she undresses, and Isla admits to herself that she enjoys his flirting even if she doesn’t trust him. He tells Isla that he doesn’t care about winning the Centennial and that the Lightlark history she knows is a lie. Legend holds that the Sunling ruler Horus Rey created Lightlark millennia ago, but Grim says that in fact the Nightshade ruler Cronan Malvere and Rey created Lightlark together. Isla asks Grim if he cast the curses, and he says no. When she asks why he’s at the Centennial, he turns the question around on her and accuses her of keeping secrets.

Chapter 17 Summary: “Frozen”

At Cleo’s event, Isla notices a rash on Oro’s hand and correctly diagnoses it as coming from giselroot, a plant that only grows in thick forests. She briefly wonders what he was doing in the woods, but the demonstration begins before she has a chance to fully consider the question. It is a swim through icy waters that tests the strength of a ruler’s self-knowledge and desire. Isla forces herself to keep swimming through the torturous cold and realizes that what she wants is everything life can offer: adventure, travel, friendship, and love. After she completes her task, Ella takes her to her room and a hot bath. Isla affirms to herself that she will do anything it takes to find the bondbreaker and break her curse, not only for Wildling but also for her own desires.

Chapter 18 Summary: “Castle”

Despite suffering from her arm injury and the cold of Cleo’s test, Isla sets out to find the library on Moon Isle during the full moon. Because of the Moonlings’ curse, no one is guarding the island. Isla climbs up the wall of the castle and enters, finding it mostly deserted. As she explores, she narrowly escapes two soldiers patrolling the castle, and she overhears them mention a legion, leading Isla to realize that Cleo is building an army.

Chapter 19 Summary: “Underwater”

Isla evades castle guards and follows the sound of crashing waves toward the library, the doors of which she barricades behind her. While the guards attempt to break down the doors and the sea batters the walls and windows of the library, Isla finds a protected section with relics encased in ice. There is no bondbreaker, though. Just as the guards make it through the door, Isla uses her starstick to portal away to the castle on the Mainland.

Chapter 20 Summary: “Tea”

Still recovering from injury and cold exposure, Isla concludes that the bondbreaker can only be on Sun Isle, but without any gold clothes, she will not be able to enter the realm. In the meantime, she attends Oro’s event, a private party for the rulers in which enchanted teas spell out each ruler’s greatest secret in the bottom of their teacups. The ruler who chooses to share their secret, Oro says, wins the trial. One by one, all the rulers break their cups, protecting their secrets. Finally, Oro wins the event by revealing his secret: He is dying.

Chapter 21 Summary: “Paired”

Isla and Celeste are shocked by Oro’s proclamation and discuss their strategy for finding the bondbreaker on Sun Isle. At the next gathering of the rulers, Oro explains that Lightlark has been weakening in strength for the last hundred years and uncovers his arm, where a portion of his golden skin has turned bluish gray. He says he fears that this Centennial may be the last chance to break the curses, and he reminds everyone about the prophecy about an enigmatic riddle that says they can only defeat the curses if they join together. Then, as the winner of the demonstrations, Oro pairs all the rulers off, choosing Isla as his partner.

Chapters 10-21 Analysis

The novel moves from exposition to rising action as the demonstrations that form the Centennial’s first trials accelerate. These challenges reveal more about Isla’s internal life. Her biggest fear, which she faces in Celeste’s event, is being trapped in her room in the Wildling castle. This fear illustrates the close relationship between Power and Duty—Isla experiences her status as ruler of the Wildlings as a kind of cage. Because her first responsibility is to her people, she is not free to chart her own course in life. She discovers her driving motivation, to experience all that life has to offer, during Cleo’s event. Isla’s desires in particular feel threatening to her. Her attraction to Grim shows her The Dangerous Allure of Beauty, challenging her previous perception of the world and her place in it, opening the possibility of a life with more connection and adventure than the one her guardians had mapped out for her: “Lightlark was dangerous but full of wonders. Now that she had tasted freedom, she couldn’t be locked in her glass box again and be content. She wanted more than she had ever wanted in her life” (87). Accepting these desires and choosing to be guided by them is part of Isla’s character arc.

In these chapters, Isla and Celeste’s search for the bondbreaker begins in earnest with a series of short, self-contained investigations of each realm’s private island. While she constantly laments her lack of magical ability, these mini quests offer Isla an opportunity to put many non-magical skills to use, providing readers with more insight into her character. Celeste calls her “a shadow” and says that she can “strategize like a general” (95). Isla is a practiced spy, watching the people around her and noticing patterns; she is a chameleon, taking on roles and personas to infiltrate other rulers’ spaces.

Though Isla does not have magical powers, she uses ordinary skills to extraordinary effect. Her interpersonal skills allow her to form alliances that serve her well as the stakes of the Centennial ratchet up. She makes friends with Azul, recruits her maid, Ella, as an accomplice, trades information with the local barkeep Juniper, and begins to build some trust with Grim, though his motivations remain mysterious. While Isla recognizes her need for others, she is reluctant to place too much trust in any one person, except for Celeste. She has experienced Abandonment and Betrayal from a young age, and her guardians, Poppy and Terra, have taught her to rely only on herself. Celeste is the first person she has truly trusted. The level of faith she has in their “sister” bond in the middle sections of the novel heightens the pathos when Celeste eventually betrays her.

Their motivation, to find the bondbreaker and break their curses, gains renewed urgency near the end of this section, as Oro surprises the rulers by revealing that he is dying. Since all rulers are connected intimately to their lands, this foretells doom for the land of Lightlark, which depends on Oro’s magical power for warmth and stability. While the two women decide to hasten their search for the bondbreaker, one final complication is thrown their way when Oro, the winner of the demonstration portion of the Centennial, pairs Isla not with Celeste but with himself. This presents an obstacle for Isla and Celeste’s alliance and threatens Isla’s secret. It also, however, draws Isla into a new, if unwanted, alliance with Oro where she will have to learn to trust more deeply.

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