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wutheringmights · 3 months ago

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Nightbane by Alex Aster opens with a quote from Cato, A Tragedy (1713) by Joseph Addison: “My bane and antidote are both before me.” Very important. Very cinematic.

Quotes can rarely, if ever, be taken out of context without any loss of meaning. So I have a personal policy to research the origins of whatever quote an author opens their book with. After all, a good quote should provide important framing or context for the book you’re about to read.

To summarize a very fascinating Wikipedia article: Cato, a Tragedy is an Enlightenment era play about Cato the Younger’s last days and his opposition to the reign of Julius Caesar. Cato was an icon of republicanism and, fittingly, the play deals with themes of “individual liberty versus government tyranny, republicanism versus monarchism, logic versus emotion, and Cato's personal struggle to hold to his beliefs in the face of death.”

Nowadays, the play is obscure. Modern productions of the play are rare, if ever staged. The text is also not included in most academic curriculum. Yet, Addison’s work seems to have been highly inspirational for America’s Founding Fathers. According to Wikipedia, quotes like “give me liberty or give me death” are theorized to be references to Addison’s play that the founding fathers assumed their audience would understand. George Washington even attended a production of it while in Valley Forge in 1778.

With its considerable influence on the founding of this country, it’s mind-boggling to me that this play is not only not taught in school, but is largely forgotten. I even asked my father, who is almost 70 and is a giant history buff, if he knew anything about this play in the vain hope that maybe some previous generation learned about it. But, no; even he had no idea what it was until I told him.

My bane and antidote are both before me comes from a soliloquy from act 5, scene 1. In it, Cato contemplates the merits of committing suicide. The bane and antidote is a sword he places his hand on and a copy of Plato’s Immortality of the Soul. He does not want to kill himself. How could anyone? But if he does not die now, he will have to live in a world made for Caesar. But Plato’s writings provide reason to the universe, which gives him comfort: “the stars shall fade away, the sun himself / Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; / But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements, / The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds!”

There’s something undeniably fascinating about pieces of art that were highly influential during a period of history that have been lost to the passage of time now. Cato, a Tragedy is a cornerstone in American history, yet that did not save it from being a victim of obscurity. It failed to flourish in immortal youth.

Joseph Addison is best remembered as an essayist. His simple prose style was credited by John Julius Norwich as the marked end of the conventional, classical images of the 17th century. You can hardly believe it with the ease of poetry in Cato’s words.

What does this have to do with Nightbane?

Absolutely nothing. I am ninety-five percent certain that Aster found this quote on an enemies-to-lovers moodboard and declared it good enough! Sure, the quote has nothing to do with romance, but hey! Who would go through the effort to research the original context?

I spent so much time waxing poetry about Cato first because it's a funny bit; but mostly because it’s at least interesting. There’s nothing to say about Nightbane except that it’s bad. But you already knew that. That’s why you and everyone else in my life wanted me to read this book. It has to be bad to warrant any real attention.

Hell, even I wanted to read this book because it’s bad. Aster’s books are my guilty pleasure, largely because she sucks. Aster writes like she has never written anything before and is quickly realizing that it’s not that easy. When I read Lightlark and Nightbane, I feel like I am thirteen years old and writing my first story all over again. It brings me joy and comfort in a way that’s completely unmarred by irony.

That’s why I can almost forgive Nightbane for all the times the story goes out of its way to respond or correct a criticism from the first book. Aster definitely reads the comments, and it’s comical all the lengths she goes through to retcon bad ideas or retroactively add lore. It reminds me not only of how I wrote when I was a pre-teen, but how I write now with my way too long, just publish the first draft it’s fine, writing project.

One of the somewhat interesting ideas Aster introduces is a plot line about the ethics of having your peasantry’s lives literally tied to their monarchs and Isla’s budding admiration for democracy. Of course, she only brings either up because these were among her critics’ common talking points. It’s obvious she has no real desire to explore either idea for all it’s worth.

The democracy plotline ends with a big slap to the face to Cato, A Tragedy’s legacy. Isla promises to make the Starling kingdom a democracy in the future. Why? She personally doesn’t want to be a ruler. She has no problem with the idea of the monarchy and has no real passion for self-determinism. She just doesn’t want to have any responsibility. It’s too much work.

Plus, she only wants to make the Starlings a democracy. Not the Wildings. She may hate having any form of responsibility, but she’s not inclined to unseat herself from power. She can still be the Wildling’s shitty ruler. No democracy for them. Sorry. It’s so blatantly hypocritical that it turns comical, and I fall a little more in love with the absurdity of Aster’s storytelling.

While there are a lot of flaws I can forgive, I can’t forgive when the plot “goes through the motions.” Aster clearly wanted to include scenes where Isla and Grimshaw (I still refuse to call him Grim) recite bog-standard dialogue and recreate tropey romantic moments. The lead up to these scenes are vaguely, choppy, and inconsequential. The why does not matter; only these scenes do.

Except when these scenes happen, they are so generic that your eyes skim over them. Isla and Grim already do not feel like real people. I can hardly call them characters, or even concepts. To call them shadows suggests there is some kind of substance they spring from. I can’t even think of a good metaphor to describe them.

They are nothing. The plot is nothing. The prose is nothing. There is nothing worth chewing on. It’s not even worth composing a long rant about it.

It’s easy-bordering-pathetic to dissect a book everyone knows is bad, especially when your only purpose is to explain why it’s bad. Where is the critical thought? What effort are you actually putting into your analysis when everyone already agrees with your arguments? I will always prefer a critic who goes after works that are genuinely popular and well-liked. If you want to win an argument then, you have to work for it.

Yet, I’m still here doing this. You’re still here reading it. Ultimately, we’re all victims to the smug pleasure of believing that we are not capable of producing trash like this. Obviously, we are all secretly the world’s greatest artistes. We are the next Great American Novelist. None of us are capable of writing anything thoughtless, absurd, or shallow. We are infallible, unlike the sinner Alex Aster.

So, yeah. Bad book. Really wish someone will let me read a good one soon.

Nightbane by Alex Aster

⭐/5 stars

Now that I have finished lording my moral superiority over all of you, here is a miscellaneous list of stupid shit that happened in Nightbane. Even I can’t resist kicking the dead horse:

Oro reveals that he is deeply traumatized from accidentally killing someone by turning them into gold. Isla proceeds to demand a gilded blade of grass as a romantic tribute. He gives it to her. It’s romantic.

Oro is rich, has a job, and a healthy group of friends, and is somehow still going to lose this love triangle. What bullshit.

After emphasizing how traumatic if was for the Skylings to lose their ability to fly, the narrative tries to convince you that the Skylings would choose not to fight a war where them refusing to fight will lead to them losing the ability to fly again.

This is so stupid that when there’s a debate about it, Aster provides no examples as to why they shouldn’t fight; she just states she happens.

So much of the story is just told-- isla’s feelings and motivations, the lore, character relationships: it’s all just told to us.

Isla is confronted with having to fix the social issues of both the Wildlings and Starlings; instead of solving them herself and learning something new, an extremely competent lesbian volunteers to fix everything for her.

One of said problems is that Wildings, who have plant-based magic, do not know how to grow crops.

Wildings have also never cooked the hearts they have been eating. Like, ever? Not once in five hundred years?

Isla shows prejudice towards the Vinderland because they are cannibals.

It’s increasingly unclear how the immortality rule works about the nobility

New lore reveals that the Nightshade have so many extra cool magic abilities because of lore reasons, and not because Aster likes them the best.

There’s a rebel group that got fed up with the rulers not fixing the curse; they also managed to make no progress in solving the very easy mystery in less than 500 years.

During flashback time, Grimshaw saves Isla no less than 7 times

There is a night market on Nightshade that has to take place during the day time, due to the curse. They still call it a night market.

There are multiple Nightshade events where the dress code is on a scale from”instagram baddie” to actually just naked. Isla’s clothes are described in detail, but not Grimshaw. I can only assume that his dick and balls were out every time.

Grimshaw seems to also be the only unfun prude on an island of hedonistic extroverts.

There is a sword that had been stolen no less than three times by different thieves.

New starstick lore clarifies it’s a device (not a wand!), and that Isla can’t use it to go anywhere she hasn’t been before; this renders her entire backstory impossible.

Instead of disengaging a bunch of traps, Grimshaw decides to Looney Tunes his ass and trigger each one by one.

There’s so much on and off screen cannibalism and flaying that neither are cool anymore. Sorry! We have to find new imagery for our toxic situationships.

The plot structure being a jump back and forth between the past and present made me question my own ability to write a storyline like that lmao

Isla and Grimshaw have been married the whole time, in a plot twist shoved in at the last second with very little thought put into it.

Isla should divorce his ass. I hope Lightlark is a no-fault state. If not, she luckily has a fuckton of faults to bring up.

#extremely tempted to read her middle grade books for comparison #ugh and I still have Skyshade to read #i just want to read a good book already!!!!#me rambling #me reading #bookish #books #booklr #books and reading #bookblr #lightlark #nightshade #alex aster

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