Lightlark

Lightlark is a romantic fantasy, or a “romantasy,” meaning that it adheres to several familiar romance tropes while also offering readers the in-depth world building common to fantasy novels (Sager, Clare. “Living the Romantasy: Genre Tropes in Romantic Fantasy.” Indie Author Magazine, 1 April 2022). Like many fantasy heroes, Isla is an orphan with a big destiny. She must save her people from their generations-long curse and ultimately from a nefarious magician who wants to dominate all of Lightlark. Along the way to these goals, Isla is involved in several self-contained episodes in search of items like the skin gloves, the Sunling clothing, and the bondbreaker—items that could be qualified as MacGuffins in that they have little significance other than to drive the plot. Lightlark itself demonstrates many common characteristics of fantasy settings: It is host to fantastical creatures, a complicated magical system, and several groups of people with distinct magical characteristics—akin to the “races” found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King) and its many literary descendants, like George R.