54 pages • 1-hour read
Nightbane
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Themes
Duality and Identity
Throughout the novel, Isla struggles to reconcile the conflicting facets of her identity, and her arc is characterized by her repeated attempts to pick one side over the other. She is able to wield both Wildling and Nightshade powers, for instance, which give her “not just […] the power to give life…but also to take it away” (90). When she tries to use her powers for the first time, the narrative reveals the opposite yet complementary nature of her abilities:
Her left hand struck the ground, and darkness erupted from her fingers. It ate through the nature in its path; everything living became cinder. Trees fell and disappeared; the air went gray with swimming shadows.
Her right hand landed, and from it a line of thousands of flowers billowed, rising from the ground in waves, blossoming in rapid succession. Roses, tulips, marigolds—they made a blanket across the forest, color streaming.
[…] One side of her was total desolation—the other the very definition of fertility (53-54).
In addition, Isla is also torn between her two love interests, Oro and Grim, who are symbolically framed as opposites in every way. While Grim brings out Isla’s darker, more self-destructive impulses, she also aspires to be worthy of Oro’s moral integrity. As she recovers her memories of her relationship with Grim, Isla’s dilemma gradually becomes more evident: “She felt like she was being split apart. Past Isla, a person she barely even recognized. Current Isla, who had slipped back into pain, into anxiety, into hurt, due to the memories” (255).
In short, Isla’s identity is fractured, characterized by the duality of her powers, relationships, and aspirations. At the end of the novel, the oracle tells her: “You, whose heart has been split in two in more ways than one, are capable of both life and death. You are both curse and cure” (373). This metaphor is used repeatedly throughout the novel to describe Isla’s opposing tendencies and thus reveals that she struggles to find her place in the world.
At one point in the story, Remlar states that “nature is a flowing force […]. You destroy one tree, you create another. Pick one flower, plant another. The ash it turns into becomes fertilizer for another. It is a never-ending turning of a wheel, and there is no ending, or beginning, just constant turning, turning, turning” (183). The narrative thereby suggests that Isla’s dilemma may stem from her desire to repress the darker side of her identity rather than embracing her natural desires and contradictions. This hints at her future character development and sets up new stakes for the following book in the series. Nightbane concludes with Isla rejecting Oro to join Grim’s side, which symbolically reveals that she rejects the moral standards she deems herself unworthy of, in favor of unconditional freedom.
Power and Morality
In the Lightlark series, political and magical powers are bound together and highly symbolic of a character’s morality. Throughout the novel, Isla struggles to embrace her role as a leader, as she believes that she is both unqualified and morally unworthy of the position. When she meets the Wildlings for the first time after breaking the curse, for instance, Isla’s reaction makes her emotional state evident:
One by one, [the Wildlings] bowed. […] She didn’t like it. Anxiety thrummed across her skin, and she wanted to yell that they should be screaming at her, calling her names, telling her everything she had done wrong up until this point. They looked like they were still dying. She was a failure, not a hero (30-31).
Azul’s narrative role as a mentor figure for Isla leads to a significant exchange between the two characters. Azul states that “it is an honor to rule but not always a pleasure” (29), a phrase that Isla reflects on several times throughout the story. She gradually comes to embrace Azul’s advice and eventually decides to implement democracy in the Starling realm rather than remain in power. Isla’s decision highlights her desire for justice and fairness, which in turn reveals that power is intrinsically linked with moral ideals.
However, Isla also struggles with other aspects of her power and, notably, the consequences of her failings. She equates her fallibility with a personal moral flaw, for example, when she is unable to protect her people from the drek attack. This leads Isla to come close to corrupting her power as she delves into the darker side of her magic. After she learns to use stronger emotions, like pain, to become more powerful, her moral dilemma is highlighted by her ambivalent reaction: “She didn’t want to tell him that though she was bleeding, she felt stronger than she had in a long time. She felt in control. Transcendent. The blood tasted like power, she wanted to say. Power—It tasted like blood” (283). This passage suggests that power, when used recklessly, can not only be destructive to others but also self-destructive for the wielder. In addition, it foreshadows the eventual revelation that Isla has already suffered the consequences of unchecked power when she lost control of her emotions and killed innocent people to save Grim. At the novel’s end, Isla decides that she is unworthy of her political power because she is unable to control her magical power, and as a result, she leaves her position on Lightlark to join Nightshade. This highlights her desire to act morally as she sacrifices some of her power because it threatens to endanger others.
Emotions and Control
One of the most common themes in works of fantasy where a protagonist learns to wield magic is the relationship between magic and emotions. Typically, as is the case in Nightbane, the character in question must learn to embrace their emotions in order to better channel them through their magical abilities. Indeed, Isla is repeatedly warned that her emotions feed her powers, and as a result, she is torn between repressing her emotions to stay in control and delving deeper into her feelings to become more powerful.
Those two tendencies are best represented by Oro and Grim’s conflicting advice. On the one hand, Oro explains that “raw power is like a beast. Without mastery, it lashes out unpredictably. Not always when you want it to. […] That’s why learning control is so important” (72-73). Isla later tests out her magic but realizes, after accidentally losing focus and free-falling from a tree, that “control [is] fickle” (94).
On the other hand, Grim teaches the young woman that he was trained through fear and pain, which only made him powerful: “Shadows can turn into the sharpest, thinnest blades” (222). He argues that pain is the strongest emotion and therefore can be used to increase one’s power without limit. Following his advice, Isla is seduced by the seemingly limitless power she is now able to access, but she is also repulsed by the destructive and corruptive nature of unchecked power.
When she follows Oro’s advice, Isla feels that her magic is safe but limited, whereas with Grim’s advice, it is more powerful than ever but dangerous. The relationship between Isla’s emotions and her magic symbolizes her conflicting emotions for Oro and Grim. Indeed, Isla represses her darker instincts when she is with Oro because she wants to be worthy of his high moral standards. With Grim, she is able to let go of her inhibitions but feels self-destructive as a result. Through the dynamics of power and control, the narrative explores how Isla’s emotions drive her desires, choices, and, ultimately, her character growth.
Complicating this theme is Isla’s recurring vision of carnage, which she believes to be a premonition but is actually a memory of when her emotions led her to lose control of her power and murder innocent people. Once she understands her past actions, she sees a pattern of giving up emotional control to yield greater power. At the end of the novel, she believes that her lack of emotional control makes her a monster, which is one reason she chooses to go with Grim. This choice foreshadows that this theme will continue to influence Isla’s character development in later books of the series.
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