The following contains spoilers for Blades of Light and Shadow, Book 1 and Endless Summer, Book 2.
This will completely blow your mind given the title of this essay, but I did not like Blades of Light & Shadow. Don't worry, I didn't hate it, nor do I think it is the downfall of the studio. Mostly because that’s a pretty low bar to set and books that aired before this already bear that title. Haha.
Real "bolas". Lol.
This is also not the essay I thought I would be writing five months ago (Like, the last week of Feburary 2020), when Blades of Light & Shadow was still going strong. If you know me, this is the book that finally made me delete the app. I wanted this essay to be different than the usual rant nature.
I wish this review was basically “After half a year of producing nothing but pure garbage, Pixelberry has turned around and became their absolute best in record time! Pixelberry is BACK, baby! This book even puts books from the golden age to shame!”
I’m sad to say, but this is not one of those reviews.
Believe it or not, but this is actually my fifth attempt to write an essay for Blades of Light & Shadow. Everything I could say about this book with the previous essay attempts just feels like beating a dead horse.
I just want to move on with my life. Keeping on making negative reviews makes me feel like I’m mourning the death of something I used to love. And it does.
So I figured I’d do something different with this review. Instead of focusing on the negatives, I figure I should at least try to do something positive for a change.
So how is Blades of Light & Shadow a miracle? I’ll get to that. But first, let me start off with the things I liked.
The Positives (To Show I am Not Bias)[]
Despite all the smack I’ve said, there is actually a lot I liked about this book! There is even more stuff I like about it than I do not. I’m making a top twenty list about the good & bad of this book, so be on the lookout for that. But for now, let's stick to the main points.
The Party.
The artwork was fantastic! I never thought for a minute this was a place made by artists. This world looked like an actual breathing place deeming with life! If this world wasn’t this vivid and diverse, this story would have lost an identity, would have lost charm.
The Party was gold! Everyone had something to gain, something to lose. It never felt like anyone was there only because the story wanted them to be. Unlike Nightbound, everyone there had a purpose. That all six of us actually wanted to work together to achieve our goals. I even want to make yet another essay explaining why each member of the party is deep and complex. All six members are gold mines of content to analyze and to be admired (I am not counting Loola for now as she was only in one chapter).
Loola.
This new RPG score system would not have made this story work if it was anywhere else. This new level of submersion adds layers to every choice, every interaction.
The Negatives :([]
So what’s the issue? I said before that there is more quantity to this book that I liked, right? Sure, there is way more stuff I liked, but the quality of the bad stuff outweighs the quantity of the good stuff.
What I didn’t like, what I really didn’t like was the story, romance, and worldbuilding.
I’ve seen posts on Reddit completely PRAISING this book. That the first two chapters have already cemented the book as being their all time favorites. I’ve seen their arguments and reviews.
My issue with it? Aside from the visuals, it’s just not very interesting.
I brought up Nightbound earlier,
and it doesn’t feel different from that book. Sure Blades of Light & Shadow is less overwhelming, but it doesn’t feel fresh. Not just with Nightbound, either. It feels like any other story about a party with a fantastically diverse group of people traveling through the land in search of a powerful object or to defeat the “dark lord” or the dragon. I made my own review on Nightbound a year ago, so if you’re more interested, I suggest you visit that.
The lore tablets were the only collectibles in Choices history I did not read. Sure, I still collected them, but that was only to collect the XP. I didn’t even bother reading the "table of contents", either. I just bought them, and fast tapped to resume the story. The worldbuilding wasn’t doing anything for me. Sure, all the locations look nice, but I’m just not feeling anything.
Kaya Duskraven.
I was honestly getting bored by the time we reached the elves city. By the time we had to fight Duchess Xenia (posing as Kaya Duskraven) was when I realized my issues with it. This book was filled with… meandering. It had good intense moments, I see those as just scenes that grab you back into the action. I didn't want to be reading something boring just for a few excellent scenes.
Duchess Xenia.
To me, the only thing that made Blades of Light & Shadow stand out to me was the party. Each person was a three-dimensional fleshed out character. Note, I refer to them as a party. Not as “the love interests”.
Now, I am going to only focus on the females for the love interest section. Mal Volari & Tyril Starfury I’m sure are great love interests, but since I am not into men, I cannot comment on them from an attraction stand point.
People kept on hailing Nia Ellarious as the greatest love interest in a long time... am I missing something? Don’t get me wrong, she’s not a badly written character, but as an LI, I just never really desired her from the beginning. She’s not… unattractive. I think the biggest flaw for me is that her character was defined by her being a Priestess of the Light. Sure, she has an arc where she has a crisis where she questions everything she thought she knew. But for a majority where we had to be romancing her, she seems like her personality was already predestined. I guess that’s the point, but it doesn’t make it better. I can certainly see why others would like her. She is a peaceful person and a real sweetheart.
Having said that… I still feel like I’m missing something. If anything, I felt closer to Imtura.
Speaking of Imtura Tal Kaelen, I think it’s safe to say she is the “least beloved” out of the four love interests. I don’t know if that is because she is overshadowed by Nia or because the vocal players are racist against green people. All joking aside, she is a fierce woman who doesn’t take anything from anyone. She seems like a strong independent woman who “don’t need no man”. Clearly I grew up on the thug life. Haha.
Having said that… I felt closer with her than Nia. Granted, I still didn’t choose Imtura, but I liked her more than Nia.
The love interests here aren’t bad. But it’s almost as if the writers were treating them like actual characters first and not primarily as love interests. Wouldn’t you rather have that? I know I would.
The End(ing)[]
That’s right, babes. The ending to this first book warrants its own section in the negative portion of the essay!
As I said in my “Why I Finally Decided To Delete Choices” blog, the ending was something I was waiting for before I officially deleted the app. At this point, I liked Blades of Light & Shadow enough to at least want to see how it all ends.
Guess what happened? I really wish I didn’t read the ending. I would rather have lived in ignorance and still have “good” memories about this book. Before the ending happened, I just thought the first fifteen chapters were good, but not great. And that is the problem, it never got above being good.
In case you haven’t read my “Why I Finally Decided To Delete Choices” post, I’ll bring up what I said here:
“When we were given the option to kill Nia, I thought this book was finally getting on the right track. Sure we were at the end, but it was better late than never. But of course, it was a cop-out. Nia was revealed to be perfectly fine a few seconds later after gorgeous artwork depicted her getting stabbed. That was it. That snuffed out any spark of hope I had of ever returning. I’m not saying I would have been happy if Nia died, either. But stick with it at least! Or if Nia was going to live, use that story line for Book 2! That sacrifice where we had to stab her is now meaningless! [...]At least in Endless Summer, Book 2 when Quinn died, we had to go out on a quest to try to save her. Sure, the quest was only a chapter long, but you know what? They EARNED it. Finding the cure for Quinn was beneficial to her story arc and it felt deserved that we found a way to save her. Nia’s? No. She got saved via[…] a macguffin. Not by the action of a character, but by an inanimate object that was not known to have that kind of power before. At that point I just gave up. I didn’t want to read the rest of the chapter. I fast tapped to collect the three diamonds and promptly deleted the app."
Given the types of responses the staff gave us, I have no doubt that Blades of Light & Shadow was going to be a one & done book. But of course, this got so much positive reception that the writers had to put this on hiatus to accustom it to have future installments.
And yes, I remember saying around chapter six that “This book is the only thing keeping me on this app. This and Open Heart: Second Year. If Blades of Light & Shadow doesn’t get a sequel, I am done!”
And… yeah. Opinions change. This book did not. It never changed for me. It never got to “above average” standards. I just did not feel as immersed in this story. I’d rather watch the Twilight movies. At least they are “entertainingly bad”.
Was Nia supposed to die at this moment if it was supposed to be a standalone? Probably not. She was a fan favorite from the start. They would have received a bunch of backlash. But now that they were going to do Book Two (after two hiatuses), wouldn’t it have been more powerful if we had to go on a long and grueling quest to try to save her? It will push us to our limits to try to get our friend back.
Let me be clear: at this point, nothing was going to convince me to read Book Two. I just wanted to read the ending to say that I did.
Countess Zathra.
By the time I started Chapter 16, I was feeling a tiny bit... "apathetic". Both with how Choices fell from greatness and how this book ended up being. Once I actually started it, it was nothing I didn’t expect. If anything it gave me the quality that I thought I would get. It was fun battling The Shadow Court, but I feel it was a bit underwhelming with how moderately easy it was to defeat people who were hyped up for so long. Like Countess Zathra & Baron Vostrasz. The former had a good design, though. But with how botched the climatic scene was (the Nia thing), it made a pit in my stomach. This moment was so fundamentally broken and a missed opportunity, my apathy escalated.
Baron Vostrasz.
This one scene snuffed out all the goodwill I had remaining for this app. Before Chapter 16, I wasn’t going to read Book 2, anyway. And I was still going to delete the app no matter what. But I was still going to give some new books a chance.
However… the ending being as bad as it was reversed my decision on the latter. Now I am NOT going to give new books a chance. Especially the upcoming Untitled Mystery Book.
The failures of Blades of Light & Shadow, Book 1 and Veil of Secrets (which I also made a review about) snuffed me out.
It feels like I was near death on a hospital bed. With the life in my eyes glowing ever so faintly and Blades of Light & Shadow came along and snuffed it out by rolling my eyes closed. Finally putting me at ease. Telling me that I can finally rest now.
Is Blades of Light & Shadow, Book 1 the worst book ever made under Pixelberry? No. Not even close. But it is the best example on how much they devolved.
Miracle[]
If this book as it’s own thing outside of Choices, people would not love it as much as they do. Or at least not in 2020. Especially the onslaught of gender locked romance books the second half of 2019 has led us down. And that’s a good thing. I am glad people liked it as much as they did! Now Choices will learn from this and try out risks! To give us more fantastical adventures!
Not to insult my audience, but Blades of Light & Shadow is made for people who see five films a year and go, "Yeah, I’m a film buff." And they’re all from PureFlix! But this book has shown the silent majority that there are more to good stories than just “bad boy” tropes!
Yeah, I may not have liked Blades of Light & Shadow, but that doesn’t even matter! I’m just happy it exists! I like how Pixelberry finally made something fantastical that:
One, isn’t gender locked. Two, is not made for tweeny-boppers. And Three, finally put work & effort into something that mirrors their golden age!
I am happy the silent & vocal majority like this!
I’d rather have three-hundred Blades of Light & Shadows get made than another Witness, Royal Romance, Baby Bump, Book 1, Desire & Decorum, Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance, Book 1, America’s Most Eligible, Save the Date, and the list goes on and on and on-on!
I mean, if you like the genderlocked romance stuff... well, you do you. I won't trample on that.
It’s just a bit sad I won’t be around to play the stories that are made as a direct result of Blades of Light & Shadow, Book 1. :(
Conclusion[]
Pixelberry to me was revolutionary. The stories I fell in love with were unlike anything I’ve seen before. I stayed because they were new and original. Endless Summer was unlike anything else at the time. The Crown & The Flame was unlike anything I’ve seen. High School Story Prime was revolutionary. Even the original trilogy of High School Story is not like anything else!
Even the books I dislike are unlike anything else at the time. Like Witness: A Bodyguard Romance and The Royal Romance (I mean, sure. The latter is everywhere now, but at the time it was revolutionary. For varying reasons).
If you told me four years ago that Pixelberry was going to do a gender-of-choice completely original story with a lovable party and absolutely no connections to The Crown & The Flame; the same studio that cut The Elementalists in half for financial reasons and made nothing but genderlocked trashy YA romance books for 2019, I would have been concerned for your well being.
But it happened! It really did, and that makes me so happy!
Again, I absolutely hated Blades of Light & Shadow, but it is still important for the future of the app! That fantastical adventures can still be financially successful and phenomenally received by the majority.
Sure, we will still get genderlocked pure romance stuff. But at least Choices won’t always resort to that now!
Unless of course, they make failures to the new books that have been influenced by Blade of Light & Shadow’s success. But at least they can take notes from this book going forward.
That is something to be admired and taken as an example.
I haven't felt like this in a long time. For the first time in forever… I’m happy.
What did you think about Blades of Light & Shadow? Did the first two chapters already make it into your number one (or second) favorite of all time? Will you defend Nia with everything you have? Do you love this book but admit I made good points? Let me know in the comments below! :)