I did it. I finally finished it—and a week before Lord of Shadows comes out, too. Reading Lady Midnight took me about a week and a
half, but it’s nearly 700 pages so I’m going to think it’s okay that I took my
time with it. The fact that I hadn’t been in this world for so long has blown
my mind. I’ve been reading Cassandra Clare’s books since I was in high school,
which was now five years ago. I can’t believe that. Her books have been there
for me during a lot of dark times during my life. Reading Lady Midnight, the first book in The Dark Artifices series felt a bit like coming home. Some people
have Harry Potter (and I do too, it
will always be there for me and I’m grateful for it) but Cassandra Clare’s
Shadowhunter books have been there for a large chunk of the short twenty-three
years I’ve been alive. Lady Midnight
was just as exciting, funny, and gut wrenching as I remember her previous books
to be. If it’s possible, Lady Midnight was
a cut above her previous books. I think it’s shown how she’s grown as a writer.
Instead of
the ‘regular girl enters fantasy world’ trope, she throws us right into the
action. This is because most of her readers have already been in this world for
nine books already (albeit in different time periods) but we know how it works.
She doesn’t have to waste time on world building and telling us how their
weapons work. Lady Midnight is also
very different from the others because it is, essentially, a murder mystery.
Since the events of her first six book series, Emma Carstairs has been
researching the murders of her parents in what these characters call the Dark
War. The higher ups basically wrote it off as more aftermath from the war, but
Emma’s been hell bent on revenge since her parents’ bodies were discovered.
That is
essentially where the plot of this book takes off. I don’t want to spoil too
much of the plot because even though I thought I had it figured out, mostly I
was guessing until the last page. This book is also a retelling of Edgar Allen
Poe’s Annabel Lee. Cassandra Clare
tackles newer kinds of magic—she introduces necromancy and we get to see more
of the Faeries of this world (I’m still confused as to why Faeries are such a
popular thing to write about nowadays? Like they always bored me whenever I
read Faerie books as a kid). But Cassandra Clare makes them at least a tad more
interesting in this one because they have direct ties to the family who runs
the L.A. Institute (the Blackthorns) and she throws in a jealous Faerie prince
to the mix, we have for some very interesting character dynamics. I also love
the way she wrote the Blackthorn family. The eldest child struggles with taking
care of his younger siblings while battling his growing for Emma. I’ll try to
explain why this is a problem in this next bit.
The other
intriguing part of this story was the parabatai
dynamic. Parabatai are
essentially two Shadowhunters that go through a ritual to make their magic
stronger than just regular Shadowhunters. There’s a catch though—you absolutely
cannot fall in love with whomever you’ve chosen. The people who are in charge
of this world forbid it, but Cassandra Clare gives a pretty decent explanation
about why this is near the end of the novel.
My only
complaint about this book is that it was so long… I don’t think it really
needed to be close to 700 pages. I couldn’t put it down, but still. I feel like
I could have read a million other things in the amount of time it took me to read
this. Large fantasy novels like this kind of take up my life when I’m reading
them and I just feel like I should be doing other stuff while I’m reading. But
other than that, I really enjoyed it. The second half of the book especially
picks up pace. I sped through the last half in a couple of days. I don’t
recommend reading this if you haven’t read all of Cassandra Clare’s previous
books, but if you have, this will feel like coming home. I gave this book 5/5
stars on my Goodreads account, which I’m constantly updating. Have you read any
of Cassandra Clare’s books? If so, which is your favorite? If you’ve read Lady Midnight, let me know your theories
for Lord of Shadows!
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