Lady Midnight

4.5/5

I was thrilled when I saw the incredible cover to this book. I was so excited to return to the fictional realm of the Shadowhunters. I went back and forth between a Kindle library book, Libby audiobook, and my own expensive hardcover copy of this book until about 40% in. Then I had to up and put it I the donate pile. Junk. This book is completely ruined by trying to conform to a new liberal, sex-driven, beyond appropriate relationship status. It isn't just love triangles, more like pentagons, and not just a side homosexual or bisexual individual, but over the top fluid sexuality all. In the past, I have found Cassandra Clare to be a powerful storyteller but the plot is completely lost in this book through the murky sexual gunk.

3.5, maybe 4 stars

I'm going to sleep on this one before I fully review and rate.

Unfortunately, the only thing I want to say when I finished this book is finally.

I still have really warm memories about previous Cassandra Clare's series - The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices. Even if I know, that if I read them now, I would not be impressed. But I still waited for that humour that was a big part in the previous books. Or for whatever else I liked.

Here all that waited for me were disastrous romantic geometry, plainly facepalm moments and annoying characters. The last but not the least, the novel was so long, like a never-ending nightmare.

Brilliant!
Jules and Emma are even more riveting than Jace and Clary, if that's possible!

Can't wait for book 2!!!!!

Don't know how to rate this. I was definitely entertained, loved the characters, enjoyed how the whole story wrapped up and I'm curious about what's coming in the next book in this series.
BUT Emma's choice at the very end of the book really, really, REALLY annoyed me.

I have been desperately trying to get to this book for a while, I have pretty much marathon-ed The Mortal Instruments over the past 3 months because there have been so many wonderful reviews about this, the first book in Cassandra Clare's Dark Artifices trilogy. At times during The Mortal Instruments I would struggle a little and falter but the fact that I knew that due to spoiler reasons I had to finish the series before picking up Lady Midnight kept me focused and kept me moving forward.

Eventually I was able to dive into this book and it is a very substantial book at 646 pages which means it's not the the faint hearted reader. It is one you need to commit yourself to and even more so because it is full of new characters and places that we haven't encountered in the Shadowhunter world before so it takes a little time to find your bearings and get used to the new setting of Los Angeles and the different members of the Blackthorn family.

We met the Blackthorns and their friend Emma Carstairs in City of Heavenly Fire and it is to them we return in Lady Midnight. It is 5 years after the end of City of Heavenly Fire and we are in the Los Angeles institute where they live under the guardianship of Arthur Blackthorn, or so it would appear. Instead, realistically, the institute is being run by Julian Blackthorn who at the tender age of 17 is trying to raise his 4 siblings alone and stop anyone in Idris from finding out about the mental illness which has plagued his uncle for years. He is scared that if anyone finds out he and his siblings will be separated and he will be torn apart from his parabatai Emma.

Emma is still trying to come to term with the death of her parents 5 years before and when she finds out that murders have been occurring in Los Angeles which bear an uncanny resemblance to their deaths she now feels they are proof that something other than Sebastian Morgernstern was responsible for their deaths and so she begins investigating even though it will involve dealing with the Fae who are now outcasts from the Downworlder accords.

This book was good in the fact that it didn't have to establish the Shadowhunter world to it's readers, Clare doesn't waste time laying out her world but instead makes the assumption that readers will be fairly familiar with everything. Instead we focus upon learning about our new heroes and heroines and their relationships with each other. Despite the fact we have a whole new cast doesn't mean that Clare is forgetting about the characters she had us so cleverly fall in love with such as Magnus, Alec, Simon,Izzy and Jace and Clary. They all pop up in this book either directly or through references from other people and we are brought up to date with what has been happening in their lives in the last 5 years. I'm sure if I'd read Tales from The Shadowhunter Academy and The Bane Chronicles at this stage they would have covered what I'd missed but instead this book made me even more excited to get on and read those also.

I really loved the family dynamic in this book, the way they all fit together in their own crazy ways. I especially loved Ty, who Clare has written as a character who is very clearly on the Asperger's/Autistic spectrum. He is wonderfully complex and yet really vulnerable and the different ways in which his big brother Julian adapts Shadowhunter life to take account of the things he finds uncomfortable or unsettling and allows him to focus his gifts was a really nice aspect of this book and made him one of my favourite characters.

One thing I found strange about this book is that I kept waiting for the action to kick in and suddenly I realised I was on about chapter 20 of 27 and it hadn't ever really taken it to a new level, instead it kind of meandered on with a bit of a slow burn, building the suspense slowly and drawing us in bit by bit till we've read the nearly the whole book before we realise it. I am happy to say that we have left enough loose ends to draw us towards Lord of Shadows in the very near future.

The book also does a very clever thing where it takes us to nearly the end before uncovering a very big twist via two very beloved characters from The Infernal Devices, Jem and Tessa. It pulls us back to the wonderful characters and old Shadowhunters we've loved from that series also and links together all 3 series nicely. It means that we can follow them all into the next book and gives us a great incentive to keep reading.

I really enjoyed Lady Midnight, perhaps not as much as I'd anticipated, if I'm honest I expected a tiny little bit more, hence my 4 star review. I liked it much more than some of the latter books in Mortal Instruments and found Emma and Julian much less annoying that Clary and Jace were at times. They are stronger characters to read about and much less teen angst ridden than their predecessors. That doesn't mean that at points they don't verge on the edge of tipping into that territory but the mystery around what would happen if they broke the law and admitted they are falling in love, the one thing forbidden by law for parabatai to do means that we are rooting for them, forbidden love is one of those tropes we all love.

I am excited to start Lord of Shadows soon and am really pleased to eventually be almost up to date with the Shadowhunter world.

This is my favourite Cassandra Clare series. It's the best one she has written, thanks to these amazing characters that she's created and the action. I'm on my second time reading this series and I love it even more now, because Julian and Emma have never left my mind or my heart after I read this book for the first time.

They're the best characters she's ever written, so complex and so beautiful, despite their flaws and their bad parts. They're amazing, the Blackthorn family is such a pure thing and their relationships make me so emotional. I just love reading about them, imagining them eating pancakes made by Julian, laughing at Emma's jokes, trying to solve murders or just having fun together. Every single member of the family is special in their own way and I love all of them so much, they're the most amazing fictional family.

There's a lot going on here. The book starts with a kid who then only shows up twice more, and is 99% irrelevant to the story being told. There is a bit with a poem by Poe that seems to just be there ‘cuz it's fun to have real world connections. The main pair are internally inconsistent with their own supposed characters. But the world is so WIDE. There's a lot of story to be told here, and a lot of mysteries to unravel. It's kind of disappointing because it could be amazing instead of just meh.

Good read. It was along the lines of The Infernal Devices, which is a better series than The Mortal Instruments in my opinion.

Nice ending too!

Honestly, the plot and the story were pretty ok. Hell, even the characters were decent (not great, decent), but this book was just sooooo boring. It has never taken me this long to read a book in my life. I loved the mortal instruments, which is why I picked this book up, but I guess it's just time for me to leave the world of the shadowhunters.

Typical shadow hunters book. I love the change of characters. I like that the author incorporates more of the fairy folk in this story. The epilogue with Jace and Claire is a little sappy the rest of the book is fun and complex.

Thank god, the book is still fantastic. There's a lesser sense of general angst once you already know everything, but it's still pretty angsty though, lmao. But in the best way. Like, the pining, OH, THE PINING! I love me some good pining.
Julian is such a ruthless bastard and I can't tell you how much I love it. Like, Jace is the fake badboy who tries to convince everyone he's bad and never succeeds, whereas Julian is the kind of person who could literally turn into the villain if he'd been dropped into the wrong world, you know what I mean? Like, he'd do anything for his family, like quite literally ANYTHING.
I adoooooooooore Emma and Christina's friendship, I would just die for the both of them, honestly, and the two of them together. Oh, the love. I love me some good girl friendship, I crave it, even, and Cassie just deliverrrrrrrrs!
Hands down the best of Clare's first books in a series. Not just for the writing, which is better with every series she does, but things like the overarching plot of the book, the setup for the trilogy as a whole, and its role as a first book in general; it is just an immense amount of fun and feelings.
Also, soft boy Mark Blackthorn is literally everything.

3.5

“No one is ever the villain of their own story.”

Best Cassandra Clare book so far. I enjoyed the LA institute, the Blackthorn family, and the murder mystery plot. Emma is definitely my favorite shadowhunter.

The word “dash” appeared only once in this book. Well done, Cassie. You would lose stars if it weren't for that.

So, I guess I finished this book yesterday, and I was lying awake at night, imagining what I thought of it.

First impressions, this book is longer than, I think, any of the other Shadowhunter books. I noticed in particular because I'd actually ordered the hardcover edition, and it seemed huge! I guess that's a point in favor of the Kindle edition. It didn't really drag, though. The pacing was pretty consistent.

I liked all of the “new” characters, though of course we kind of met most of them in City of Heavenly Fire. I loved the Blackthorn family motto, a bad law is no law. A nice contrast to the usual Shadowhunter creed.

I liked the way Malcolm was introduced. At first I thought he seemed like he was going to be too much like Magnus, and I think that was deliberate misdirection because when he showed up with his shirt half unbuttoned I thought that he was going to be show-offy like Magnus. Then he said he'd just forgotten to finish buttoning it. And he'd tied his shoelaces together.

I liked the tie-in to the children's story.

I did not predict the ending at all. I was very sad to learn that Malcolm was the enemy.
At my MOPS group somewhat recently, we had a speaker on the topic of protecting your children from sexual predators. A lot of the things that Malcolm did reminded me of the predatory “grooming” that she talked about. He got the family to trust him, he watched movies and ate pizza with them. He played with Tavvy and gave him toys. This actually made the scenario much more believable for me.

I was interested in the tie-in of the Edgar Allen Poe poem. I was half expecting to read that Malcolm was really Edgar Allen Poe or something. It was pretty awful what happened to Annabel, and it's sad that Malcolm thought that everyone had lied to him about her. I was glad to learn that they didn't know either.

Emma/Julian - That's going to be a problem. All of the main ships in these series has had big obstacles, but I can't see how this one could be overcome.

A lost Herondale! Great surprise near the end. I thought that perhaps Kit would be selected to go to the academy and try to ascend or something. I didn't expect him to be Christopher Herondale.

How awesome are Tessa and Jem?

This book actually wrapped things up more than I am used to for something that I knew would be the first in a series. I appreciate that. The main plot of the book was pretty much ended, and it wasn't really cliffhangery.

I was wondering what would be left for the next book until the reveal of Christopher Herondale, the parabatai curse, and... Annabel waking up.

4.5 • Entre mi lectura de [b:Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy 28954137 Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Cassandra Clare https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1454864103l/28954137.SY75.jpg 46924845] y este libro pasó bastante tiempo, por lo que volver a empaparme del Mundo de las Sombras me costó un poco al principio, y tal vez por eso me fue difícil conectar con los personajes en los primeros capítulos, especialmente con Julian. Sin embargo, la mayoría terminó cayéndome bien.Me parece que no se manejó de la mejor forma la inclusión de personajes mexicanos en la historia debido al idioma. Es ilógico que, siendo el español su lengua nativa, Diego y Cristina a penas se digan dos o tres cositas en español. Entiendo que es porque el libro está escrito en inglés y bla bla bla, pero me parece ilógico por igual.El uso del poema [b:Annabel Lee 178911 Annabel Lee Edgar Allan Poe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172464693l/178911.SX50.jpg 1632052] y el cuento de la desdichada Lady Midnight son una delicia, al igual que todas las citas y referencias a otros poemas, cuentos y leyendas (incluso la Biblia). It's my jam.Además, las florituras en la escritura de la autora me fascinan, pero considero que todavía le falta pulir los finales de escena.

Sudah 2 tahun sejak aku membaca marathon dunia Shadowhunter, trilogy pertama & kedua The Mortal Instrument juga Trilogy The Infernal Devices. Aku mengalami momen insta-love dgn dunia Shadowhunter, termasuk tokoh villain tercinta Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern. Membuatku sedikit amnesia kalua Cassie Clare itu kalo nulis buku tebel & isinya macam emak2 curhat hehehe.
Trilogy The Dark Artifices ini terjadi 5 thn setelah Dark War yg dipimpin oleh Jonathan Morgenstern. Selepas Perang Hitam dalam City of Heavenly Fire yang melibatkan hampir seluruh Shadowhunter dan penghuni Dunia Bawah dari berbagai penjuru dunia, kehidupan kembali normal. Setiap kelompok berusaha membuang jauh-jauh mimpi buruk tentang perang. Mereka hidup dalam naungan hukum baru yang disebut Perjanjian Damai.
Emma Carstairs dan Julian Blackthorn yang saat Perang Hitam masih tergolong anak-anak, tumbuh menjadi remaja-remaja tangguh dengan beban tanggung jawab dua kali lipat orang dewasa. Julian harus mengurus dan membesarkan empat orang adik-adiknya yang kehilangan orangtua akibat perang, ditambah lagi kewajiban untuk membantu menjalankan Institut Los Angeles. Emma masih terobsesi mencari tahu pembunuh orangtuanya.
Pembunuhan misterius terjadi di sekitaran Hollywood. Mereka dibunuh dengan cara yang ganjil, semua korbannya adalah warga Dunia Bawah. Awalnya, Julian dan Emma hanya sekilas saja mencermati berita itu, sampai ketika utusan kaum peri datang ke Institut. Membawa sesosok manusia setengah peri yang selama ini muncul dalam mimpi-mimpi Julian. Para Shadowhunter muda ini memutuskan untuk terlibat dalam penyelidikan dan beraksi diam-diam. Penyelidikan yang tidak hanya membuat Emma dan Julian masuk ke dalam pusaran masalah besar, tetapi juga jalinan perasaan antara keduanya yang lebih rumit lagi.
Penilaianku bisa saja bias, seperti kubilang aku sangat mencintai dunia Shadowhunter. Jadi 5 bintang untuk Lady Midnight.

why did cc's editor not tell her that this book was at least two hundred pages too long?

I am on such a good book streak right now (although I'm 99% sure I'm about to lose it with this next book)! Lady Midnight was phenomenal. It delves straight into the fantasy world that I love so dearly. For new readers, it provides a wonderful explanation at the beginning that is the perfect length and still interesting even if you've read all the others.

It was certainly better than TMI, and dare I say even TID? I've loved seeing Clare grow as an author, and this book is an excellent example of that. I can't wait for the next one. Especially that ending... oh man.

Darn it, Cassandra Clare. I read one of your books again...and I liked it.


I'd say that I have a love/hate relationship with Cassandra Clare. I felt that the Infernal Devices trilogy was very good, a sort of guilty pleasure, whereas I liked the first three books of The Mortal Instruments, only to watch it get steadily worse from there. By the time I read the last book, City of Heavenly Fire, I just skipped to the ending, proceeded to write the book a scathing review and called it a day.

Now, you'd think with a reputation like that, I wouldn't want to begin with Lady Midnight,but some people suggested it to me, so when I saw it at the library, I thought, why not, and started reading it. At the very least, I could just put this quietly back on it's shelf, and forget about it. But you know what? I think I have come to...(gulp) like this book.

I know, I'm shocked.

Firstly, let me say that, without a doubt, Claire's writing has VASTLY improved over the Mortal Instruments. I, personally, could tell that City of Bones was the first thing that Clare had ever written. Some things didn't make sense, and other things that seemed stupid only existed for the sake of a love triangle. Here, however, we have no such problems. It feels like Clare either has improved her story telling abilities, and also gotten a better editor. Her writing not only manages to draw me in, but also makes me forget how much I'm reading and before I know it, I've read almost 50 pages without breaking a sweat. This makes the roughly 700 page book, which I picked up with some trepidation, seem to fly by. . I also like how Clare has managed to stay away from the love triangle, for the most part. It is there, but it definitely was not the main focus, which was a very smart move. It is only a small part of the many different viewpoints that we seamlessly transition to in between each chapter. Another element that Clare was famous for was her crutch of the loner, misunderstood bad boy, aka Jace and Will Harondale. Thankfully, she has enough to leave this annoying archetype behind, in favor of characters who are genuinely likeable.

There are some things that annoyed me, however, like how some of the scenes didn't flow as well as I thought they would. Often times, the plot moves so fast that it is hard to get room to breathe in the midst of romantic moments, and then transition to more action oriented scenes.

Also, what romance is there is good, but I disliked how everyone seemed to need to be paired off with someone else in this book. Seriously, it was getting so ridiculous that I was surprised the cat didn't have a romantic partner. And also, while we are on the subject of romance, what is up with the rule about not being able to love your parabati? And, to clarify, I don't mean that like a agree with the characters who think it is stupid in the book, I mean what point does this serve from a writing standpoint? I would say that, to me, it felt like a cheap way to generate romantic tension in the story. I also dislike how much drama was there in terms of who love who and why. It felt like Clare was up to her old tricks again of trying to give people romantic pairings only to create drama with them later, this is especially true towards the end. I won't spoil it here, only to say that the last minute pairing in the book seemed like something out of the CW Network book of hack romance writing, and had little regard to the established characterization we had seen throughout the book.

As for everything else, such as the mystery, I thought it was good, but it did seem to go by quickly, given how fast paced this book was. Honestly, I thought it could have been improved as well. Obviously, I won't spoil it, but often times it felt rushed and thrown together, especially with how the poem Annabel Lee fits into the story. How does it fit, might you ask. Especially with regards to Edgar Allen Poe? Clare does not answer that question in the slightest, which makes it even more annoying that she included it at all. There are other grading things, like how the evil villain just has to commit the Evil Ruler Mistake Number One: Talking to the hero about how you committed the crimes, instead of killing them outright while you have the chance. Then he made Evil Ruler Mistake Number Two: Monologue about your plans and how there is nothing the hero can do to stop them, instead of just committing the evil deed and hightailing it out of there while the hero is bound/gagged/whatever. These feel like amateur mistakes that Clare should not be making, and it greatly cheapened the story for me.

In the end, I think I liked this book overall, but the ending was marred by a rushed villain plot, and romance that could have been significantly toned down. But lets face it, I am not the audience for this book. This is for the fans and they are not going to care what I say. So I will say that, even though I loved the level of writing in this book, and how it does show Clare's growth as a writer, there are some tropes of hers that I just couldn't agree with. For this reason, I give it a three out of five. It may be better than the Mortal Instruments, but not by much.