#certain lyrics did but i was not immediately enamoured as i was with midnights

[thebirdandhersong]

hmm

[valntinemorgenstern]

Review: Lord of Shadows

★★★★★

As always, my thoughts on Cassandra Clare’s books are prolific, multiplicitous, entangled, sometimes joyous and delighted, sometimes troubled and difficult; I could happily write numerous lectures and essays on this woman’s books, and Lord of Shadows comes as no exception. So, in the interest of keeping this as readable as possible, the first section of this review will contain my general thoughts, and the section after it, a more detailed (and, probably, sweary and incoherent) fangirl mess list of my very spoilery thoughts/opinions/feelings.

General 

In my opinion, Lord of Shadows is a huge improvement on Lady Midnight (I wrote an exceedingly long review on it last year that more resembled a disorganised splurge, but in sum:). For me, LM was an enjoyable, enthralling read as Cassandra’s books always are, but I was baffled by the claims that it was her best-ever book. For me, it consistently failed to hit the right chord, the characters didn’t spark on the page; the pacing lagged, and then rushed; I had a multitude of issues with plot, structure and character decisions. Most of all, the characters failed to draw me to them in the way that I was accustomed to with most of Cassie’s vast cast of characters. I’m pleased to say that I feel mostly over all of that now. I’m certain that this was also present in LM, but I think I appreciated this a lot more, given how much easier I was with the story as a whole — I was consistently impressed in this instalment with the quality of writing. LoS is strewn with some fantastically lyrical, poetic flashes of prose that, as I was reading, I just had to kind of sit back in astonishment, turning over that scintillating metaphor, or that line of dialogue, or that paragraph of description in my mind. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s obvious that Cassandra is, stylistically, far more mature, daring and sophisticated than the Cassandra writing TMI 6 years ago (I also think that this is related to a greater tendency to indulge in some flowery and exploratory prose, hence the ever-growing length of her books, but I’m not complaining).

I think by nature of the fact that this was the second in the series, there was no time that had to be spent lingering over long expositions and the tediousness of setting up unfamiliar characters; it didn’t take 300 pages for the motor to start turning. One of the developments that surprised me was how much the narrative eye in this instalment really starts to wander from Emma / Julian as its primary focus, as it mostly is in LM. I absolutely loved how much it started to scoop up the rest of the Blackthorn family, and even other characters like Arthur and Kit (though I can imagine there are some Jemma fans who might be a bit disappointed with this decision). For me, having this distance from Emma’s POV was wonderful / I really welcomed the opportunity to attach myself more deeply to other characters (to be honest, I wasn’t hugely enamoured with Emma in LM) and this made the story so much easier to invest in. In the end, it has actually warmed me to Emma a lot more, so I’m happy.

Very Spoilery 

FREAKED OUT by how many things I ended up predicting (without knowing I ws predicting them?) Consistently dogged by the feeling of déjà-vu and that I’d secretly thought that thing might happen. By no means had an exhaustive list of theories, only a couple of solid ones, and the rest ephemeral, half-baked, flippant daydreams of ‘oh, what if x got with x? wouldn’t THAT be a twist!’ and then….it happened. It happened with: Dru and Jaime becoming a thing (what sort of thing has yet to be seen, but HMM); Kit x Livvy (like, Livvy what even was that? hey you’re a male; you’re in my line of sight!); Arthur’s death (this is a whole topic in itself and Don’t Get Started™); the hinting that Ty and Kit may become parabatai in lieu of an immediately romantic relationship (their dynamic reminds me so much of Will and Jem) and thus HA HA history repeats itself in both ways…

OVERJOYED about the fact that Mark x Emma never properly materialised. Last year, this was not only an alarmingly popular ship, I thought, but also one that Cassandra seemed to be teasing would be become canonical in LoS. At this point I legitimately and seriously considered whether or not I’d bother reading Lord of Shadows, as this was probably the biggest NOTP I’d ever had. It was a deal breaker for me. So, very pleased.

I went into this determined not to ship Mark / Cristina / Kieran as a three way, and wow oh WOW, did Cassie utterly, remorselessly obliterate this! Major, major FUCKING KUDOS to Cassie’s skill and craft here for managing to completely overturn the way I feel about this polyamorous ship. I completely take back everything I said about feeling uncomfortable with this, because DUDE I am struggling to see how they’re gonna avoid a threesome at some point. This ship is electric and has so much chemistry, I’m not gonna lie, there were moments where I was thinking I was shipping it even more than Jemma…

LOVED everything in Faerie. Just! Ugh! Loved how dark and dreamy it was and the high-fantasy overtones and how reminiscent it was of mythology and Goblin Market and Arthurian romance.

All the classical + 18/19th literature allusions! The lit student in me was elated. ‘The nightmare life in death was she’ MY SOUL WAS IN COMMUNION WITH YOU CASSIE.

So lovely to return to London again! (and, woah, wasn’t expecting them to be there most of the book?) Tempered, though, by its portrayal as run-down, neglected Institute that has (somehow? I WANNA KNOW CASSIE) fallen out of The Herondale’s hands and into the management of The Highsmiths? Made me very sad indeed to see this.

i could write a whole meta of the depiction of Herondales in this book. (Lmao for a series allegedly supposed to focus on the Blackthorns and, for once, not-about-the-herondales, they still end up being a pretty damn important)

There is like, not a single POV from Kit (shocked by how huge his role is in this book?) where his Herondaleness is being mentioned, questioned or alluded to. HA I EAT THIS SHIT UP

How delightfully frustrating that, with regards to Kit, far more questions posed than answered. (The woman in his dreams? So he remembers his mother? How come only now? How the hell do the seven riders of Mannan have anything to do with him / how do they recognise him? Evidently the mysteries surrounding his heritage are tangled up in Faerie as well…) Loved how protective he was of Ty, and how brilliantly they work together. In LM, Kit was depicted as very sheltered and innocent, but he really comes into his own in LoS — loved how he was starting to mould what he’d learnt from his father with what he was learning as a Shadowhunter.

TMI DREAM TEAM REAPPEARANCES FUCK YESSSSSSSSSS MAGNUS YOU’RE A BABE AND HAVE THEY MADE STATUES OF JACE YET??

THE ENDING

T H E  E N D I N G

T   H   E     E  N  D  I  N  G

WHAT IN GOD’S NAME

It was like: trundling along nicely, some angst, but danger is mostly over, cue some boring meetings (Idris tho!! I have missed you!) and then — BANG BANG BANG BANG! Magnus (and Tessa?!) is/have been illWHAT?! Robert is dead, and Livvy is dead. CHRIST ALIVE. One thing after the other.

Did not see any of that coming. At all. Gut-wrenchingly, heart-stoppingly shocking stuff. I had to put the book down, and gaping, looked up laughingly and whispered a series of profanities to myself. That said, I expected Robert to die at the end of TMI (and was sincerely surprised he managed to survive it — had a whole theory about it) and wondered, at the time, why Cassie kept him going. Now I see why she waited till now: a strategic decision, so that there would have formed a dark force i.e. the Cohort to replace the vacuum his death as Inquisitor would leave with.

Livvy!!! I am so, terribly sad.

I am also so so scared for Queen of Air and Darkness.