This is a spoiler-free review! You can read my review of Lady Midnight, here.
I started reading this book in 2017 and got 62 pages in, and did not touch it again for six years... sorry! When I opened this book back up, I could tell you two details about what was happening in the story, and everything else seemed to be wiped from my brain until I started reading again and it all started coming back to me. Big shoutout to Cassandra Clare for name dropping nearly every single one of her characters so that my memory could be jogged.
Zara is hands down one of the most ANNOYING characters in one of Clare's books -- she is absolutely insufferable, not to mention a straight-up bigot. Every single time her name popped up on the page, my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I probably spent the entire book hoping she would magically disappear or just stay silent in any scene. It was very reassuring that the rest of the characters shared my despise of her as well -- she is certainly not subtle about how much of a supremacist that she is, and yet somehow she continues to think that her and her father are on the right side. Zara girl, please go away and never come back -- if I never have to read your name on a page again, it will be too soon.
"Will you be my jailer?" had me literally closing the book and take a lap around my room because I could not handle how much pain you could feel behind those words. The book was moving a little slow for me, and to have that scene be the turning point of the story actually made me excited and nervous for the rest of the book. Mark and Kieran have some of the most insane chemistry I have ever read, and yet they also have off the charts chemistry with Cristina -- I can literally feel their tension rising after every page and I am rooting for them so hard it hurts.
Now, I have to say that I was not over the moon, gushing over Emma and Julian during Lady Midnight, and even in the first half of Lord of Shadows I was weary of anything ever happening between them, However, boy oh boy was I wrong. They had me giggling and kicking my feet and I will admit that I have switched sides. Consider me Emma and Julian's personal support system because there is absolutely no way that I will stop cheering them on, even after Julian and Emma reveal some information that the Seelie Queen had about parabatai bonds. Julian definitely acquired the Blackthorn charm with the way he was talking to Emma by the end of the book, because let me say that if a guy ever said to me "Break my heart. Break it in pieces... I give you permission" I would be marrying him on the spot.
I cannot remember if Dru's age was mentioned in the first book or not, but her being only thirteen had me screaming -- I absolutely was under the impression that this girl was at least sixteen. And does anyone know Jaime's age?? Is he seventeen? Because that certainly is something I would like to know to give myself some piece of mind that he is not pursuing a minor and that he runs away and does not see her for years if anything ever happens between the two of them.
Any time that we had to switch over to the Kit, Livvy, and Ty storyline I nearly fell asleep -- I was just not interested at all in what they were running around doing, and the only relatively interesting thing about their little side quest was Magnus and Alex being there. Everything else felt like the same recycled scenarios that we have seen before in Clare's books before, and if she decided to explore more of Kit's inner thoughts and leave the kids behind, maybe I would have enjoyed it more than I did.
I would have loved if we spent more time in the Courts of Faerie -- from the synopsis, you would have expected the story to primarily take place there, but it felt as though we really only spent a handful of chapters following everyone around the faerie lands. And for a book called Lord of Shadows, we did not get to see the Unseelie King very often, and even when he did pop up from time to time, it felt very brief.
My god.. that ending??? The last twenty pages had me hollering every two seconds and crying in between gasps. I could sense certain things were going to happen, but I did not expect such insanity at this magnitude right at the very end of the book. The absolute heartbreak and shock the reader will feel for so many characters is something on an entirely different level when it comes to fantasy novels. It truly reminded me how much I had enjoyed reading The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices all those years ago, and I absolutely will be continuing on with the series.
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