All my thoughts: Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare (Part 2)

Analyzing book No. 1 in The Dark Artifices trilogy

Welcome back to all my thoughts on Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare!

In Part 1 of my analysis, I dove into the Blackthorn family dynamic, along with Emma and Julian as individuals and as a couple. If you haven’t read that yet, check it out here.

Lady Midnight is so much more than just the story of Emma and Julian falling into forbidden love. It’s a story about family, both found and by blood, and how one fits into that mold. It’s a story about betrayal and loss. It’s a story about what one is willing to do in the name of love.

Here are the rest of my thoughts on Lady Midnight.

Marky Mark and the Faerie bunch

In my opinion, Mark Blackthorn was dealt the worst hand of all the Blackthorn children after the Dark War. Julian was forced to grow up too quickly and put his siblings’ well-being over his own, but he still had the love of those kids and of Emma. Helen was exiled to Wrangel Island, but she had the company of her then-girlfriend and now-wife Aline. She also gets to at least Skype and call her younger siblings to keep in touch.

Mark was abandoned. He was given to the Wild Hunt after being kidnapped by Sebastian Morgenstern and the Clave left him there to be beaten and broken. He was still a child, and the very people who were supposed to protect him allowed him to be tortured because he was half Faerie. It’s beyond messed up.

When Iarlath and Kieran use Mark as their bargaining chip to get the Nephilim to help investigate the murders, they’re banking on a few things that the Blackthorns aren’t aware of: that Mark is too broken to fully trust his siblings, that Mark will refuse to return to his Shadowhunter ways, and that Mark is attached to Kieran and will ultimately return to the Hunt to be with the prince.

If you’ve been keeping up with my journey through the Shadow World, you know how I’m an absolute sucker for character development. I want to see characters grow and change throughout their adventures, not remain stagnant.

Clare did a wonderful job at developing Mark as a multidimensional character with both strengths and flaws, just as she did with Julian and Emma.

When Mark is first unveiled in the Sanctuary, he’s terrified. He thinks that Julian is his father, not his younger brother. Then, he believes that his family, which doesn’t look like the family he was taken from five years ago, is a hallucination used to punish him. He’s scared because so much has changed, he’s angry that he was abandoned and Helen was exiled due to their parentage, and he’s conflicted about his place amongst these people who are his family.

“I have been in the land of Faerie for years and it is a place where mortal blood is turned to fire. It is a place of beauty and terror beyond what can be imagined here. I have ridden with the Wild Hunt. I have carved a clear path of freedom among the stars and outrun the wind. And now I am asked to walk upon the earth again.”
“You belong where you’re loved.”
(Mark and Emma, Page 200)

There’s so much love for Mark amongst the Blackthorns.

The Hunt had done unspeakable things to break Mark’s spirit and bloody his body, from carving runes into his back and relentlessly mocking him for his Nephilim blood. I understood why Mark would be so hesitant to slip back into his old family and the Shadowhunter lifestyle when it is what brought him so much pain and left him at the mercy of the Hunt.

“You belong where you’re loved.” If I’m not mistaken, didn’t Jem say that to Tessa in *Clockwork Prince*? Emma sure has learned a lot from our boy Jem, and it really warms my heart. Did Jem say that to Emma at some point to reassure her that she was making the right choice by staying with the Blackthorns?

It was interesting to see Mark slowly drop his barriers to be the brother that was expected of him and it was equally intriguing to see how it rekindled bonds with the younger siblings and conflict with Julian.

Mark finds an ally in Ty, who defends his older brother’s outbursts because he knows what it’s like to be overwhelmed by the world. In return, Mark does his best to relate to Ty, including a scene where Ty is forced to complete an exam without his headphones and gets cut while destroying a radio instead. Mark also defies the rules of the exam and cuts his hand in the process.

“It’s not his fault if he doesn’t understand everything. Or if things are too much for him. It’s not his fault. “Now we both have hurt hands,” Mark said.”
(Page 241)

Then at Canter’s, Julian suggests that Mark needs to act like a “normal human being”, and Ty insists that he doesn’t need to. Ty feels protective of Mark despite being younger because he understands the struggles of not being considered as “normal”.

However, Julian had a point that Mark couldn’t be allowed to run around apologizing to inanimate objects and flirting with mundanes using Faerie speech.

As Mark becomes closer with the younger siblings, making them giggle and fall in love with his silly nature, the gap widens between him and Julian. They’re jealous of each other. Mark believes that Julian was given the easier path in life, and Jules thinks that Mark has it easy for not having to bear the weight of responsibility.

After Julian and Cristina rescue Mark and Emma at the Convergence, Mark is bleeding and the younger Blackthorn brother insists on looking at the injury. The tone of Julian’s voice, that of a grown man and not a little boy, troubles Mark into showing them why he doesn’t want to be marked.

“I have had this since I was ten. I had this when they took me, and this when they broke me and made me one of them. Never has it helped me. The runes of the Angel are lies cast into the teeth of Heaven.”
(Mark to Julian, Page 229)

When Julian argues that Mark can’t go with him and Emma to investigate Stanley Wells’s house because they can’t rune him, Mark gets snappy.

“If I had wanted to take orders, I would have stayed with the Hunt.”
(Mark to Julian, Page 249)

It’s not all conflict. Clare gives breaks in the tension in the form of small moments where these brothers show each other glimpses of what the other doesn’t know about them. Before the Lotter event, Mark notices that Julian chews his fingernails and asks, “You weren’t carried away by faeries … why are you the one with the bloody hands?” To which Julian tells Mark about how he killed their Endarkened father during the Dark War.

“But everyone didn’t see it happen, Julian, our father being Turned. I did. The light in his eyes went out like a candle guttering in the dark. He was already dead inside. All you did was bury the body.”
(Mark to Julian, Page 325)

This moment allowed the two brothers to connect on a level they hadn’t before. While Mark didn’t speak of it, Julian could tell by the sadness in his brother’s eyes that his own hands weren’t clean either. In that fact, the two could exchange that weight they both carried for doing unspeakable things that haunt their dreams.

All the progress Julian and Mark made together is seemingly thrown out the window with the infamous kitchen incident. It’s Cristina who reaches out to explain to Mark why Julian is so upset.

“Julian does everything for these children. Everything. I have never seen a brother who is so much like a parent. He cannot only tell them yes, he has to tell them no. He must deal in discipline and punishment and denial. Whereas you, you can give them anything. You can have fun with them.”
“Julian can have fun with them.”
“He can’t. He’s envious because he loves them but he cannot be their brother. He must be their father. In his mind, they dread him and adore you. … Be kind to him. He has a gentle soul. He is terrified you will leave and break the hearts of all these children he loves so very much.”
(Cristina and Mark, Page 401-402)

A lot of criticism I’ve seen of Julian is how he treated Mark early in Lady Midnight, which I won’t say is invalid. Jules treats Mark as a burden for a good majority of this book. It’s even mentioned when Julian first convinces Mark that they’re not hallucinations that, “he tightened his hands on Mark and adjusted his heart to bear the new burden.”

It’s not right or justifiable, but I understand why Julian reacted the way he did. He was disappointed that his older brother wasn’t capable of helping him bear his own burdens, he thought Mark was going to leave them and hurt his younger siblings, and he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to care for Mark who, in another world and under different circumstances, should’ve been caring for him. He also was super jealous and worried that Emma would fall back on her crush for Mark, but that’s for another time.

However, Jules was an asshole. He treated Mark like a little kid. He refused to trust Mark enough to help with the investigation or understand why his brother didn’t want to be runed. While Julian preached about love and family, he acted as if Mark were an outsider that threatened to pop the bubble he had created.

Also, Mark accused Julian of allowing the Clave to exile Helen and claimed the younger brother didn’t fight to have Mark released from the Hunt. My guy, Jules was only 12 years old. There’s only so much an actual child can do. That sure didn’t help their relationship.

“You’re a whole person — you were raised by someone who loved you, loved you more than his own life, and that’s not anything to be grateful for, that’s what parents do, but for years, I haven’t had that.” This tore my heart in half. Ty wants Mark to be their guardian because he feels connected to him and possibly wants Julian to be able to take a break. Mark is panicking in this moment, because he feels unprepared and overwhelmed by what Ty expects from him.

It’s crazy how a simple conversation can mend the severed edges, but it wouldn’t be a Cassandra Clare novel if the characters actually communicated. There’s two beautiful moments between Mark and Julian after the above conversation with Cristina that gives readers a glimpse of a newly formed, rekindled brotherly bond.

The first comes after Jules tells Mark and Emma about Arthur’s condition and him secretly running the Institute. Julian expects them both to hate him for lying and deceiving, instead they both are grateful for what he’s done to keep the family together.

“I have come back to a family not just alive and healthy, but whose bonds have not been severed, and that is because of what you have done. There’s love here, among you. Such love as takes my breath out of my body. There has even been enough love left for me.”
(Mark to Julian, Page 485)

That moment is from Emma’s POV, and she recognizes that this is the first time since Mark’s return that she could see “the harmony they had lost”. I wonder how close these brothers were before Mark was taken? There’s technically four years between them. There’s six years between me and my youngest older brother, and, while we’re extremely close now, we fought aggressively and relentlessly for the first 18 years of my life. Emma mentions when Mark first returned that, “There were few things in life that could undo Julian’s calm, but Mark was, and had always been, one of them.”

That indicates that there was already a tense relationship between the two. I hope there’s flashbacks or something that establishes more of a connection between Julian and Mark as I continue through this trilogy, because I’m curious.

The second moment comes after Emma is whipped by the Faerie convoy. Mark believes it’s his fault that Emma is hurt, and Julian is there to not only push those worries away but also apologize for not seeing what Mark had left behind and what he went through in the Hunt.

“All your life, you’ve done the right thing.”
“I’m sorry. … I’m sorry — sorry about Kieran, because I can see you cared about him. I’m sorry I didn’t know you’d left anyone you cared about behind. I’m sorry that for years I thought you were the one who had freedom, that you were enjoying yourself in Faerie while I killed myself here trying to raise four kids and run the Institute and keep Arthur’s secrets. I wanted to believe you were okay — I wanted to believe one of us was okay. So much.”
“You wanted to believe I was happy, just as I wanted to believe the same about you. I had thought about whether you were happy, thriving, living. I had never stopped to wonder what kind of man you might have grown up to be. I am proud of you.”
(Mark and Julian, Page 529)

I think this conversation in particular is a turning point in the boys’ relationship. This is them finally admitting to each other that they had not understood what the other had given up and lost in the years they were apart. This is the point where Mark proclaims he will stay with the family no matter what and wraps his arms around his younger brother, who allows Mark to “bear just a little of his weight”.

I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids! (THE PLOT!)

This is a very spicy take, but I feel like Cassandra Clare often gets away with half-assed plot lines, because she writes such well-developed, likeable and captivating characters that are somehow both broken and perfect at the same time. *cough* The Infernal Devices *cough*

Other than the storyline with Sebastian Morgenstern in the second half of TMI, I truly haven’t been gripped tightly by any of her plots. Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy was close, but, in the end, it was just a filler book to show Simon’s journey on becoming a Shadowhunter despite the fact that the Clave has always been dirtbags.

So far, The Dark Artifices ranks above TID and below the second half of TMI in terms of plot line and villain.

In particular, I loved the politics of Lady Midnight and how our bad guy used the tense political climate to his advantage.

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First, we have the Cold Peace, that’s the name the Clave is giving to their shitty decision to punish all of the Fair Folk. The Seelie Queen and Unseelie King failed to attend the signing of the Cold Peace treaty, which means they and their people are no longer protected under the Accords. In theory, this makes sense because each Downworld community must be represented and sign the agreement. However, what would the Clave have done if the Seelie Queen and Unseelie King did arrive in Alicante to sign the papers? Would they be punished on site? Put to death for breaking the Accords? We all know how the Clave likes to set examples. The Law is hard.

Of course the Seelies would refuse to show up to what could have been their own funerals. They’re smarter than that. Plus, the Nephilim, per usual, were being unjust in their requests.

The Cold Peace sets the political tone of the Shadow World for The Dark Artifices. Downworlders are even more on edge with Shadowhunters, because they saw how merciless they were with the Fair Folk. The Cold Peace has left a cold pit in the stomachs of everyone involved.

Like so many of our characters, I feel conflicted by the Cold Peace. In one way, I understand that the Seelies aligned themselves with Sebastian Morgenstern during the Dark War and fought alongside his army. There deserves to be repercussions for breaking the Accords. However, it’s wrong to punish a whole group of people (or in this case Downworlders) for the actions of the minority. There had to have been a middle ground that the Clave simply ran past in the effort to lay down the Law as harshly as possible.

Clare touched on how the Shadowhunters view the Fair Folk after the Dark War throughout TFTSA. There’s a lot of prejudice against the faeries. We even see hesitation from the Blackthorns to trust the Fair Folk despite their connections. Emma says they’re dangerous, Arthur calls Mark the “fey boy”, and Livvy says she hates the Courts and will “kill all of them” after they whipped Emma.

However, the Blackthorns are loyal to Mark, which Iarath knows and that’s why they seek them out to investigate the murders.

That’s the storyline of Lady Midnight. There’s been a string of murders in the Los Angeles area, some of the mundanes and others faeries. Every single body has the same exact markings that were found on Emma’s parents when they were discovered dead, and, just like the Carstairs, these bodies turn to ash when you go to move them.

The Fair Folk have translated the first line of the markings and are asking the L.A. Institute for help decoding the rest to bring the murderer to the Courts to face punishment in exchange for Mark’s choice to return to the Blackthorns or stay with the Hunt.

This is against the Cold Peace and both sides know it. That sets the scene for a super secret investigation — that means the Blackthorns can’t ask for help from the Clave or the Silent Brothers.

“I hate being in charge. I hate making the decisions. I’m terrified you’ll all learn to hate me. I’m terrified of losing Mark. I’m terrified of losing Emma. I want someone to take over. I’m not as strong as you thing.” Julian’s inner monologue is top tier. I love how he’s always freaking out inside, but on the outside he’s so responsible and calm and collected.

The investigation in itself was fun and interesting. I loved how it took everyone involved to piece everything together. Ty and Livvy translated images from the convergence cave that turned out to be the Edgar Allan Poe poem “Annabel Lee”, Emma and Julian did their part on the field tracking down clues and following up on leads like the Lottery, Mark and Cristina worked together to figure out that the fairy rhyme used to taunt him related to the markings on the bodies, Dru helped plot map points, and little Tavvy figured it all out with remembering the Lady Midnight story from his children’s book.

I thought that the Lottery and the Followers were a decent concept in the grand scheme of the plot. The Lottery offered Downworlders and mundanes with the Sight their greatest desires, all you had to do was possibly kill a person if your number is called. Also, the fact that our TDA gang thought the Lottery winner was the victim and not the murderer was so funny after they realized their mistake. The Lottery needs to explain the rules a little clearer.

Like so many other cults, the Followers offered those who were scared, desperate, full of secrets or a little of all three a place to be amongst others with similar feelings. It harvested an atmosphere for lost souls and turned into a place to prove yourself worthy of life by taking the life of another. It’s the perfect front for a bad guy to get the weird ingredients he needs for a possible necromantic spell.

That’s how “Annabel Lee” and “Lady Midnight” play into the story. In the children’s story about Lady Midnight, Annabel Blackthorn falls in love with somebody she shouldn’t (spoiler alert, it’s a warlock). Her parents imprison her, and she dies of sadness. When her lover goes to the Faeries for help in bringing her back, they give him a rhyme:

“First the flame and then the flood: In the end, it’s Blackthorn blood. Seek thou to forget what’s past. First thirteenth and then the last. Search not the book of angels gray, red or white will lead you far astray. To regain what you have lost, find the black book at any cost.”

The real story, because the Shadowhunters love to cover up their shittiness, is that the Blackthorns told everyone they sent Annabel to become an Iron Sister, when the family actually killed her. “Annabel Lee” is simply a fun way of Clare connecting her fictional world to that of the real one. Edgar Allan Poe heard the tragic story of Annabel and her forbidden lover and immortalized it in a poem, which our Guardian has become quite obsessed over since that’s how he discovered that Annabel was killed, not sent away.

I actually love when author’s make these types of connections. Personally, it helps me immerse myself in the fictional world when it overlaps with the one I already know. “Annabel Lee” is also my favorite E.A.P. work, so I’m biased.

Oh, by the way, the Guardian is Malcolm.

Malcolm gave me some sketchy vibes when he was first introduced at the beginning of the book, so I wasn’t entirely surprised by this plot twist. However, I did adore that he turned out to be the villain. I looooooooooove when villains have deep personal links to the protagonists and play the long game.

In fact, Malcolm showed up just before Sebastian attacked the L.A. Institute. He stole the Black Volume of the Dead from the Institute’s library after the attack left the building empty, and he killed Emma’s parents as a failed test based on one of the spells in the book. Then, he befriended the Blackthorn children when they returned to the Institute because the last step of his necromantic spell was Blackthorn blood.

The Blackthorn children trusted Malcolm. He became a family friend after the Dark War stole everything from them. He made medicine for Julian to give to Arthur, he played with Tavvy and brought him toys, he watched movies with them and brought them pizza, and it was all just a ruse so that he could one day kill one of them.

Malcolm was friends with Iarlath, and they worked together to have the Blackthorns thrown off their trail by inciting an investigation that ensured the Clave or Silent Brothers couldn’t get involved. They never imagined the kids would actually put all the pieces together.

Looking back, there were several clues that Malcolm would betray these kids. When Julian and Emma first asked Malcolm to help translate the markings on the bodies, he told them outright, “Don’t depend on me too much. … Because I’ll let you down. Everyone does.”

Then, when Iarlath whips Julian, he says, “Foolish Shadowhunters. Too naive to even know who you can trust.”

There’s also the fact that Malcolm never actually helps them translate any of the markings and tells them it’s a summoning spell when it’s actually a necromantic one.

Much like Sebastian Morgenstern, Malcolm is a great villain because you can sympathize with him despite his wrong doings. What happened with Malcolm and Annabel is tragic, nobody can stand by and say that Annabel’s family murdering her for being in love with a warlock was right. Not only was Annabel killed, but her death was covered up. Malcolm thought that everyone, including his friends, lied to him for centuries. He was heartbroken and desperate to right the wrong that the Shadowhunters did to him.

“No one is ever the villain of their own story.”
(Cristina, Page 605)

That’s why our protagonists feel conflicted after his death. They know they did what needed to be done, but they could understand why Malcolm was drowning in grief and willing to do anything to get back his love. Julian even says that he could imagine himself doing the same thing for Emma.

Not only does Malcolm get sympathy points, he also gets some extra villain points for relating to Emma. He’s the man who killed Emma’s parents, and it’s finally time for her to reap revenge.

“We are all what we were born to be. I was born to love Annabel and that was taken from me. Now I live only for revenge. Just as you have, Emma. How many times have you told me that all you want in life is to kill the one who killed your parents? What would you give up for it? Would you give up the Blackthorns? Would you give up your precious parabatai?”
(Malcolm, Page 598)

Revenge is the music of Emma’s soul. She knows how dedicated she is for her revenge, so how can she stand between Malcolm and his?

“When someone has wronged you, it isn’t enough that they suffer. They need to look at your face and know why they suffer.”
(Malcolm, Page 593)

That’s why Malcolm put the Lady Midnight rhyme on all the bodies, so the Clave would eventually have to face the truth that their cruelty is what led to so much destruction. Emma can relate. She wants Malcolm to suffer and know why he must suffer for killing her parents.

But sympathy doesn’t do much for Emma, not when the alternative is allowing one of her family to die. She drives Cortana into Malcolm’s stomach and sends him out to sea to be grabbed by demons. She has avenged her parents’ deaths.

Side note! It feels weird to say, but I’m so glad that Emma got her revenge. I was extremely worried that Clare was going to pull some bullshit where Emma would have to stand by and watch someone else kill her parents’ murderer and never find closure. By killing Malcolm, Emma gets her revenge and learns the hard way that it won’t make a difference. She still has nightmares, her parents are still dead and it didn’t help the grief. I’m curious how and if this will change Emma. Her whole personality revolved around getting revenge, so what now?

Malcolm’s death didn’t affect me the same way Sebastian did (AKA violent sobs), because I simply didn’t know enough about him. However, it did feel a bit painful, especially when Magnus points out that they were friends and that Malcolm had done so much good in his long life to go with the bad. Back to what Kieran said about being more than one thing.

“No one is ever the villain of their own story.” Is Cristina purely speaking on Malcolm in this situation? Or is she having doubts about Diego, as well?

I would consider Malcolm a B-tier villain. He’s not S-tier like Sebastian, but he’s better than most. He’s smart for creating the Lottery to do his dirty work and allying with the faeries, he had a well-thought out plan and was willing to play the long game, he earned the trust of the Blackthorns, and his motives were pure despite the morally-wrong means of meeting them.

Finally, the ending. Just as Malcolm deserves props for his plan to exact revenge and raise Annabel, Julian deserves so much credit for the elaborate story he relayed to the Inquisitor about the Blackthorn’s investigation and how he set everything up so perfectly, from mixing the medicine in Arthur’s wine to hiding the pizza boxes in the foyer.

It was honestly kind of scary to see just how deceptive Julian could be, which makes me like his character more. Please give me more terrifyingly smart and deceptive Julian. I need it.

However, Nightshade’s pizza actually being laced with addictive demon powders was a little … cheesy. (Sorry). It felt more like a middle-school plot device than a young adult one. Would the Clave that Clare has proven to be so merciless really blow off the Blackthorn’s blatant disregard for the Law and defiance of the Cold Peace just because of some vampire pizza? And would a capable Arthur really ignore his nieces and nephews investigating legit murders to follow up on the leads to said pizza scandal? It made me roll my eyes. This book loses a whole star for that moment alone. Nobody respected Nightshade’s hustle.

The only logical explanation I have to reason with this choice is that because of Jace, Clary and Magnus’s favorable opinion of the Blackthorn’s, Robert didn’t want to have to punish them. Plus, Arthur made a fairly good point that these children were punished by the Clave five years ago when they exiled Helen and abandoned Mark. Hook, line and sinker. The Clave doesn’t want themselves to look bad, so they can look past the Law when it’s convenient.

Overall, Lady Midnight had one of Clare’s best plot lines, and it has me excited to see where the story leads us in Lord of Shadows and not just how these wonderful characters develop (which is usually the case for me in Clare’s books).

Everything else.

Kit Rook (AKA the Lost Herondale): We didn’t learn much about Kit; however, the small details we did get made me want to know more. It was interesting to see how his father taught him to fear Shadowhunters because the Nephilim were “kidnapping” mundanes with the Sight to send to the Academy. Were they? Seems like something sketchy the Clave would do.

Kit gives me meme lord energy. I’m not sure why. He seems like a typical Gen Z kid. His father hid him in the basement, so he spent most of his time playing video games or browsing ye ole’ Internet.

When Tessa and Jem appear with Emma to help Kit after demons attacked the Rook home and killed his father, they reveal that Kit is exactly what they’ve been looking for. Kit is not just a Shadowhunter … he’s a Herondale. Remember the baby of Tobias Herondale that Catarina Loss saved and raised as a mundane? Yep, Kit is a descendant of that line. His real name is Christopher Jonathan.

Sidenote! If you have a Shadowhunter baby that you don’t want anybody to know is a Shadowhunter, don’t name it any version of “Jonathan Christopher”. That’s a dead giveaway. Now we have Jace (Jonathan Christopher Herondale) and Kit (Christopher Jonathan Herondale). Oh! Jace is going to be so damn excited to meet Kit. He better make a joke about their names, or I demand a refund.

Jem and Tessa have been looking for Kit because of the infamous debt established between our boy Jem and his parabatai Will Herondale: “He is a Herondale. And the Carstairs owe the Herondales.” If we’re counting, the Herondales now owe the Carstairs two favors: one for Emma telling Jace about Edom when she was 12 and now for Jem finding Kit. Also, how did they track down this family line? I don’t think you can find them on ancestry.com.

“Neither Fair Folk nor mortals know what love is or is not. No one does.” Love is complicated, am I right?

I’m guessing Kit is going to be a bigger part of the story moving forward. I don’t know enough about him to have any definitive opinions on him, but I think he will bring a lighter personality to the stuffiness of Shadowhunters. He might be a “cooler” version of what Simon was in TMI. Plus, based on their interactions so far, I hope that Kit and Ty become friends (or more).

Perfect Diego and Cristina: OK, so I loved Cristina and how finally Clare gave us a very close friendship between two females. Cristina tempered Emma similarly to the way Julian does, and the two quickly became best friends. They tell each other secrets, they shop together, they talk about boys together, they eat ice cream and watch bad movies together. Girl stuff. I loved it. Just two bad ass ladies, who should’ve been parabatai in another world.

At first, I expected Cristina to possibly betray the Blackthorns, and Emma because she seemed super mysterious. Turns out Cristina left Mexico after overhearing her boyfriend (Perfect Diego) and her best friend Jamie talking about how her family didn’t deserve to be running the Institute. The plan was for Jaime to become parabatai with Cristina and Diego to marry her so that their family could take over. However, because nobody knows how to frickin communicate, Jamie was drunk and told Diego that plan for the first time when Cristina overheard. Diego planned on telling Cristina before the two could have their parabatai ceremony.

I’m not sure how I feel about Cristina or Diego. I love Cristina’s character, how she’s soft but fierce and seems to always know exactly what to do. I adore the way she was set on helping the Blackthorn’s with the investigation and became an extension of the family. She’s one I want to get more backstory on going forward.

As for Diego, I don’t trust him. Yes, he helped the Blackthorns. Yes, he didn’t contact the Clave when he could’ve ratted them out for investigating the faerie murders. I just can’t shake the feeling that he’s going to hurt Cristina … again. I guess, we’ll see.

Diana: OK … I’m super suspicious of her. She seems to have the Blackthorn children’s best interests in mind, but so did Malcolm. She’s just so God damn mysterious. She puts me on edge. She knows too much about the Blackthorns, and we don’t know enough about her. I need more details on why she’s so sus 24/7 before I can say more.

You can’t just slip that by us, Cassie!: Clare gives us two HUGE life updates pertaining to our beloved TMI gang that she casually slips in and then tosses out like they mean nothing. First, Jace and Clary are now running the New York Institute. WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? What happened to Maryse? Did she just give the Institute over to a couple 20-somethings and wipe her hands clean of responsibility?

Second, Simon and Isabelle are engaged! ENGAGED! How dare Cassie slip this one by me without giving me a 10-page description of the moment that my awkward baby Simon got down on one knee and proposed to his warrior babe Izzy? I need all the details. I’m pissed. Also, I would like a copy of the speech that Jace was going to make at their engagement party.

“People live through heartbreak, and you are strong enough to live through many times. But Julian is not someone who can just touch your heart. He can touch your soul. And there is a difference between having your heart break and having your soul shatter.” You’re right, per usual, Cristina. However, Emma is the one shattering Julian’s soul.

Conclusion

Overall, Lady Midnight may just be Cassandra Clare’s best opening book for a series.

It’s engaging and action-packed, with a wide variety of characters that are all captivating and unique, a family dynamic that is unmatched, a forbidden lovers story arc that feels fresh, an overarching plot that makes sense and keeps readers on their toes, and a villain who captures sympathy and forces questions about what one is willing to do in the name of love.

Julian’s ruthlessness for the sake of family and Emma’s recklessness for the sake of revenge, along with the deep politics of the Shadow World and how it’s adjusting after the Dark War, set the stage for The Dark Artifices to be my new favorite series in Clare’s long list of works.

There’s just so much to love, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

4 out of 5 stars.

Life of Bry

Analyzing book No. 1 in The Dark Artifices trilogy

Marky Mark and the Faerie bunch

I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids! (THE PLOT!)

Everything else.

Conclusion

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Analyzing book No. 1 in The Dark Artifices trilogy

Marky Mark and the Faerie bunch

I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids! (THE PLOT!)

Everything else.

Conclusion

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