“How much love people have denied themselves through the ages because they believed they did not deserve it. As if the waste of love is not the greater tragedy.”
Matthew Fairchild, Chain of Thorns
I am so sad.
Not in a good way.
In a disappointing way.
Chain of Thorns, the finale to Cassandra Clare’s The Last Hours trilogy, came out on Jan. 31, and it was probably my most anticipated new release in a LONG time. I haven’t cared about a new book coming out in years, and I gave Chain of Gold a perfect five stars and Chain of Iron 4.5. I had incredibly high hopes that ChoT would compete with Lord of Shadows for my favorite Shadowhunters book.
That being said, it didn’t even graze my expectations, and my rating of 3.8 stars is only because I love Matthew Fairchild so incredibly much and, thus, am biased.
Chain of Thorns was a mess of tangled storylines that felt rushed yet dragged on forever. It has some of the most awkward pacing issues, and so little of the heart that I often associate with The Shadowhunters Chronicles. Clare does her usual magic with most of our characters, especially with Matthew, but others get left in the dust with plot lines that never get fleshed out and end off page — I’m looking at you, Grace, Jesse, and even Lucie. A lot of this book happens off page, actually. Some of our biggest emotional turning points don’t get scenes at all; they get delivered after the fact by third parties. What happens on page with plot work is lackluster and unsatisfying — a series of recycled plot points and tropes used in her other series. It’s a very safe narrative with no impact, no consequence and no surprises.
I wanted a book that would tear me to pieces the same way Clockwork Princess and Lord of Shadows did in the past, but what I got was unearned happy endings that left me frustrated and deflated.
I had … a lot … of thoughts on this book, so I’ve decided to split this into two parts. First up, we’ll discuss my main issues with the writing and storyline, the messiness of the Blackthorns and how Lucie definitely got away with necromancy and I will die mad about it.
Warning: All the spoilers ahead.
Here are all my thoughts on Chain of Thorns …
I got 99 problems …
Let’s start with some of my most basic issues.
I think Clare pigeon-holed herself with this series. She couldn’t do too much damage because she wanted the connection between the TLH gang and our current Shadowhunters. We know Jace is from Will’s line, meaning James had to live. This knowledge made the biggest scene in the book have zero suspense. James was never actually in mortal danger, and his confidence actually matches that to make the tone flat.
A lot of this book isn’t as suspenseful as it should be, because so much is wrapped up too neatly and there’s truly no consequences. That’s probably why Matthew shines in this book, because his story is anything but neat. It’s bittersweet, whereas most of our other characters get a fairly closed-off happy ending.
Nothing our characters do in TLH leaves a ripple effect for later generations that we don’t already know. Belial is dealt with, we know the deal with Lilith, we saw what happens to Malcolm, fire-messages are used in other series, etc.
Aside from that, it didn’t even answer questions from Secrets of Blackthorn Hall. How and why did Tatiana end up with Matthew’s flask that he says he lost in Paris? How did Alastair’s dagger find itself in the church? What is the music box?? We didn’t even get a mention of the enchantment on Blackthorn Hall. Why did Tatiana want those things and what was she planning to do with them?
The burying of the casket was simply a farewell, which is fine. But it doesn’t explain why Tessa, Jem and even Magnus are so tight-lipped about this generation. Tessa was mortified by current Kit finding James’ revolver, but did she ever see James use it? Or even know it was his? Why doesn’t Tessa ever speak about Lucie when her daughter got away with necromancy spot-free and has nothing to hide?
Also if the current Blackthorns do come from Lucie and Jesse — which I mean, there’s still a chance they don’t because there’s that secret line that went to America — why wouldn’t Tessa take the same care with them as she did for Jace? Jace was practically an adult and she took him around Herondale Manor in Idris and told him stories of his ancestors, so why not give the Blackthorns (who during the time after the Dark War, were literal children) the same attention? I suppose it’s because Jace didn’t have anyone else, while the Blackthorns had Arthur and some knowledge of their family. But it still makes Tessa look worse than she already did in my eyes for neglecting Lucie’s possible great-great-great grandkids. I suppose we always knew James was her favorite child.
Whew … I got off topic. Anyway this kind of goes with the feeling that ChoT was forced. Cassie needed to make excuses. She shoved Esme Hardcastle into the narrative to excuse the family tree, she had Lucie and James’ powers disappear as Belial is … reborn? … to explain why Mina won’t have the same issues in The Wicked Powers, she includes a pointless coda of Jem meeting the new Belial to give a reason why he’s owed a favor in GotSM, and even Charlotte’s pregnancy and the birth of Zachary are just thrown in there to make sure we have family lines that continue.
Side note: If James and Lucie lost their power because that version of Belial was defeated, then shouldn’t Tessa also lose her abilities? Wouldn’t that be how it works if that’s the excuse Cassie gave?
All of that combined with the fact everything felt too easy — like how Cortana is a deus ex machina by just happening to be able to heal its wounds only if you’re a paladin and how they were able to just quickly portal into and out of Edom — makes the plot of Chain of Thorns boring and flat.
The pacing: It took me so long to get through this book because it dragged. We pretty much have 600-plus pages of primarily character building and no plot work — which would be fine if this wasn’t a finale. Clare wanted to have her characters work through their personal issues before heading into battle, which was such a weird choice. We straighten out the Matthew/Cordelia/ James love triangle, we fix Herondaisy, we deal with Grace, we get our Jesse excuse, we see Matthew start to reconcile with the Merry Thieves and start his sobriety journey, we have both Thomas and Alastair and Anna and Ari sort their stuff out, and we have Lucie and Cordelia fight and makeup.
I would have rather had these things happen more integrated into the main plot of Belial-Lilith, but I think it’s because of the nature of TLH. It’s a fantasy story that mostly deals with the more mundane side of Shadowhunters at the time — especially society and politics. It’s something that I loved about the other two books, but didn’t have the same appeal in this last book because it’s not as big of a focus. The Belial-Lilith situation takes over as the main issue that also doesn’t get the attention it needs, and that lingering battle of societal standards and political play is pushed aside for personal retribution between our characters.
It’s a lot of Cassie trying to make readers feel bad for a bunch of nepo babies and their nepo baby problems. It felt flippant at times.
The book is also divided awkwardly.
The two previous books are separated into three parts, which helps the story flow better between the societal and fantasy elements. However, ChoT is only divided into two parts and very awkwardly. It’s not an even split. It’s very much a line drawn about ⅔ of the way through the book where Clare decides to turn away from character work to plot work. It’s an awkward transition that doesn’t allow for Christopher’s death to be properly felt by the narrative, because the dominoes fell before he died to begin the plot. And it starts a race. Everything that happens after Intermission: Grief is way too fast.
If Clare intermingled her character work better with the plot, ChoT would have felt like a smoother read.
Reduce, reuse, recycle: Cassie loves to reuse plotlines in order to spark parallels between generations. However, Chain of Thorns is almost entirely recycled. Little Alexander Lightwood is kidnapped, just like Tavvy Blackthorn in Lady Midnight and just like Mina Carstairs in “Secrets of Blackthorn Hall.” James heals Matthew in Edom with iratzes that shouldn’t work, just like Emma healed Julian from a fatal wound with runes that shouldn’t have worked in TDA. We’ve also seen Edom before in TMI. James is possessed by Belial, just like Jace was controlled by Jonathan because of Lilith (which is very similar to Cordelia’s paladin situation). James is stabbed by a special sword to free him from evil, just like Clary had to stab Jace and later Jonathan and just how Alec Lightwood stabbed himself with the Thorn in The Lost Book of the White.
It’s a lot of recycling for a book that already has so much focus on nostalgia.
And if CC wanted to use nostalgia as a trigger, then she should’ve went harder with the emotional pull.
For example, I think what would’ve made the scene with Cordelia and possessed James better is if there was more of a push and pull like we see with Jace in City of Lost Souls. James was too confident in his ability and too morally sound, whereas with Jace it was a constant fight and an admittance that there were parts he wanted. Cassie should’ve given us a James POV in that moment to go with Cordelia’s indecision. Have him fighting Belial for control or feeling the power and being enticed by it. Have Belial maybe hurt Cordelia (or have Matthew show up and be hurt) and have that be the moment he breaks through enough to get Cortana. Or make Cordelia the one to have to strike the blow so that we feel that anguish of having her hands be the one to kill or save James in an act of mercy — just like Clary with Jace. That would’ve played into Cordelia saying as a child she wanted Cortana because she wished to be a merciful hero and concluded her arc better.
Which brings me to …
POVs have power: Perspective can make or break a scene. You need the right voice to tell the right story, and Clare had such a hard time finding the right voices in ChoT in my opinion. So many scenes fell short because they were told from the wrong perspective.
Christopher’s death was the worst. We needed at least one page — even half a page — of Anna’s POV as she drew iratzes on her brother and watched them fade. We needed his last breath from her perspective to feel the grief and pain and horror. Instead we have Lucie notice the interactions between the siblings and just accept that it’s fine. She’s probably the worst POV to have at this moment because she’s the most … immature … of the bunch. She’s the youngest and still has this view that bad things don’t happen. Not to them. I mean she literally just got away with necromancy. But also she has a different role to play in this scene, so she can’t focus on Kit literally dying.
It’s a very poor choice on CC’s part.
Tell, don’t show: Apparently Clare hasn’t heard of show don’t tell, because so much of Chain of Thorns was told to readers rather than shown in the narrative.
We don’t get any part of Charles arriving in Alicante and having to tell Cecily and Gabriel about Christopher’s death. In fact, we don’t get their reactions at all. Or Charles standing up against the Inquisitor. Or Tessa and Will being tried (which is a topic all on its own of how the bigotry of the Clave was used solely to remove adults from London rather than an actual discussion despite being intermingled throughout the narrative). Or Sona’s baby being born. We are told everyone’s reactions by Eugenia as if it’s casual gossip and not these events we’ve been waiting for.
We also don’t get a scene of James and Cordelia putting on their second marriage runes, which was such a huge thing in Chain of Iron! The same goes for Jesse’s trial by Mortal Sword. That’s a big thing, and we only get a mention in the epilogue and move along.
There’s also the moment Jesse kisses Lucie so she can try to get the help of the dead Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters, but the scene cuts before we see them agree or what they even do. Or even James accepting Belial’s offer and having to leave Matthew in Edom.
I think because there was just so much going on, there wasn’t time to get into everything, but it left the narrative to feel unsatisfying and unfinished.
Blackthorns have always been messy …
Jesse Blackthorn, my love. You had so much potential, and yet a dog got a better storyline than you. I’m sorry.
Aside from Matthew, I was probably most excited to see where Jesse’s story went in ChoT.
It went nowhere.
He’s resurrected only to be assassinated, which sucks because he is such an unintentionally funny character and I love Blackthorn boys with my whole being.
Essentially, Jesse’s little character arc is him adjusting to being alive in the most basic ways — needing clothes, being fascinated that he can feel the warmth of a fire, just being happy to be alive. He doesn’t push boundaries because he doesn’t want to appear ungrateful for Tessa and Will’s kindness and he’s untrained, which is just Cassie’s excuse to not write him an actual storyline (where is all that Shadowhunters *instincts* bs that was preached with Clary 75 percent of TMI?).
So Jesse stays at the edge of the story. He lingers as if he’s still a ghost. He pops in to tell us he’s fine with everyone talking shit on his mom and fades out. Even in the end battle, he gives up his sword to an actual mundane — another thing Cassie does just to give reason as to how Bridget is still living.
It doesn’t make sense to outcast Jesse when he was wronged and victimized by Tatiana/Belial just as much as James.
“Mine is a complicated story, and people do not want to hear complicated stories. They want simple stories, in which people are either good or evil, and no one good ever makes a mistake, and no one evil ever repents.”
When Jesse tells this to Lucie, it reads on a meta level. Jesse’s existence challenges the status quo, and it makes it seem like we will get his story because people don’t want to hear it but it needs to be heard. It sets the stage for Jesse to prove the line is blurred. For him to be our voice of reason between the haziness of good and evil, since he walks the line. But instead the story focuses primarily on the black and white with James and Cordelia vs. Belial and Lilith.
I would’ve loved to see Jesse be the one to erase that line when it came to both Grace and his mother.
The Merry Thieves are an echo chamber. They hate and love together for the most part — this is why Thomas was so afraid to admit his feelings for public enemy No. 1 Alastair. Jesse was an outside perspective that could’ve challenged them, yet he left Christopher to defend Grace on his own.
That is what I’ll never understand. The choice for Jesse to be the most condemning of Grace when he knew the brutal conditions their mother bound her by. If anybody should be her advocate to say she did what she did out of fear after a life of abuse and conditioning, it should be Jesse.
I don’t think the narrative really did Grace’s character justice without his voice.
She is a sympathetic villain, who is not entirely a villain. Everyone, even herself, kept saying she had a choice in everything she’d done, but is it really a choice in her case? She was bought and trained and groomed to be a weapon as a child. She didn’t have a proper sense of right and wrong. She only knew she wanted to be loved and the only affection she received was after completing Tatiana’s requests.
Let’s also remember she held her brother, the only person to truly show her that kindness and affection, as he died. Grace was made to believe that their mother was doing everything to bring Jesse back. Her helping Tatiana in that endeavor is similar to her helping Lucie. Different means to the same end. Both necromancers. Tho only one admits to it … and it’s not our protagonist.
That’s why I liked that Christopher stood up for her. Not to say she did nothing wrong, but to voice that she wasn’t the devil or their enemy.
We excuse Matthew’s Great Sin because he was a child who was tricked and insecure, so why not give Grace that same benefit? She was manipulated and abused and caused harm, but she faced her own moral consequences as Math did. And was questioned by the Silent City.
It doesn’t mean James or anybody else has to forgive or befriend Grace, but there needed to be that level of understanding. Christopher shouldn’t have been alone in that, and having Jesse stand up with him would’ve made a bigger impact. Sure, he starts to make amends with Grace quietly by believing in her, but I personally wanted and needed him to say it to the Merry Thieves — this is my sister and she’s done wrong but it is because x, y and z and if you do not condemn me you should not condemn her.
Side note: Grace’s storyline is never really settled. There’s no moment of reconciliation or real conversation with all of them after the fact with her. She isn’t even told that she was bought, which didn’t we learn in Chain of Iron that the truth is what matters even if it’s bitter?
She’s pseudo-adopted by the Fairchilds, which makes everything even more awkward. Everyone still kind of hates her, but she’s sticking around London in this group that probably will never fully care for her the way she needs to be to heal. I would’ve liked it if she was sent to a different Institute to be trained properly — a merciful consequence for her allegiance that would help her character grow.
Instead Jesse is reduced to being a bit of a coward.
I get that the reasoning probably falls within the realm that he was horrified with the extent of what was being hidden from him and he was trying so hard to fit into this found family of his, but it made me so sad to not see him stick up for his sister. That’s not the Blackthorn way.
We do see him stand up to his mother when she kidnapped Alexander, but I really wanted there to be some affection between him and Tatiana. We know that if there’s anything in this world Tatiana loved, it was Jesse because he was her and Rupert’s son — a final gift from her late husband. She loved Jesse so much that she allowed him to get a rune, and while that ended poorly, it does show that at the root of it all she loved her son enough to go against everything she stood for.
Which is also why I loved Tatiana as a villain. She’s a sympathetic villain, though much grayer than Grace.
We learned a bit about Tatiana’s childhood in SoBH, and she was very much neglected by Benedict unless he needed her. It didn’t make her likable as a person, but it gave us more reasoning as to how Tatiana got as bad as she did. She was always an overlooked victim. Losing Rupert and then losing Jesse really just threw her through a loop that she was unprepared for. She couldn’t take accountability — because did Benedict ever preach accountability? No. His motto was to blame others and cheat the system — for her own faults and turned grief into rage.
It’s very interesting to compare her to our protagonists, who lead privileged lives and are righteous in their goodness. They like to believe that they wouldn’t also drive themselves to damning means to restore love when it is all lost. Tatiana forces them to see that when she’s standing in the ballroom with Alexander and tells them that she has to take something of theirs for them to listen. It’s true, in a very twisted way. Everyone pushed her off as a threat because they deemed her mad, but didn’t realize that sinking into madness and grief and misery can be the most dangerous thing imaginable.
But our protagonists don’t learn or acknowledge anything from this moment. It’s just “crazy lady bad.”
Another thing I enjoyed about Tatiana’s character is how that love for Jesse and Rupert becomes clouded. She loses touch with why she agreed to be in a league with Belial to begin with. It’s less about grief and more about revenge, which is very similar to Emma Carstairs’ arc in TDA and shows the difference having a support system makes. Tatiana believed that destroying those she thinks have wronged her will bring back her son and husband. That’s such a hard-hitting emotional pull that I wish was used more.
Because it is Lucie summoning Rupert’s ghost to the courtyard that forces Tatiana to stop the attack. There’s still love even if it’s buried under mountains of hate.
“Tell them to stop before they kill our son!” was one of the lines that hit me the hardest in this book, because it’s forcing Tatiana to realize what she’s doing and also is just heartwrenching to have Rupert care more for their son he never even got to meet than a mother who raised the boy his whole life. BRB gonna sob some more.
And with that, I wish that Jesse also stood up for his mother more. I understand the choice for him to be distant from her because she is very much doing terrible shit and also told him she didn’t want him alive if it meant he was with the “enemy”, but as with Grace, I would’ve loved for him to throw in some comments like, “She wasn’t always like this.” when people talk about her badly. And maybe have him share softer memories he’s had with her to show her deterioration. It would’ve made Jesse more interesting as a hammer against the walls of an echo chamber, and also given Tatiana more dimension. She’s more than just a crazy woman, she’s a grieving mother.
The only real pull we have from Jesse is this moment:
“You are sick, Mother. You are sick in your mind. All your beliefs that you are being persecuted, that these people, these families, are trying to harm you, are the refuges you have found in which you can bury your grief over my father’s death. Over your own father —”
I’m conflicted, because I loved that it’s Jesse telling her the truth. But I also wanted a tiny bit more warmth from him to be complex.
I wanted Jesse to be more. He had the potential to be so much more.
I will die mad about this.
… Lucie did necromancy … Lucie did necromancy and got away with it. …
I will not be accepting any excuses Clare made to say Lucie didn’t do necromancy. Jesse was dead. The Silent Brothers pronounced him dead. Tatiana tells the Enclave that they would’ve burned her son’s body. Because he was dead. He is no longer dead. Because Lucie commanded him to live. Lucie brought Jesse back from the dead. She brought him back from the dead using powers she had because her grandfather is literally the prince of necromancers.
Lucie did fucking necromancy.
This is what I 100 percent hated about this book. There’s no conflicting feelings on this topic. Lucie got away with necromancy, and it only proves the Clave’s concerns that the Herondales believe they are above the law.
This issue becomes a non-issue so insanely quick, as well. It’s wrapped up within the first few chapters. Magnus comes in and checks out Jesse only to say he has no necromantic magic on him, which simply doesn’t make sense. Tatiana had his body preserved through necromantic magic, he was used as a vessel by Belial, Grace was trying to do necromancy on him, and Lucie brought him back using necromantic powers. This boy should be oozing with necromantic magic.
But if that were so, Cassie would have to write consequences for a Herondale, and we can’t have the golden family be tarnished. It was so frustrating, and it made me even angrier when everyone kept noticing a change in Lucie as if she’s grown up so much, but what type of character development can she really get when she did the ultimate crime and got away with it without so much as being questioned by the Mortal Sword or accepting what she’s done. No, Jesse gets tried for acts he didn’t even commit … and it happens off page.
Jesse truly takes all the blame for something he even urged Lucie not to do. He was willing to be exiled, to turn himself in, to change his identity … all to protect Lucie, who had no intentions of admitting she’d done anything wrong.
Side note: It’s awfully convenient that there’s another secret line of Blackthorns in America that nobody knows much about. But also, wouldn’t it be awfully convenient that a few days after a dead Blackthorn boy is possessed by a demon, another one shows up claiming to be from some other line. And he doesn’t look like the Cornwall line of Blackthorns, he looks identical to the young man that Benedict Lightwood (we all remember that psycho) ate when he contracted demon pox. I love that we as readers just have to accept that the Enclave is full of idiots. … Which it kind of is, but that’s beside the point.
Just because Jesse deserved to live, doesn’t mean doing necromancy is the right choice. Isn’t that what we learned with Ty and Livvy? The dead should stay dead.
What gets me is that Malcolm even foreshadows troubles for Lucie and Jesse with this line:
“Try not to collect any painful memories, Lucie. Do not get too attached to anything, or anyone. For if you lose them, the memory will burn in your mind like a poison for which there will never be any cure.”
Instead this line becomes a way of making Malcolm look scorned and bitter at Lucie, which he probably is. But Cassie is trying to draw lines to separate the difference between what Lucie did and what Ty and Malcolm did. There’s no line. All three did necromancy. Malcolm pays his price, Ty will have a whole series about paying his, and Lucie runs off free of blame.
I hate it here.
(Also very convenient that Lucie loses her power and can’t help with Annabel. Another way of Cassie taking a possible plotline for Lucie and Jesse and taking a blow torch to it.)
End of Part 1
We’re going to stop here for now. In part two, I’ll be touching on both Cordelia and James’ character development, *that* death, the perfection that is and always will be Matthew Fairchild and some other random thoughts I had while reading.
Life of Bry 
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