Lady Midnight

I have tried and tried and tried to read something a little serious this summer, but I don’t know what’s happened to me this summer, but I suddenly seem to have developed the attention span of a toddler.

What with the onset of summer holidays, weekends horse-riding with Piglet, raising a new pup (yes! Follow my Instagram for some puppygrams), and general laziness, I’ve just not thought through my reading too much. I have slightly relaxed blogging diligently about every book I read.

Anyway, coming back to the point of this post, which is to rave about Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare. This book had me reading compulsively late into the night.

About the book

This is the first book in The Dark Artifices series and is set in the Shadowhunter world that Cassandra Clare has set up in two other series – The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices.

I finished the entire The Mortal Instruments series a couple of weeks back, and though the books have some serious writing, plotting, and character development flaws, I loved them for the world-building. Cassandra Clare just nailed it, and so when I saw a beautiful-looking cover of Lady Midnight in the library, I was intrigued enough to check out the blurb. And once I realized it was set in the same Shadowhunter world and that several characters from The Mortal Instruments also spill over into Lady Midnight, I was sold. Into my bag went the book.

Synopsis

This book (and the series) tells Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn, who were just children in The Mortal Instruments.

Now they are teenagers living in the Los Angeles Institute. Emma is haunted by the murder of her parents (which happens offline in The Mortal Instruments) and wants to find the culprits. Julian is weighed down by his responsibilities to his younger brothers and sisters (his parents are dead, and his elder brother is kidnapped by fairies – again, a back story from The Mortal Instruments). When a chance comes for both of them to meet their respective goals – revenge for Emma, and a chance to get his brother back for Julian, they both jump headlong into mystery and danger.

So, does this mean you need to have read the entire The Mortal Instruments before you start on this book? Well, that depends.

I would answer Yes because that means you are really interested in these characters and world already and know their back story, and so are already attached to them. Plus, Julian has so many brothers and sisters (with nicknames) that if you haven’t read the earlier books, you might spend the first section of the book a little confused about who is who.

But also, I must say that Clare really takes her time setting up the story and the characters in the first 50-100 pages, so you shouldn’t feel too lost.

That said, this book is a chunkster, and the first part is pretty much scene-setting, so a little patience is required.

What I loved about this book

I love that Clare has improved so much as a writer. She got a lot of flak for some of the books in The Mortal Instruments, and she’s learned some lessons and just aced this one.

Character build-up of Julian and Emma: Note-perfect. Both Julian and Emma are so well-drawn out. Their characters and the people around them are really well-developed and so different from Clary and Jace and the others from The Mortal Instruments. Here Emma and Julian’s problems seem so natural, and so are their reactions and emotions. Julian especially is awesome. He shows some unsettling, obsessive sides to his character, which really intrigued me, and I can’t wait to see how he develops in the later books.

Terrific action and bad-assery: Well, this is a Shadowhunter novel, so of course, the action will be top-notch. I did love, though, that it was always appropriate, and the story and suspense never took a back seat.

Excellent suspense: I thought the whole murder angle was pretty well plotted out. While the identity of the killer wasn’t totally gasp-inducing, I thought CC did an excellent and believable job setting up all the clues and the red herrings and all. The suspense pretty much lasted the entirety of the novel.

What I disliked about this book

Pretty much nothing. Yes, the start was slow, but it wasn’t slow enough to dissuade me from digging into it.

So, overall, this is pretty much two thumbs up from me.