Reviews

Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare

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dailysnack's review against another edition

5.0

I... am honestly so shook.. I cannot stop crying.
Cassandra Clare was NOT wrong when she said the plot twist was brutal..
...

ladygeekface_'s review against another edition

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5.0

That ending though.. :/

faithtrustpixiedust's review against another edition

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3.0

I really wanted to like this, especially because I remember liking the first book in this trilogy so much, but I just...didn't?

I think the biggest issue this book had was just how long it was. 700+ isn't so insanely long (looking at you, [b:It|830502|It|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1334416842l/830502._SY75_.jpg|150259]) but oh my goodness, this book dragged on and on and repeated locations and scenarios SO MANY TIMES that all tension dissolved! And that's because this book didn't have a plot! I mean, just look at the Goodreads description. It literally just says that this is in the Dark Artifices trilogy and rehashes the events of the first book, giving almost zero indication about the contents of this book. It's less helpful than random quotes on the back of the book, because at least those usually let you know how many people were bribed into liking it.

This book doesn't have a premise, nor does it have a point other than that racism and bigotry are bad, which isn't exactly a super radical idea to anyone with a brain, and it makes this point in almost comically cheesy way.

It has a love dodecahedron and that's about it.

To illustrate my point, I shall lay out the romantic plots of the story using persons A-G (and also H-J and K-L):

Person A is in love with Person B, but they can't be together for reasons so vague and reliant on the worldbuilding that it serves only to be angsty without any tangible consequences. So, to avoid this, Person B fake-dates Person C. Person C is lowkey-highkey in love with Person D even though C has a past with Person E. Person E forgets their own past crimes and so for literally no discernable reason, Person C has to pretend (but also not pretend, it's very inconsistent) to still love Person C to essentially blackmail them. This is explored somewhat satisfactorily. I don't like C and E together bc it's super toxic on both of them but at least that's explored in the text. Back to Person D, they were dating Person F, but it turns out that F is secretly in a relationship with Person G. Person G just so happens to be Hitler, by the way. Or Trump, depending on how you want to look at it. It has some strong nationalistic, Make-Shadowhunters-Great-Again vibes.

As for the other characters, a somewhat unrelated Person H kisses Person I

Spoiler

but then she dies at the end, in a not-so-subtly foreshadowed way??

even though there's weird inconsistent parabatai-or-thirst tension between H and Person J. Oh and, there's Person K, whose entire character is that they're overweight and depressed, so ~yay~ for that representation, and K seems to have a crush on the much older Person L, who's a friend of Person D. Luckily, Person L isn't a pervert, so they don't seem to reciprocate.

This is the A plot, for all intents and purposes. There is supposed to be a real plot going on, but it's so frequently overshadowed by the unnecessary miscommunication and pining that I honestly forgot what was happening on several occasions. Maybe that's the issue the people who write the plot descriptions ran into, so they just said, "forget it, let's just remind people what series this is in!"

Additionally, a major issue with this series as a whole is where exactly this stands as a fully integrated urban fantasy, in regards to how much the Nephilim know and understand about Mundane society. It seems to be a very selective semipermeable membrane; only allowing in major motion pictures and Wikipedia, but completely ignoring the DSM-IV (even though they have Wikipedia...just like...use Google, people, look things up for once???). This constantly brought me out of the story, making me question the reality these characters live in.

And, to make it worse, Clare reiterates ad nauseam that Shadowhunters are just the ~coolest~ even though they're actually frequently quite awful and always make up the main antagonist, exhibiting some of the most toxic and destructive traits out of every other creature or group in the series. So when Kit suddenly thinks being a Shadowhunter is pretty neat, I got a little bit annoyed tbh, because the reasons he thinks they're neat are that they have knives and stuff, and that's not unique by any means. It is oppressively obvious in urban fantasies like this that normal humans are useless until they become supernatural, even if that goes against the central themes the author attempts to present. It happened with Simon (twice, might I add). This might as well just be an alternate reality, rather than an urban fantasy, because the real world is exclusively background and serves no purpose.

I like Cristina, though. Even though she's sometimes really creepy and seems to like watching Kieran and Mark make out to an uncomfortable degree. Hmm I wonder if she's supposed to represent the voyeuristic middle-aged women who LOVE writing about adolescent gay boys.