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A review by urmom46
Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare
4.0
TLDR: A solid first book in The Dark Artifices. Get ready for interesting characters, solid plot, but lowkey eye-rolling romance.
There is a lot to enjoy about this book. The writing was pretty good, and the cast was very interesting to follow.
Characters:
What makes Emma is interesting is that she is the first main female lead who’s not a mundane, unlike Tessa from TID and Clary from TMI. I’m not going to lie, more than Emma, I was more interesting in the side characters.
We once again have a brooding male lead, but I feel more sympathy towards him and his situation. Julian has a lot of weight to deal with, growing up too fast to take care of his siblings. And the sad thing is that I feel like a lot of people can relate to him, and how the government can screw over a lot of families and children, even if they don’t have a half-faerie brother.
Speaking of Mark, being in the faerie world, he’s definitely not the same person we saw in TMI. But I like his character coming back, and trying to fit into the family when he doesn’t even know who he is himself.
This brings me to Cristina. Cristina is a godsend in this book. I love love love her so much. Her character reminds me of the badass femininity of Isabelle, and she’s got secrets of her own to hide. I definitely hope to see more of her as the series goes on.
The Blackthorn kids all seem interesting but I don’t really know enough about them yet, same with Mark’s faerie boyfriend Kieran.
Plot:
The plot is one of the strongest points in this book. We see some old characters make an appearance as well which is always welcome. The plot twist is really solid.
Cons:
We have another forbidden romance. Cristina Mark and Kieran have something going on which I love, but Emma and Julian fall in love despite being Parabatai (this shouldn’t be a surprise). I wonder how many more series Clare can keep up before she starts running out of ways to keep her two leads apart.
Some characters fall flat because the cast is so huge. I want either more screentime with the blackthorn kids separately or more family moments (not necessarily with Julian) because I want to know more about them. Despite me loving to see some old characters come back something felt off but I can’t put my finger on it. The writing was actually the pretty nice, but we’ll have to see if that continues through the second and third book.
There is a lot to enjoy about this book. The writing was pretty good, and the cast was very interesting to follow.
Characters:
What makes Emma is interesting is that she is the first main female lead who’s not a mundane, unlike Tessa from TID and Clary from TMI. I’m not going to lie, more than Emma, I was more interesting in the side characters.
We once again have a brooding male lead, but I feel more sympathy towards him and his situation. Julian has a lot of weight to deal with, growing up too fast to take care of his siblings. And the sad thing is that I feel like a lot of people can relate to him, and how the government can screw over a lot of families and children, even if they don’t have a half-faerie brother.
Speaking of Mark, being in the faerie world, he’s definitely not the same person we saw in TMI. But I like his character coming back, and trying to fit into the family when he doesn’t even know who he is himself.
This brings me to Cristina. Cristina is a godsend in this book. I love love love her so much. Her character reminds me of the badass femininity of Isabelle, and she’s got secrets of her own to hide. I definitely hope to see more of her as the series goes on.
The Blackthorn kids all seem interesting but I don’t really know enough about them yet, same with Mark’s faerie boyfriend Kieran.
Plot:
The plot is one of the strongest points in this book. We see some old characters make an appearance as well which is always welcome. The plot twist is really solid.
Cons:
We have another forbidden romance. Cristina Mark and Kieran have something going on which I love, but Emma and Julian fall in love despite being Parabatai (this shouldn’t be a surprise). I wonder how many more series Clare can keep up before she starts running out of ways to keep her two leads apart.
Some characters fall flat because the cast is so huge. I want either more screentime with the blackthorn kids separately or more family moments (not necessarily with Julian) because I want to know more about them. Despite me loving to see some old characters come back something felt off but I can’t put my finger on it. The writing was actually the pretty nice, but we’ll have to see if that continues through the second and third book.