The Dark Artifices Trilogy by Cassandra Clare
It’s been five years since the events of City of Heavenly Fire that brought Shadowhunteres to the brink of oblivion. Emma Carstairs is no longer a child in mourning, but a young woman bent on discovering what killed her parents and avenging her losses. Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica
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Cassandra Clare creates characters that you cannot help but love completely. In this series, that is no different. The Dark Artifices takes place after the main trilogy in the Shadowhunter world with plenty of cameos from our old favourites from The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices series’. This trilogy was full of action, characters, and plot. It had more main characters than the entire six books of the previous series combined. That’s a lot to squeeze into three books but I loved every single character so much. That’s what wins me over with these books is the characters are just so perfect that you can’t help but love them. Definitely an area where Clare excels. The plot of the first book was fantastic and creepy, once we got to the second book I feel like we got a bit lost in the plot and because of that, the third book was wild from start to finish with so much going on. I really enjoyed the trilogy as a whole, but the first book was definitely the shining star in all of this. And our new main characters, Julian and Emma, have made it to second place on my list of favourite Shadowhunters!
Starting off a few years after the events of the last book, Julian and Emma are no longer 10/11 year olds and are currently in charge of almost the entire Blackthorn clan (everyone’s parents died in the last series). Because of this, they come off as a lot more mature than you would expect which made the themes in this trilogy a little bit more adult than the previous books which I liked. I didn’t think I’d like them as characters, I didn’t think I’d like this being set in LA instead of New York, I was set on not liking this book and it won me over from that way of thinking pretty quick. The plot in book one was a simple revenge plot. It centred around Emma searching for the cause of her parents’ death five years ago and as she gets closer to the truth, deeper and darker things going on in the Shadowhunter world come to light. On top of it all, she has some pretty complicated feelings for her Parabatai (feelings that are illegal for Shadowhunters) and that just makes the plot of it all the more interesting.
There’s a lot of focus on the bigotry of the Shadowhunter world in these books and it ends up being a huge plot driver. In the last books there was always a dark underbelly to the Council and the more important Shadowhunters that always SEEMED like it was brushed under the rug but in this book is confronted head on. Some Shadowhunters feel they are better than all the rest and hold very harmful and racist viewpoints against literally anyone different from them. It was terrifying how closely this plot reflected a lot of what’s going on in present day USA. The characters that represented the extremists made my blood boil like no other (Zara Dearborn is WORSE than Delores Umbridge. I said what I said). The entire dynamic between Shadowhunters and Downworlders was fascinating because it really delved into how little was actually fixed during the Dar War and dug up all the deep rooted hate and fear that was underneath. It was fascinating and horrifying.
I do think with so many main characters (there are a lot of Blackthorns) the plot got a little lost once each sibling started to have adventures of their own. I loved Ty, I really didn’t love his plot line in the third book, it was heartbreakingly unnecessary. I loved the Christina, Mark, Kieran dynamic but we could have spent less time focusing on Faerie when we already had some pretty good Gwyn/wild hunt content going on in Faerie already. The apocalypic “dimension” hopping was my least favourite part. Clare includes this in nearly every finale book and it’s getting old (City of Heavenly Fire, The Lost Book of the White, The Queen of Air and Darkness). However, the way things came together after all the loose plots trailed off was PERFECTION. She tied it together so well and the battle scenes were magnificent. As usual, Alec and Magnus stole the show.
Cassandra Clare has always tried to be somewhat diverse in her characters as well and in this book I think she had the most diverse cast yet! We had transgendered representation for the first time, autistic rep, unusual relationship dynamics, and a lot more characters of different ethnicities included as main characters instead of just side characters. I feel like a lot of people can see themselves when reading this trilogy and that’s what makes this so much more fun, being able to enjoy and share it with a wider audience of people who can relate to specific characters.
It was a great continuation of the Shadowhunter world. I do wish it was a bit more condensed in plot but I still had a lot of fun reading it and the characters will forever be the best part of this world. I gave the first book 4 stars, the second book 3 stars, and the third book 4 stars. If you like the Shadowhunter stories, you’d definitely like this one!