Review: Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Lady Midnight

by Cassandra Clare
Series: The Dark Artifices, #1

In a kingdom by the sea…

In a secret world where half-angel warriors are sworn to fight demons, parabatai is a sacred word.

A parabatai is your partner in battle. A parabatai is your best friend. Parabatai can be everything to each other—but they can never fall in love.

Emma Carstairs is a warrior, a Shadowhunter, and the best in her generation. She lives for battle. Shoulder to shoulder with her parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, she patrols the streets of Los Angeles, where vampires party on the Sunset Strip, and faeries—the most powerful of supernatural creatures—teeter on the edge of open war with Shadowhunters. When the bodies of humans and faeries turn up murdered in the same way Emma’s parents were when she was a child, an uneasy alliance is formed. This is Emma’s chance for revenge—and Julian’s chance to get back his brother Mark, who is being held prisoner by the faerie Courts. All Emma, Mark, and Julian have to do is solve the murders within two weeks…and before the murderer targets them.

Their search takes Emma from sea caves full of sorcery to a dark lottery where death is dispensed. And each clue she unravels uncovers more secrets. What has Julian been hiding from her all these years? Why does Shadowhunter Law forbid parabatai to fall in love? Who really killed her parents—and can she bear to know the truth?

The darkly magical world of Shadowhunters has captured the imaginations of millions of readers across the globe. Join the adventure in Lady Midnight, the long-awaited first volume of a new trilogy from Cassandra Clare.

"This is not a love story."

"Every story is a love story."

Oh my. Can I just start of by saying that Cassandra Clare is one of my all-time favorite authors ever, in the history of the universe?? I just love the intricately weaved tales she creates, and the Shadowhunter world, while it can be dark and disturbing at times, is one of my absolute favorite worlds to dive into. The characters that she creates leave such a lasting impression on the reader in a way that you can only describe as pure magic. I almost believe that she herself is a Shadowhunter in disguise, sent to tell us the tales of their world without actually telling us, cause you know, that's forbidden and all.

"There is a difference between having your heart break and having your soul shatter."

Emma Carstairs first showed up in the Shadowhunter universe in City of Heavenly Fire, when her parents were killed during what was assumed to be an attack from Sebastian Morganstern during the Dark War. During this scene we discover many things about Emma Carstairs, those things being that she has some serious spunk, a fire in her heart. and that she would do anything in the world for her best friend Julian Blackthorn. Leaving him and his siblings behind after the death of her parents is just simply out of the question for her and refuses to even consider it an option. This fierce love for Julian and her refusal to leave him behind lead the pair to become parabatai.

"Laws are meaningless, child. There is nothing more important than love. And no law higher."

Flash forward a few years and the two are now teenagers. There have been only two things driving Emma forward since that fateful time: her love for Julian and his family that she now considers her own, and revenge for her parents deaths that she never truly believed was the act of Sebastian. Emma and Julian are continuously struggling to define their feelings for each other, both of them knowing that they can never be anything more than platonic. Anything more than that is forbidden and would result in the two of them being exiled.

"But there were worse things than being left."

Emma tries to focus on recent killings that have been happening around L.A. that are occurring in a similar manner to the deaths of her parents, dragging the newest Shadowhunter in the Institute Cristina, with her. It isn't long after this that the Faeries bring Julian's brother Mark back to them, offering to let him choose whether he wants to stay with the Wild Hunt or with his family if only they discover who the murderer is.

"Everyone is more than one thing. We are more than single actions we undertake, whether they be good or evil."

The delicate relationships between the main characters in this story, and the minute details of each scene that hurl us into a heart-racing conclusion shows just how amazing Cassandra Clare is at weaving an emotional tale. She expertly pens such raw emotions mixed with subtle sarcasm into each of her scenes and dives into the parts of life that are gritty, showing that life can be full of blissful times and also dark, painstaking depressions that can catapult us into doing great and also terrible things, all in the name of love.