Lord of Shadows
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy via WHSmith

Sunny Los Angeles can be a dark place indeed in Cassandra Clare’s Lord of Shadows, the sequel to the #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling Lady Midnight. Lord of Shadows is a Shadowhunters novel.

Emma Carstairs has finally avenged her parents. She thought she’d be at peace. But she is anything but calm. Torn between her desire for her parabatai Julian and her desire to protect him from the brutal consequences of parabatai relationships, she has begun dating his brother, Mark. But Mark has spent the past five years trapped in Faerie; can he ever truly be a Shadowhunter again?

And the faerie courts are not silent. The Unseelie King is tired of the Cold Peace, and will no longer concede to the Shadowhunters’ demands. Caught between the demands of faerie and the laws of the Clave, Emma, Julian, and Mark must find a way to come together to defend everything they hold dear—before it’s too late.


I'm not even really sure where to begin with this book. I feel like Lord of Shadows is such a complex book and I'm not sure any review could even touch on how much this book somehow manages to cram in. Cassie's style of writing has somehow managed to get so much better and I'd say technically, this is the best book she's ever written (and I've read every book she's ever had published so far).

So the book started with a poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was quite simply enough to win me over already. Lord of Shadows is the sequel to Lady Midnight and picked up quite literally where it left off.

An unexplainable amount of demons have just started swarming the Institute and the only person that could be behind it, is someone they've already killed...

There is so much that happens in this book with Malcolm, Annabel and the race for the the Black Volume of the Dead. The Shadowhunter world must do what they can to stop the book getting into the hands of the Lord of Shadows. Although this is the main plot line, there is so much going on in side plots, that you seem to forget that a lot of the time!

Their time is spent in three main Institutes, Los Angeles, London and Cornwall. I always find the different Institutes so fascinating and of course, if you've read The Infernal Devices, you will already be familiar with the London Institute and there is definitely a few links to TID, which I loved.

Ahh, the character development in this book is quite literally incredible. There are so many characters in this book, yet somehow you are familiar them all. Of course, she always includes characters from previous Shadowhunters books and the volume of Magnus and Alec in this book made my heart happy. Alec is in charge of the London Institute temporarily in the book and it just made my The Mortal Instruments heart swoon. We also get to see more of Jace and Clary, again, which I loved.

Then there's the focal characters, Emma and Julian. And Mark and Kieran. And Cristina and Diego. And Ty and Kit. And Dru, Livvy and Tavvy. Kit is honestly so much better in this book. I found him quite an annoyance in Lady Midnight but in LoS, he's sarcastic, funny and extremely sweet to Ty. The bonds of Parabatai are explored in more depth, something else I love about this book. Glimpses of a possible new Parabatai pairing and glimpses of a broken one...

I am genuinely confused with the love triangle that consists of Mark, Kieran and Cristina. I'm not quite sure who's coming and who's going but I do know I love all 3 characters, in particular Mark. I have such a soft spot for the half Faerie/half Shadowhunter. He just seems like such a lost soul and hasn't really known what to do with himself since he came back from the Wild Hunt.

The Shadow World is definitely changing (much like ours at the moment) and the conflict between the Shadowhunters and the Downworlders seems more rife than ever. Some Shadowhunters have some very awful opinions and want to turn these opinions into actions, which could mean another war on the horizon...

Death. Oh Cassie, the death. The last 100 pages or so had me heaving from my tears. There were a few extremely unexpected deaths and I was not prepared for what I was reading. I love that she's not scared to kill off characters that she's invested a lot of time in and we've grown to love, I think it's such a bold move as an author and she always does it beautifully.

I am so excited for the next book in the series because if this series continues the way it's going, it might just become my favourite. It's a very large book at 700 pages and the book itself is very big. I usually struggle with long books as I get bored pretty easily but you don't have time to be bored reading this. Simply stunning.