The Dark Artifices

Have you ever noticed that the first book in a popular series will have a gazillion reviews, but by the time the last book rolls around the number of reviews will be significantly less.  Now granted Queen of Air and Darkness has only been out about a month and a half, so the number may climb, but still I always find that interesting.  Is it because people loose interest or just haven’t had the time to read it yet?  It is probably the time thing, because, yeah, the last one is a doozy when it comes to length, not that any of them are what I would call short.

With all of those gazillion reviews for this series, I’m not sure my review will be all that different.  I am also sure that there are better reviews for the books than what you will read here.  But still I had some things to say so I’m going to say them.

I really liked this series, in fact I think it is my favorite so far of the Shadowhunter books.   I think partly because most of the book takes place in LA, but it also dealt with some darker issues than the others.   We saw in this series a darker side of the Shadowhunter world, and it certainly isn’t pretty.  Throughout all of the books set in this world, we see a great many Shadowhunters who dislike downworlders, but are willing to see the benefits of having them around.  In this series with the Cohort, we see how prejudice and racism can get out of control to the detriment of all.  

There was a lot to love about this series, but I did have a couple of issues with it too.  First the likes:

• Julian and Emma’s forbidden love and the parabatai curse.  
• Ty and Kit’s friendship in the second book.
• The necromancy and some of the darker magic 
• The Shadow Market
• Thule (those of you who have read the third book know what I am talking about)
• Meeting different Shadowhunters from all over the world.  It gave a more global perspective to the series
• Kieran and Mark
• The Riders of Mannan
• And of course Magnus and Alec

I could probably list more, but will stop there.  There are really only three things I had issue with and most them were in the third book. 

• First, there was just a little too much romance in this one.  It felt like there was someone either kissing someone or thinking about it, or more on every other page.  The book would have been shorter if some of that had been cut out.  It didn’t move the plot along for the most part either.  
• Next was the way Ty and Kit’s relationship went in the third book.  It just about broke my heart, but I am hopeful to see a better resolution in a future book. 
• Finally, even though I liked Diana, I felt like her back story was just thrown in for diversities sake.  I know it was the reason she couldn’t be the head of the institute, but couldn’t she just not want to be head? 

Now I also had an issue with the epilogue.  I know Cassandra Claire will continue to write books in this world, but WTF!  Not sure where she will be going next with that story line.  I’m sure it will be great though.

And some final thoughts, I listened to the first two as audiobooks and the narrators did a great job.  I just got the third book on audio, because I do want to read it again.  I was pretty shocked that the audiobook was almost 31 hours long.  If you have really long road trip this would be a great series to listen to.