Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare

Summary:
Innocent blood has been spilled on the steps of the Council Hall, the sacred stronghold of the Shadowhunters. In the wake of the tragic death of Livia Blackthorn, the Clave teeters on the brink of civil war. One fragment of the Blackthorn family flees to Los Angeles, seeking to discover the source of the disease that is destroying the race of warlocks. Meanwhile, Julian and Emma take desperate measures to put their forbidden love aside and undertake a perilous mission to Faerie to retrieve the Black Volume of the Dead. What they find in the Courts is a secret that may tear the Shadow World asunder and open a dark path into a future they could never have imagined. Caught in a race against time, Emma and Julian must save the world of Shadowhunters before the deadly power of the parabatai curse destroys them and everyone they love.
Review:
Queen of Air and Darkness is the finale of The Dark Artifices. This is why I’m just now reading it five months after it was published. I was not ready to torture myself with the things I knew were going to slay me. I was absolutely correct. I somehow read this 900-page beast in three days. I did pretty much nothing but read. I just couldn’t bring myself to stop. I needed to know what was going to happen. This honestly was the whole mood for the book and I think it really says a lot about a book. The Shadowhunter world is one that never fails to do this. The story and the characters suck me in and I enjoy being in the world so much that I just can’t seem to stop until I’m finished with the story.

“You may not yourself be luminous, but you are an extraordinary conductor of light.”

There is so much that happens in Queen of Air and Darkness that it’s impossible for me to talk about each part. All of the characters each find themselves off on their own sort of missions. They all have a part they need to play to prevent a civil war among the Shadowhunters. Or if your Ty to completely ignore everything around you to do something that is the most unwise. Every time I found myself thinking about how the current plotlines were going to weird places they were soon brought back to the rest of the story and the other characters. This is why the book was so big. There were certain parts that I thought maybe this wasn’t really needed and could have been taken out to make it a bit shorter, but after finishing I knew that every piece of the story was needed and made it exactly what it is.

“None of us are okay,” she said. “Maybe that’s part of it. When you’re hurting, it’s sometimes hard to see how other people may be hurting differently or worse.”

I do have to mention that I’d love to live in Cassandra Clare’s brain. The things and ideas that she’s come up for this story were WILD. I cannot wait to see what she’s going to do next with the next (last?) series. I’ve heard it follows Kit and Ty and the fact that there is no release date or even year makes me die a little on the inside.

“We all stumble around in the dark and we cause each other pain and we try to  make up for it the best we can.”

The characters are as loveable as always. I don’t know what it is but I find myself loving the supporting characters more than those that are supposed to be the main focus. In TMI I didn’t care all that much about Jace and Clary, but now when they appear in this series, I freaking adore them. I didn’t love Emma and Julian. As the books went on, I liked them less and less. I adored Emma in the first book and then as they fall in love I just didn’t like them as much. I’m not saying I don’t like them, but I honestly prefer every everyone else.

“Grief can be so bad you can’t breathe, but that’s what it means to be human. We lose, we suffer, but we have to keep breathing.”

I wanted more of Drusilla and Ty and Kit. I still liked them and I was happy with how their story turned out, but I know I’m going to love them more when/if they appear in The Wicked Powers. We get to see so many characters I love from previous books like Magnus and Alec, Simon and Isabelle, Jem and Tessa. I loved every page that these beloved characters appeared.

“You made me understand that love creates far more joy than any pain it causes.”

Overall, Queen of Air and Darkness might be my favorite Shadowhunters book to date. I loved the full cast of characters, new and old. I love the wild adventures they found themselves on. I love the racially and sexually diverse characters that we get to know and love. I cannot think of anything that I did not like about this book other than the fact that it ended. I’m really sad that this story had ended but I’m excited to see what Cassandra Clare is going to come out with next.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.