Queen of Air and Darkness (my review)

Hello, my name is Nikky. I thought it would be fun to create a blog that shares my opinions and reviews on things that I experience and especially read. I have just finished the book “Queen of Air and Darkness” by Cassandra Clare from The Dark Artifices series. Though I doubt anyone will read it, these are my thoughts.

(contains spoilers of the book)

This book had one of the saddest beginnings that I have ever read. I don't think I have ever read the very first page of a book and started crying, but nonetheless, I did. I cannot believe Cassandra Clare killed off Livvy. We will never hear the sweet sound of her voice in our head again, well, other than when Emma and Julian travel to the alternate dimension of Thule and when Ty brings her back as a ghost, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We are talking about Livvy. Honestly, when I started this series, Livvy didn’t stand out to me that much. That makes sense since the book didn’t jump perspectives as often, which I will discuss later, but her character development didn’t really happen until right before she died, which is cruel to the readers but still very effective. The author's logic is clear, make the readers love Livvy so they will cry for her when she dies. I did cry, but in the first book, it wasn’t just Livvy who didn’t get that much character development it was every character except Emma and Julian. In Lady Midnight, I thought of all of Julian's siblings as extra characters. I would have grown far more attached to them far sooner if we had learned more about them right from the start.

Backtracking a little, I think that how often the book switched perspectives needs to be discussed. I'll admit, it had its befits as we understood more about different characters, but the perspective changes were all so abrupt. Every time I started to get into the story and excitedly anticipate what was going to happen next, the perspective would change. Emma and Julian would be in the middle of a battle for their lives, and then we would be suddenly submerged in Kit and Ty's life. Every time that happened I felt like screaming, “WE DON’T CARE!” Does Julian die, do they fall in love, do they break their parabati rune, do they win the fight? I realize that Cassandra Clare probably wanted us to feel like that, but that doesn’t change how annoying it is. I found myself constantly sneaking a look at the oncoming pages to figure out when I could continue reading a perspective. I wish the book could at least stay in the same perspective until the end of the scene.

I’m not sure if this applies to anyone else, but this is the first time I have read a YA novel that had a relationship between three people. I have read about plenty of love triangles, where two people love the same person, but I have never read a book with a threesome in it. I wasn’t a big fan of this three-way relationship, but that was only because of how much I was rooting for Mark and Cristina to end up together. Mark constantly made me laugh when he first left the Wild Hunt because he was so unused to the modern world. I loved how perfectly weird he was. Even when Cristina was with Diego, I still wanted her to end up with Mark. They make such a cute couple! In my opinion, Kieran gets in the way. Cristina is my favourite character, and she deserves someone better than the man who was responsible for the whipping of Emma and Julian. I can’t put to words how annoyed I was when I thought Mark was going to end with Kieran.

One of the things that I loved about this book was Dianna and Gywn. They might not have been that large a part of the book, but I think it has to be made clear that they belong together, and I wouldn’t have wished Dianna to be with anyone else.

Let's talk about Julian. When he was under that spell, I swear I felt like throwing my book across the room. There wasn’t a single thing that he did without emotion that I approved of. He was a jerk that hurt Emma, he took advantage of everyone that was gullible enough to believe his lies, and he nearly got Emma killed when he decided to visit Unseelie land instead of the Seelie and ended up in an alternate dimension. He waited far too long to get Magnus to take back the spell, even if taking it back may have killed Magnus, and he shouldn’t have even had the spell put on him in the first place. I didn’t really like Julian that much without the spell. It always seemed like he was hiding his true personality, but I couldn’t stand him when he was under it.

There we’re many things in this book, that I didn’t enjoy, but most of it was very pleasing. Especially the ending. I got everything I wanted out of the book and more. Alec became the consul, married Magnus, and began to make movements towards ending the cold peace. Ty finally started to accept the fact that his twin, Livvy, was gone and there was nothing he could do to bring her back, and he decided to go to Scholomance. Emma and Julian ended up together and they were happier than they had ever been before, and Dru finally found someone that she could trust and call a friend, Ty. The only sad part of this happy ending was that Kit wasn’t in it. I can honestly say that I thought Kit and Ty were going to start seeing each other, and I cannot believe that they will probably never see each other again. It may be exiting for Tessa and Jem to have another child to take care of, but I would have been so much more satisfied if Kit was able to continue talking to Ty.

The only thing that is left to discuss is the Epilogue. What is happing there? Jace‘s dark mirror from Thule somehow magically appeared with Ash and now he wants to kidnap Clary? You have got to be kidding me. Does this mean what I think it means, are we going to get more books about Jace and Clary? Cassandra Clare better do something with that plot.