Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare

In this book, Malcom Fade, who was supposedly killed by Emma in Lady Midnight, returns with an army of sea demons, which have been terrorizing LA. Since the LA institute failed to kill Malcom, the Centurions from the Scholomance are brought in to "take care of the cituation". Amoung them is Perfect Diego, and his so called fiancee, Zara Dearborn. Diego was dating Cristina, who dumps him afterwards because she didn't know about his engagement, which is actually an arranged marriage.

The Centurions go out every day to do their work, but Ty and Livvy and Kit (Christopher Herondale) suspect otherwise.

The plot thickens when Gwyn the Hunter shows up at the institute and asks Mark to go into Faerie and save Kieran (Mark's ex) from execution for killing Ithuriel (sp). Mark does, along with Emma, Julian, and Cristina. The world of Faerie has a dance and Mark and Cristina dance, and a faerie ties their hands together with a ribbon, but it's actually a spell so that they experience pain in their wrists when separated.

Btw it's illegal to communicate with faeries (including going there!) because of the Cold Peace, because the faeries allied with Sebastian Morgenstern in the Dark War.

The Unseelie King, aka Kieran's father, plans to use the Black Volume to create more patches of land where no Angel magic works: seraph blades, runes, and witchlight.

Mark and Cristina make out, and Julian kisses a faerie disguised as Emma. Emma sees this, and thinks that he's gotten over her because he's kissing another girl (Emma sees just a faerie).

Mark learns that Emma actually loves Julian (she told him it was for Cameron) and they agree to end their fake relationship.

They save Kieran, who doesn't remember how he got Julian and Emma whipped in the last novel as the King took away some memories. He told someone that Mark had broken a law to try and bring Mark back to the wild hunt because he thought in the regular world Mark would be killed.

Still in faerie, Emma and Julian sleep in the same bed together and he's having a hard time holding his feelings in. The Seelie Queen (they were led to her by Mark and Helen's aunt, Nene (?)) shows Julian Arthur sacrificing himself to Malcolm so no more of the Blackthorn children will be hunted. Julian has trouble telling people this because how he found out was by going to faerie, which is illegal. If he breaks the law he'll be exiled away from his family, which would kill him.

So Arthur is slain to raise Annabel Blackthorn, Malcolm's shadowhunter lover from 200 years ago who was killed by the Clave, and she kills Malcolm for leaving her to be killed all those years ago and not just leaving her in death. She has the Black Volume, which Julian needs to give to the Seelie Queen to get her armies on their side to defeat the Unseelie King, end the parabati curse (they'll go mad and kill people), bring back Aline and Helen from Wrangel Island, and end the Cold Peace.

Kit kisses Livvy, who wanted to try it.

Julian and Emma go looking for Annabel and find a cottage that Malcolm built for him and Annabel to hide from the Clave. But, the only way for him to hide was to give the Unseelie King the Black Volume. Annabel didn't know of that.

In the cottage, they go through all Malcolm and Annabel's old stuff, and pixies tell them to go to a church to find her. She isn't actually there, and it's a test, and a demon spawns and Emma kills it. Julian draws a fire rune on the stone church with energy from Emma and burns it down. The power that their combined energy has scares Emma.

Then Kieran learns that the Riders of Mannan (sp) have left the Unseelie King's court to hunt the Blackthorns and find the Black Volume. Emma and Julian argue, because he thinks he's the only one who has to hide his feelings. Emma slams the cottage door and walks down to the beach, where the Riders find her. She battles them and kills one of them with her sword, Cortana, which has never happened before. No one has killed these riders who are as old as time.

Back in the cottage, Emma reveals that she has also had to hide her feelings from Julian, and he kisses her. That escalates to making out heavily.

Magnus Bane comes to the cottage to try and bring them back before the riders find them, as Ty, Kit and Livvy got found by the riders in the shadow market trying to get a warlock to tell them what was hidden in a stone of Annabel's old memories. Magnus saves them.

Diana is also a transgender who was originally named David, and can't be sworn in as the new head of the institute because the ceremony will ask her her name given at birth under mortal sword. Zara wants to lead the institute with her father, Horace, so they can have authority to pass their new law, almost like WWII. Registering Downworlders, making shadowhunters superior over Downworlders.

The Riders show up at the institute in London (where everyone is because the LA one was where Malcolm knew they were. Yes, Jessamine is here, and a carving of JB+LH, which means Jesse Blackthorn + Lucy Herondale. They'll be in another series that isn't out yet). Emma runs out and locks the door so she can fight them alone. They can't get in the institute. The rune wears off and everyone fights. Don't exactly remember how that ends, but it does.

Zara claims to have killed Malcolm so everyone praises her, but actually Annabel did, and the Blackthorns need her to testify in the Council meeting.

At the council meeting, Magnus gets sick because he's used his magic too much, and Annabel has no one to comfort her (Julian isn't allowed to stand up with her). She's mentally insane from the torture the Clave did to her all those years ago. She says she killed Malcolm, but Zara and the Cohort, her followers, don't believe her so she has to say it while holding the mortal sword. She does, but its weight makes her mad.

Before the meeting, Emma and Julian told Robert that they're in love and that Emma needs to be exiled because it will weaken their power because they "don't want to break the law". But really they don't want the curse to set in because they don't want to lose who they are and become dangerous. Robert doesn't know about the curse, only that the law against parabati falling in love must exist for a reason.

Annabel kills Robert with the sword, and Emma hits the mortal sword with Cortana, which causes the mortal sword to shatter in half. Something's up with Cortana! Annabel, with one half of a sword, stabs Livvy in the heart as she was coming to help Julian. Julian's feeling is indescribable (sad). And it ends.

So now there's a problem because Emma needs to get exiled on her own terms (Julian can't leave the kids) but the only person who knew has died. And Julian doesn't yet have the Black Volume, because Annabel only agreed to give it to him if everything worked out and they didn't hate her. And there's the Unseelie King vowing to hunt and kill Kieran for being willing to give a testimony for the Seelie Queen in front of the Clave.

King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard

King's Cage is the third book in the Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard. If begins where Glass Sword left off, which was with Mare being captured and held prisoner by King Maven. The first half of the book is her locked up in the castle prison. She's used as a symbol to lure in other newbloods (reds with powers) to the castle because Maven wants the public to think that the Scarlet Guard (Mare's rebellion group) is hunting and killing newbloods. Mare is forced to say Maven's lines to the public and Cal, the boy she loves, can't bare to watch the tv broadcast, even though they all know it's a lie.

The book alternates perspectives from Mare and Cameron, a 15 year-old girl who Mare rescued from Corros prison in Glass Sword. Her ability is silence, meaning she can kill someone by just thinking it and take away their ability to use their powers. She wants her twin brother, Morrey, back from the Choke, where he was conscripted. She does, when the Scarlet Guard invades the Choke to take it back from Maven.

Farley is pregnant with Shade Barrow's child, and gives birth to Clara.

While Mare is in prison she passes her 18th birthday.

Maven was engaged to Evangeline, but he got rid of that to marry the princess of the Lakelands, Iris, so that an alliance between the two nations can be formed. At their wedding, Evangeline (who is gay with Eline I think her name is who married her brother Ptolmous) sets Mare free and the Scarlet Guard invades the wedding with their newbloods and take her back. Samson Merandus, a whisper who can control people's minds, makes Mare and Cal fight each other. They don't die though.

Evangeline and her family created a new kingdom, the Rift, which I don't really understand. But they side with the Scarlet Guard.

Cal and Mare train and run laps. On one of their morning runs they have sex under a tree when they're caught in the rain. Then they show up at the hospital to clean off but find out that Farley's giving birth. Mare goes into her room all coated in mud and Farley sees Cal walk across the hall and puts the pieces together. Farley asks the nurse to get Mare a pill which must prevent a baby, so she knows what the two did.

The big battle at the end is when Maven's troops (not Maven himself) invade the military base that the Scarlet Guard stole from them. Maven loses, and the book ends with the good guys trying to come up with a plan. There's a guy named Dave (I think) who leads the Mon__ (idk) who are another neighbouring land that side with the rebellion against Maven. There, reds, silvers and newbloods are equal, which is what he wants for Norta (this land).

Evangeline's father, Volo, wants her to marry Cal once he is properly the King of Norta. Cal doesn't really say his opinion on this, but that's just like agreeing to it. His grandma, Annabel, wants him on the throne. Mare is outraged that all Cal and the rest of them want is to put Cal on the throne and kill Maven without making the world equal. So she breaks up with him at the end by walking away and saying something like "I don't know you."

Good for her, really. As much as I like Cal, Mare is a heroine who knows what she wants and won't let a boy stop her.

Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Emma Carstairs is a seventeen year-old Shadowhunter at the Los Angeles Institute with her parabati, Julian Blackthorn, friend Cristina Rosales, and the younger Blackthorns: twins Livia (Livvy) and Tiberius (Ty) who are both fifteen, Drusilla (Dru) who is thirteen, and the youngest of seven years old, Octavian (Tavvy). Five years ago, Emma's parents were killed by an unknown murderer and left by the sea. Their bodies turned into dust. Emma vowed revenge on her parent's killer and spent the next 5 years finding clues and keeping them in her closet and information from Jonny Rook at the Shadow Market. The Clave blames her parents' deaths on Sebastian Morgenstern during the Dark War, but Emma, Jace Herondale, and Clary Farchild (who run the New York Institute) are also not conviced. Now more bodies start turning up like her parents', and Emma is determined to solve the mystery.

One day the Wild Hunt arrive at the Institute. During the Dark War, Mark Blackthorn (who was 16 at the time, and Julian and Emma were 12) was taken by the Wild Hunt because he is half Faerie. The oldest, Helen Blackthorn, was exiled to Wrangel Island by the Clave because of her Faerie parent also after the Dark War (Lady Nerissa, same as Mark's). Mark is returned to the Institute by the Wild Hunt in exchange for the Shadowhunter's help in solving the murders, since some of the victims are of the fair folk. The Shadowhunters cannot call the Clave for help because they're breaking the Cold Peace- a new law installed after the Dark War forbidding Shadowhunters from working with the fair folk after they allied with Sebastian in the war.

While Mark was in the Hunt, he met a Faerie prince, Kieran, who he fell in love with. Mark admits he's bisexual, as he is also attracted to Cristina (who is having a thing with her "friend" from Mexico, Diego [or Perfect Diego, as Emma called him]).

The group works out the investigation where a secret club is involved, called the Followers, where they hold a lottery. If your name is picked you have to kill someone.

Everything adds up at the end of the novel when the group discovers that the leader of the evil group, also known as The Guardian, is Malcom Fade, the High Warlock of Los Angeles and their friend who sometimes came over to take care of the children and eat pizza (Anslem Nightshade, a vampire, was framed about selling demonic pizza by Julian so that people avoid what Julian and Emma did). There is a poem about a girl named Annabel Lee written on the bodies of the murdered, and they realize that it is a spell to awaked her from the dead. She was Malcom's lover and she was killed by the Clave. He wants to bring her back using dark magic.

The group goes to the cavern where this takes place when Tavvy is kidnapped by Malcom on the beach. Part of the poem is Blackthorn Blood, so Malcom plans to kill Tavvy to complete the spell. The hands of the murderers of the lottery were put on a candelabra as Hands of Glory (another ingredient). Malcom is killed by Emma Carstairs when she uses an Endurance rune on her arm to deflect the killling blow of his magic (Julian put it there) and stabs Malcom with her sword, Cortana.

All while this is happening, Julian and Emma have very much fallen in love with eachother. The problem-they're parabati, which makes it forbidden. They have sex on the beach after he rescues her from the sea (the cave lead into the ocean). At the end of the novel, Jem Carstairs tells Emma of why parabati cannot fall in love-the runes turn into magic and power (which is what happened in the cavern) since the bond is a romantic bond (closer). Emma takes Julian aside and tells him she does not want to secretly date him because she is afraid of this magic (she didn't tell Julian about the power runes, but that she doesn't want to love him anymore in secret. It's a lie but IT BREAKS MY HEART and well, hers). To complete her lie, she asks Mark to become her fake-boyfriend since she took the whipping that was meant for him. He says "why lie?" and I think takes her hand.

Tessa and Jem find Kit Rook, son of Jonny Rook (now dead by demons), because he is actually Christopher Herondale, son of Tobias Herondale. Tobias was exiled but no one could find him so they gave his punishment to his pregnant wife. Someone helped the baby (forget) and hid him. Now Kit is at the LA Institute, probably going to make friends with Ty (even though Ty held Kit at knifepoint when the investigation team went to Kit's house to see Jonny Rook for information).

In the epilogue, Annabel opens her eyes.

I can't believe Emma did that. She's going to kill Julian's heart forever :'(

City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

This isn't written by me, but someone else on the internet. It is a summary of the book that I read to refresh my memory of the events before reading Lady Midnight. Here it is.

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard (sequel to Red Queen)

This series deserves a post simply because I do not want to forget it. I spent a good 4 hours in my room finishing Glass Sword because I could not put it down. I wanted to write about this book because this is a new book, meaning that the sequel will take years to come. In those future moments I can then revisit this post and refresh my memory about my reflection upon Glass Sword and the events that took place.

The main character, Mare, is a "newblood" with Red blood but Silver abilities. In her case, she has the ability to control and create lighting and electricity. Red Queen ended with Mare and her love interest, Cal (brother to Maven, King in Glass Sword), fighting for their lives in the Battle of the Bones arena Maven put them in to be executed. I don't remember how they escaped, but they defeated all their executioners and joined forces with the Scarlet Guard, a rebel army trying to overthrow King Maven.

Maven is the younger brother of Cal. His mother, Queen Elara, has the Silver ability to read and control people's minds. She forced Cal to kill his father, then labeled him as a traitor and Maven took his place about the kingdom.

Glass Sword begins with Mare and her brother, Shade (who she thought was dead after he was conscripted into the war) who is also a newblood like herself. He has the ability to teleport.

Throughout the story, Mare's goal is to use the book Julian Jacos gave her (her tutor, and the book holds all the newbloods like her) to find the newbloods before Maven does, as he wants to kill them all so that the population doesn't know they exist. There is Nix (strongarm with unbreakable skin [dies]), Gareth (manipulate gravity and fly [dies]), Kesha (blow things up with her mind [dies]), Cameron (silence people's abilities and is immune to silent stone, the stone that blocks people's powers), Shade (teleoport, [dies]), Cal (control fire), Farely (no ability, but a good command and Shade's love interest before he died, Nanny (can take the appearence of anyone), Darmain (like Nix), Har__ (forget the rest of his name at the moment, but can control light and make people see things that aren't there, invisibility) Farrah (absorb sound), Luther (a young boy around 7 who can kill plants (never tried people) with his hands), Ada (can memorize everything, literally), Sara Skonos (Julian's love interest, healer), Jon (an eye who can predict the future), and Maven, who can also control fire. Don't forget about Kilorin, Mare's normal friend from the Slits (who is also a skilled hunter and fisherman). Oh, and Mare's brothers, Bree and Tramy, and younger sister, Giza. And mom and dad.

The Scarlet Guard go rescuing and gathering newbloods, but they also go to Corros prision to resue the ones they were too late to save. There's this whole showdown and that's where some die. They release all the prisoners and run for the Blackrun (the jet they flew there). Mare is running towards the jet and Ptolmeus (metal power man) is throwing metal at her. Just as he throws a needle, Shade teleports in front of her with his hand out to bring her with him to the jet.

Mare zaps and kills Queen Elara and brings her body back to broadcast on TV (or whatever it's called)

Farely was holding her stomach so I think Shade got her pregnant before all this. HE WAS THE ONE PERSON I DIDN'T WANT TO DIE! I thought Kilorin was going to die and I was okay with that.

They get back, and then get on another Jet to go to the Choke, where 5 thousand innocent child soldiers are being sent to die. In the sky, they're shot down by Maven. Everyone gets pinned by metal and instead of letting them all get captured and killed, Mare trades herself in to Maven in exchange for everyone else to be freed. The novel ends with Maven and Mare on a podium in front of a crowd with her wearing a collar and him holding the leash, and she kneels at his feet like he tells her to.

I think the ending was rushed, but I saw it coming. Something had to keep us wanting the next book.

BUT SHADE! COME BACK TO ME!

The end.

The Selection Trilogy by Kierra Cass

These books totally brought to the surface my longing for a romantic relationship. America and Maxon are so cute!

These series really reminded me of the tv show "The Bachelor" because it is almost the exact same game (minus the castle).

I think there should've been a fourth book to the series. While the plot was interesting, it was dragged out up until the last three chapters of The One where everything was revealed. I think that it should've ended with the fact that her dad is a rebel and Maxon is getting rid of her. That would've kept readers in suspense once again for the conclusion. Instead, after the rebel attack, Maxon suddenly realizes his heart and takes her back. Fictional characters have low standards apparently as guys in the real world take years to come around!

The last book would've left time to explain how she deals with her father's news and being queen. Does she have kids? It states that they have to produce an heir, but it never happened in the last book. The wedding was very short and we never got to meet her family in their new, close by house.

Therefore, to sum up this giant blob I have just created, while I loved these series, I think there should've been a fourth book so the third book would not have ended so abruptly.