Lord of Shadows

Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)
Author Cassandra Clare
Audio read by James Marsters[1]
Country United States
Language English
Series The Dark Artifices
Genre Fantasy
Publisher Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication date
May 23, 2017
Media type Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook
Pages 699
ISBN 9781442468405
OCLC 951070885
Preceded by Lady Midnight
Followed by Queen of Air and Darkness

Lord of Shadows is a young adult urban fantasy novel by Cassandra Clare. It is the second book in The Dark Artifices, which is chronologically the fourth series in The Shadowhunter Chronicles. The book is set in the Los Angeles area in 2012.

Plot

The book takes place after the events of Lady Midnight, where 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 Blackthorn 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, Carstairs, and the Blackthorn brothers must find a way to come together to defend everything they hold dear before it's too late.

Characters

  • Emma Carstairs - a 17 year old Shadowhunter that has lived most of her life in the Los Angeles Institute with the Blackthorn family. She has brown eyes, long, pale blond hair, and pale skin, with many scars, including a deep scar up her right arm. Emma is a passionate and hardworking Shadowhunter and sometimes considered the best of her generation.
  • Julian "Jules" Blackthorn - another 17 year old Shadowhunter who has lived his entire life at the Los Angeles Institute. He lives there alongside his siblings and Emma Carstairs, his best friend and parabatai. Julian has dark brown messy hair and startling blue-green eyes. He is described as tall and slender, lanky, with high cheekbones. As an artist, he is usually seen untidy or splattered with paint. His main concern is for his younger siblings, as they are all orphans and he feels responsible for them.
  • Mark Blackthorn - a Shadowhunter residing at the Los Angeles Institute and is one of the many Blackthorn children. He was a former Hunter who rode with the Wild Hunt. He and his older sister, Helen, have the same faerie mother and are part-faerie. He is 21 years old (as of 2012) and is described as being tall, thin, with broad shoulders and the signature blue-green eyes of the Blackthorns. However, since Mark became part of the Wild Hunt; his right eye has since turned gold. Like Helen, he also has pointed ears and curly white-gold hair.
  • Tiberius "Ty" Blackthorn - a Shadowhunter from the Los Angeles Institute. He is 15 years old as of 2012. Tiberius, unlike most of his siblings, has dark black hair and gray eyes, as opposed to the family's trademark brown hair and blue-green eyes. Julian puts down Ty's ability to be different to sheer stubbornness.
  • Livia "Livvy" Blackthorn - the twin sister of Tiberius Blackthorn, as well as the sister of Jules, Dru, and Tavvy, and the half-sister of Helen and Mark. She lives at the Los Angeles Institute with her siblings, under the guardianship of their uncle, Arthur. She is 15 years old as of 2012. Livia, like her other siblings, has the Blackthorn brown hair and blue-green eyes. Livvy was born with gray eyes like her twin, Tiberius, though hers had changed to blue-green since.
  • Drusilla "Dru" Blackthorn - a 13-year-old Shadowhunter from the Blackthorn family who lives at the Los Angeles Institute. She has the Blackthorns' signature dark brown hair and blue-green eyes. She is quite tall for her age. Her body has since already gone through puberty early, showing off her curves to the point where Dru, at thirteen, has been mistaken for seventeen or eighteen years old by mundane boys. This has made her very self-conscious about her body because unlike most Shadowhunters who are wiry or muscular, she is round-bodied and doesn't fit into the gear designed for girls in her age group. Drusilla is quite shy.
  • Octavian "Tavvy" Blackthorn - a Shadowhunter of the Blackthorn family and is the youngest in their family. He resides in the Los Angeles Institute. He is 7 years old as of 2012. Tavvy shares the Blackthorn family's dark brown hair and blue-green eyes. According to Jules, he is quite small and thin for his age.
  • Cristina Mendoza-Rosales - a Shadowhunter from Mexico who came to the Los Angeles Institute and became fast friends with the Institute ward Emma Carstairs. She is 18 years old as of 2012. She has dark brown eyes and long, black hair. Cristina is a generally wise, composed, and gentle person. She is principled and thoughtful, strong and unwavering in her loyalty and morals.
  • Diego Rocío Rosales - one of the youngest Centurions to ever graduate from the Scholomance. He is 19 years old as of 2012. Diego has thick, dark hair. He is often referred to by the other characters as "Perfect Diego".
  • Diana Wrayburn - a Shadowhunter who used to run a weapons shop called Diana's Arrow in Alicante. After the Dark War, Diana volunteered to be stationed at Los Angeles to become the tutor of the Blackthorn children. Diana has black hair and dark skin. On her cheek is a tattoo of a silver koi fish.
  • Arthur Blackthorn - the current head of the Los Angeles Institute and the uncle of the Blackthorn children Mark, Helen, Julian, Livia, Tiberius, Drusilla, and Octavian. Arthur resembles his brother, Andrew Blackthorn, albeit smaller and paler. He has a slight figure, a round face, brown hair, and the trademark Blackthorn blue-green eyes. He also wears spectacles.
  • Malcolm Fade - a very powerful warlock and the High Warlock of Los Angeles. Malcolm is a tall man with an angular face, white hair, and purple eyes. He is strangely attractive. He has the appearance of a twenty-seven-year-old man.
  • Kieran - a faerie and a member of the Wild Hunt. He is one of the Unseelie King's many children and is thus considered a prince of the Unseelie Court. Kieran is said to be beautiful—inhumanly so—and fierce. He has high cheekbones and wide spaced eyes, the left black and the right a deep silver. He is pale and his body is lithe and graceful. As a prince of Faerie, Kieran wears battered white gauntlets. His thick hair changes color—specifically colors of the sea, due in part to his nixie heritage—depending on his mood, though he could also change them at will.
  • Johnny Rook - a mysterious figure who ran a booth at the Los Angeles Shadow Market. He is described as having blond graing hair and blue eyes. Johnny rarely showed affection, but when he did, it was only for his son, Kit.
  • Christopher "Kit" Rook - a Shadowhunter who was raised as a mundane, previously unaware of his heritage. He was born Christopher Jonathan Herondale and is the son of the man who called himself Johnny Rook. He and Johnny are descendants of the notorious Tobias Herondale and his lost line. He is described as having blond hair and blue eyes.
  • Magnus Bane - The High Warlock of Brooklyn. Being over four centuries old, his life has since intertwined with several Shadowhunters and Downworlders over the centuries, but being a warlock still appears to be nineteen years old. Magnus has brown skin, is very tall, with a long and lean body. His main warlock mark is his yellow-green "cat-like eyes" with vertical pupils.. He is also noted to have a somewhat Asian appearance, due to the curve of his eyes. He has dark black hair. He wears all kinds of make-up, such as glitter around his eyes, lipstick, and nail polish. He likes to flaunt his beauty by often dressing in flamboyant and glitzy ensembles. He arrived at the Los Angeles Institute to investigate a flare of necromantic magic.
  • Theresa "Tessa" Gray - an American warlock; half-Shadowhunter, half-Eidolon demon. She moved to London in 1878 and her life has since been entangled in the lives of the Nephilim. Tessa has wavy brown hair, steely gray-blue eyes, an oval face, and a slender body. She is around 5'9. While she used to think herself average, several of her friends have called her not conventionally beautiful, but kindly attractive. Being immortal, Tessa appears to be a young woman in her early twenties.
  • James "Jem" Carstairs - an inactive Shadowhunter and a former Silent Brother. Once an orphan living in the London Institute in the 1870s, along with his parabatai, Will Herondale, he is now a mortal who is over a hundred years old, cured of his illness. Jem's hair is dark brown, almost black, with only a single silver streak remaining, and his eyes are dark brown with gold flecks. Due to his stagnancy as a Silent Brother, Jem maintained his youthful appearance, looking like someone in his early twenties, though his wisdom and experiences in his long life as a Silent Brother reflects in his eyes.
  • Gwyn ap Nudd - AKA Gwyn the Hunter, is a faerie and the leader of the Wild Hunt. He has heterochromia iridum; one of his eyes is black, and the other is a very pale blue. He is also described as a big, broad man with a beard, wide eyes, broad cheekbones, and wicked eyebrows. He shows great interest in Diana Wrayburn and even took her on a picnic in Brocelind Forest.
  • Ash - is a 13 year old faerie that Drusilla Blackthorn meets in 2012 when she accidentally touched the Rosales family heirloom and was sucked into Faerie. Drusilla finds Ash in a room with walls decorated all over with symbols like a hawk, a throne and a broken crown (the symbol of the Unseelie Court). Ash seems to be very demanding, being aware of his high rank and using it to command people around. On the other side, he seems to be very easy to surprise and is very much curious about the things happening around him. He has short, white-blond hair, green eyes and appears to be around the age of 13. His face is typically sharp for a faerie and he wears rich clothes made of silk and velvet, combined with heavy boots. There is also a little, pale metal band around his head, seeming like a crown.
  • Nene - is a faerie healer of the Seelie Court, and is the sister of Lady Nerissa. She is also a handmaiden for the Seelie Queen. She is described to as a gentle and kind faerie with pale blond hair bound back with ropes of flowers. In 2012, Nene helped Mark, Julian Blackthorn, Emma Carstairs, and Cristina Rosales rescue Kieran from his father, the Unseelie King. She shot burning arrows into the sky to cover their escape, and opened a door to the Seelie Court for them.

Reception

RT Book Reviews gave the book four and a half stars, marking it as a top pick and stating "The Infernal Devices devotees will find this a bittersweet return as current characters find reminders of their Victorian predecessors while they wrestle with present adversity."[2] A reviewer for the Deseret News also reviewed Lord of Shadows, writing "Aside from the traumatic ending, readers can expect to enjoy a quick read despite the book's length — this is the sort of book readers can expect to read well into the night."[3] The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,[4] Booklist,[5] and Common Sense Media[6] also reviewed the book.

It was a Publishers Weekly 2017 bestseller.[7]

References

  1. Ganz, Jami. "Buffy actor James Marsters reads Cassandra Clare's new novel: Listen now". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 15 September 2018.
  2. Sutherland, Kerry. "LORD OF SHADOWS". RT Book Reviews. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
  3. Bulsiewicz, Michelle Garrett (2017-06-07). "Book review: Cassandra Clare's latest is a page-turner with a traumatic twist ending". Deseret News. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
  4. IRVIN-MITCHELL, ATIYA (August 6, 2017). "The latest installment of the 'Shadowhunter Chronicles' arrives". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
  5. "Lord of Shadows". kcls.bibliocommons. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  6. Carrie R. Wheadon. "Lord of Shadows: The Dark Artifices, Book 2". www.commonsensemedia.org. Common Sense Media Inc. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  7. "2017 Children's Bestsellers: Thriving Backlists, Popular Tie-Ins, and More". Publishers Weekly. PWxyz LLC. February 27, 2018. Retrieved September 18, 2017.
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