Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices, book 3) 

By Cassandra Clare

Blurb: 
What if damnation is the price of true love?

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 blight 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: 
I've read several of Cassandra Clare's books and she's one of my favourite authors, I just generally love her books as they all have great storylines.

The trilogy The Dark Artifices isn't one of my favourites but I do still like it, I thought the first two books were much better compared to this one. I found Queen of Air and Darkness was lacking in story twists and discovering the meaning of other things that was mentioned earlier on in the book. I found that this book dragged on quite a lot in a few scenes and it just got quite boring, I thought that in certain scenes you didn't need all the detail that was given. But there again others may have liked that, it's just my opinion.

Another thing that I didn't really like about this book is I thought that she had changed her style of writing, it felt like she had changed her reading age to older teens which is what young adult is but I feel like her other series were aimed round 12/13 year olds where as this book I'd say was more 15/16 just purely down to the bad language and the sexual scenes, I admit that at times the language was suited to the scene it was used in but it just didn't feel like the Cassandra Clare I'm used to.

The story however was quite good, it was her usual setting, I also liked how it followed straight on from book 2. I loved the actual discovering of the story and I like how there's no real side stories with the main story, by no real side stories there is other main characters on a mission but Emma and Jules mission join their's so it's just like one big main story with slight side lines but they all correspond. It was nice to have other main characters from The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices mentioned within this book and to have a main part too.

Another thing I quite liked about this book was the mention of grief and how Ty was struggling without Livy and he was trying to do everything to get her back no matter what the consequences were. This is how grief feels to me too, you either regret not doing stuff sooner or you try everything to make things right now that the person has gone. I've never lost a brother or sister but I have lost close family members that mean the world to me. 

I'd still highly recommend this trilogy but it wouldn't be the first I'd tell you to pick up as it's not as fast paced.

Favourite Characters: Cristina

Read: 12/12/18 - 01/01/19

4 stars out of 5

Written by Sammie

Check out Sammie's review of Cassandra Clare's next main series The Last Hours, book 1: Chain of Gold.