The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, book 1)

By Cassandra Clare

Blurb: 
All Magnus Bane wanted was a vacation—a lavish trip across Europe with Alec Lightwood, the Shadowhunter who against all odds is finally his boyfriend. But as soon as the pair settles in Paris, an old friend arrives with news about a demon-worshipping cult called the Crimson Hand that is bent on causing chaos around the world. A cult that was apparently founded by Magnus himself. Years ago. As a joke.

Now Magnus and Alec must race across Europe to track down the Crimson Hand and its elusive new leader before the cult can cause any more damage. As if it wasn’t bad enough that their romantic getaway has been sidetracked, demons are now dogging their every step, and it is becoming harder to tell friend from foe. As their quest for answers becomes increasingly dire, Magnus and Alec will have to trust each other more than ever—even if it means revealing the secrets they’ve both been keeping.

Review: 
I preordered this book and was so excited to receive it. I was slightly wary because I wasn't a fan of The Bane Chronicles but I was going in with an open mind.

This story is based on Alec and Magnus' relationship and their first trip away after Alec declared his love for Magnus in front of his parents and the consul. It is quite a nice story because you see how their love develops, and it is really nice to see how other relationships develop that we have come across in the Dark Artifices trilogy. 

This book starts of when they are in Paris on their adventure, Magnus tries to be romantic with a hot air balloon, and it goes wrong. While they are on this hot air balloon they realise 2 shadowhunters are being attacked by demons, so Alec helps them out with his bow and arrow. We discover these characters later on in the book so I won't say who they are but we have met one of them in a past series.

While they are on this romantic trip away together, there is a rumor going round that Magnus had started a demon worshiping cult, and all the rules for this cult are in The Red Scrolls. So they go on an adventure to find them so they can discover the true leader of the cult and stop them worshiping demons.

Throughout this book we get to understand the true feelings Alec has for Magnus and know that he is quite nervous as this is his first boyfriend so he is quite enclosed with his feelings. Towards the end of the book though he starts to open up as he is becoming more relaxed.

I found that this book was lacking in a story line that was enticing, I found that it was quite a simple story-line for Cassandra Clare and nothing complex was actually included. There was a few story plot twists which did help with the reading experience and make you want to read a bit more, but I did find that it was an extremely slow read for one of Cassandra's books sadly. I still rate it higher than The Bane Chronicles as it is an improvement on that but only just.

The romance within this book is obviously LGBT so if you are not into this stuff don't really bother trying to read it, there isn't anything to saucy but there are a few hot scenes.

Meeting characters in this book that we have met in older series was quite a nice input so you know where about the book is actually based among them all. I was so happy to have old characters back that I had missed quite a bit, so I may reread her other series at some point when I'm out of this stupid reading slump.

The way this book was wrote is just like her old writing style so I did like it a lot compared to The Dark Artifices, the only thing it was lacking which I mentioned before was a complex story-line. Which is the main reason why this book only got 4 stars as I thought the length that it was, it would have been more complex, but oh well that's my opinion. I look forward to the second book in this series to see if it is any improvement, either way I'll finish this trilogy, I will always read any new books from Cassandra Clare no matter how much I dislike them.

So I'd totally recommend this book if you are into your LGBT, adventure, sight seeing and small plot twists.

Favourite Character: Helen

Read: 10/04/19 - 22/04/19

4 stars out of 5

Written by Sammie