Sunny Los Angeles can be a dark place indeed in Cassandra Clare's Lord of Shadows, the sequel to the number-one New York Times and USA Today best-selling Lady Midnight. Lord of Shadows is a Shadowhunters novel.

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 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, Emma, Julian, and Mark must find a way to come together to defend everything they hold dear - before it's too late.

Listening Length

23 hours and 30 minutes
Author

Cassandra Clare
Narrator

James Marsters
Audible release date

May 30 2017
Language

English
Publisher

Audible Studios
ASIN

B071FCF77L
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Name: Lord of Shadows: The Dark Artifices, Book 2 (A Shadowhunter Novel) &#40;Audible Audio Edition&#41;: Cassandra Clare, James Marsters, Audible Studios: Amazon.ca: Audible Books & Originals
Rating: 4.7 (11934 reviews)

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Product details

Listening Length	23 hours and 30 minutes
Author	Cassandra Clare
Narrator	James Marsters
Audible.ca Release Date	May 30 2017
Publisher	Audible Studios
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B071FCF77L
Best Sellers Rank	#43,272 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #5,186 in Fantasy (Audible Books & Originals) #8,355 in Teen & Young Adult (Books) #23,718 in Fantasy (Books)

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

11,934 global ratings

5 star		77%
4 star		17%
3 star		4%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Jessica

10/10

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 30, 2023

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Literally love every book from the shadow hunter world!

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Sieran Lane

More Kieran screen time!!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 9, 2017

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Wow, I liked this even more than Lady Midnight! Partly because Kieran, my favorite character, has much more screen time in Lord of Shadows. The friendship developing between Ty and Kit is very interesting. :D It’s great as well that we get to know Ty as a 3D, complex person now; we didn’t get to see much beyond the surface for Ty’s character before this book, in my opinion. For Kit, my view of him fluctuated a bit, but I ultimately do like him at least a little.

In my review of Lady Midnight, I mentioned my appreciation that we get to see some good guy faeries now, because prior to the Dark Artifices books, the faeries were pretty much portrayed as these devious, even demonic, creatures. Lord of Shadows continues this exploration of faerie characters on the good side, mainly Kieran and Gwyn. For Kieran especially, we get to see him as a person, not merely as “a faerie.” So instead of just some exotic, interesting being, Kieran is presented as someone who is complex, unique, understandable, and relatable. Several of the shadowhunter characters sympathized with Kieran and treated him like a person too, which I liked. Kieran also seems friendlier and more approachable than he was in Lady Midnight, which puzzled me at first; but I’m aware that we didn’t get to see much of him in Lady Midnight.

(Please see my Goodreads review under Sieran Lane for more details (with spoilers).)

All in all, this was a fantastic book! Complex, rich, layered, nuanced, with many intriguing plots, subplots, themes, characters, and interpersonal relationships!

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James

Lord of Shadows

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 23, 2022

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Arrived in perfect condition

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Alex MacCallum

Arrived in perfect condition

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 11, 2020

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Came a day early and in perfect condition!

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tess talty

Book

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 12, 2021

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Love the author

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Ejder

Good seller

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 17, 2020

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Awesome book, arrived in great condition.

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Crystal Chantyman

can't wait for next book....

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 12, 2017

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I love this book.! Sorry to see some main characters die. I am. Intrigued in foreshadowing this book. Can not wait for queen of Shadows the next installment...cmc

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delia baza

are the best I have read in a long time

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 24, 2017

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Without doubt, the 2 books, are the best I have read in a long time, the only thing and I hope I am right, Miss. Clare is written the conclusion to the history right now. Congratulations Miss Casandra Clare. Thank you.

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Top reviews from other countries

Amy Beer

A Real Disappointment

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 27, 2018

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** spoiler alert ** I never thought that I would be writing a 2 star review for a Cassandra Clare Shadowhunters book but I simply cannot justify giving this book anything higher.

The fact that this book took me 4 months to read should give you some indication of how much I struggled with this novel. I am someone who cannot put a book down, if I start it I will finish it but I found it extremely difficult to do that here. For the first time in my life, I had to stop reading a book halfway through and read something else to get myself motivated. I hated having to do it but I feel like if I hadn’t I would still have at least 250 pages to go now!

So, what was wrong with it? Well, for me the first part of this book doesn’t even get 1 star. It was so unbelieveably dull! Nothing happened! There are only so many boring conversations and monotonous meetings a person can sit through in 300 pages and I feel like Clare exhausted that limit around page 54.

It also doesn’t help that I felt like I’ve read this all before. Every single plot point and character seemed like it had been plucked straight out of Clare’s earlier novels, tweaked ever so slightly and dropped into Part 1 of Lord of Shadows. I think that’s why I found all of the conversations and meeting so so hard to read. When I read a new book I expect to be reading new material, not something that I’ve already read in Clare’s books or watched in the Shadowhunters TV show.

Which brings me onto my next problem with Part 1 - Clary! I was thrilled when Clary and Jace turned up at the start of the novel... until Clary quickly started to make everything about her! I am all for more Jace and Clary stories, but if Clare isn’t going to do that then write another book about Jace and Clary! Don’t give them (what’s is undoubtedly going to turn into) a main plot point or twist in what is supposed to be someone else’s book! I don’t know whether my irritation with Clary is partly to do with the fact that I can’t stand her in the TV show, but whatever it is, it didn’t help that I had to put this book down for a long time because I was so mad that Clary had made herself the centre of attention in what was not supposed to be her story!

Here is my summary of Part 1: A group of hateful Shadowhunters want to enslave the downworlders and bring back the “golden age” of shadowhunting and Clary swoops in with a few words that make her the only thing you can think about for most of the book. Sound familiar? It should, it’s the premise of every single book in The Mortal Instruments series! It seemed like Clare chose this particular storyline on purpose to reflect what is currently going on in the world. Changing certain key names to Shadowhunter names and turning real-life people into downworlders doesn’t make it feel any less like Clare is trying to make a political statement in this book. While that is fine and I applaud her for doing so, I read fantasy books like these to escape from the harsh reality of the real world not to have it consistently thrown in my face. I want read these books to read about how the good guys win and the oppressors are crushed under the might of those they seek to enslave. It’s not a realistic view I know, but that’s why the genre is called fantasy fiction.

Part 2 was infinitely better, but by that time the damage had been done for me with this book so Part 2 only managed to scrape a couple of stars out of me. It still wasn’t brilliant, but it was far more exciting.

First of all, the Shadowhunters actually stopped sitting around talking and got up and did something! They went on missions like Shadowhunters are supposed to do and everything! Shocked? I was when it happened because I genuinely thought the entire book was going to be long, long, long conversations and nothing more! The missions were even exciting and made me want to read more.

The final chapter was Clare’s writing at her best, but it was too much for the final chapter. The final chapter of a book is supposed to be when everything settles down a little bit because all of the exciting stuff has happened. All of the most exciting parts of the book aren’t meant to be kept for the last chapter! I could feel my heart beating in my chest while reading it, I should have been feeling that excitement through all 700 pages not just the last 50.

This goes back to what I was saying saying about the long conversations. I feel as though Clare spent so much of this book with relationships; a subtle touch of the hand here, some unspoken subtext there, the constant will-they-won’t-they that she lost sight of what the story was actually supposed to be about. I also have to ask, how many LGBT characters is too many? I should say right now to avoid any backlash that my view is that love is love and I have no problem whatsoever with gay characters (Malec is one of my ultimate OTP’s and I will fight anyone who says that they should not be together (Zara Dearborn I’m talking to you)). People should be whoever they want to be and be with whoever they want to be, but at a certain point it stopped feeling as though these were just relationships and started to feel as though Clare was simply writing them that way to make herself seem more accepting. But, back to my original point, if Clare hadn’t spent more than three quarters of the book on relationships, this book would have either been less than half the size or would have been just as long but had more actual plot in it.

I don’t think that the fact that I cannot stand Emma Carstairs helped matters either. I’m sorry, but she’s is an annoying, whiny little brat who says one thing but does another, and bitches at someone because they haven’t done something that she didn’t tell them outright that she wanted them to do but was thinking that maybe they might do it anyway. As such, I hated reading chapters from her POV. Sadly, there were a lot of them! Thankfully, the chapters from Mark, Christina, Julian and Kit’s POV’s more than made up for it.

It also didn’t help that most of the book that took place in London felt like it was written by someone who has never been to London! Which is bad because I know Clare has visited England many times! I never truly appreciated how hard it is to read a bad description of a place when you know what it should look like. To read characters going from one place to another by taking streets that you know either would not take them to their intended destination or are nowhere near where they are currently supposed to be. Also, as someone who lives in the South West of England and frequently takes the train from London to Cornwall I feel the need to mention that I have been in first class many times on those trains and, despite Clare’s description of Julian and Emma having a compartment all to themselves and the woman with the refreshment trolley rattling down the narrow hall outside it, the trains from London to Cornwall are nothing like the Hogwarts Express! You do not get single compartments to yourselves no matter how much you pay for first class tickets! Everyone sits in a carriage together. The only difference is that in first class you only have 20-30 people in a carriage instead of 80. Despite everything that I had read up until that point that is nothing at all like the London I know, the description of the train is what made me cringe the most!

Ironically, after what I said about Jace and Clary earlier, Magnus and Alec were one of my favourite things about the entire novel! I was beyond thrilled when they turned up in part 2 and loved that they stuck around to help out the Blackthorn’s. I think the reason that I feel so differently is because Malec didn’t try to take over the story. They were there as additional characters but didn’t take anything away from the Blackthorn’s. This is what I expect from seeing my favourite characters return, nothing more.

SPOILER ALERT!! After thinking about it overnight I've realised how pointless Livvy Blackthorn's death is. Yes, they had to find out who killed Malcolm Fade but there were two people in the hall who were claiming to kill Malcolm, Annabel was just one of them. Why on earth couldn't they give the sword to Zara Dearborn and ask her the questions when Annabel said that she didn't want to? Jia and Robert knew that she had valid reasons to not want to touch the sword, so why not then go to Zara and ask her the questions? It may not have proved that Annabel did it, but it would certainly prove that Zara didn't and they may have even been able to discredit her and the Cohort with further questions that way. Now the Blackthorn's are in mourning and out for revenge when everything could have gone so much smoother.

In conclusion, an absolutely terrible start followed by a pretty good second half and finishing with a brilliant ending. Not even a little bit what I expected from a Shadowhunters novel. Sadly, I really feel as though Clare has run out of ideas and is just rehashing the same old story over and over again. She’s beating a dead horse at this point and I don’t know how much more of it I can take.

10 people found this helpful

Kintara

Love this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 5, 2020

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A Shadowhunter's life is bound by duty, constrained by honour. It is a Shadowhunters word is a solemn pledge and no other vow in the world is more sacred than the vow which binds Parabatai. Parabatai are warrior partners who are sworn to fight together, die together.

Emma Carstairs has learned that the love that she shares with her own Parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, isn't just forbidden but it could also destroy them both She knows that she should run away from Julian however how can she when the Blackthorns are threatened by enemies on all sides of the battle. Their only real hope is to get the Black Volume of the Dead - a spell book of terrible power. And what makes it worse is that everyone wants it. However only the Blackthorns are the ones which can find it. Being spurred on by a dark bargain with the Seelie Queen, Emma; her best friend Cristina and Mark and Julian Backthorn are thrust into a journey into the Courts of Faerie. In this land the glittering outlook revels a hidden bloody danger and shows that no promise can be trusted when dealing with the fae, Back in the normal world, the tension between the Shadowhunters and the Downworlders has reached fever pitch and produced the Cohort, and extremist group of Shadowhunters dedicated to registering Downworlders and any unsuitable Nephilim. This band of extremist will do anything in their power to expose Julian's secrets and take the Los Angeles Institute for themselves and start to take over the leadership.

When the Downworlders turn against the Clave, a new threat rises in the form of the Lord of Shadows - the Unseelie King, who sends his greatest warriors who aim to slaughter those with Blackthorn blood and seize the Black Volume. As the danger closes in, Julian starts to devise a risky scheme which depends on the cooperation of an unpredictable enemy. However his success may come with a price he and Emma cannot imagine, one which will bring with it a time of reckoning of blood which could have severe repercussions for everyone and everything they hold dear.

Every single book I read of Clare's the more in love I find myself with all of the characters and how the different families are all entwined. This was the sequel which i have been waiting for. It has the same amount of high-intensity and beautifully constructed content which we have all come to expect from The Shadowhunter Chronicles. With this installment we go further and deeper into the world than we have seen before. Following on from the repercussions from the cold peace, there is significant tensions between all races in the shadowhunter universe. This is accompanied with the fact that there are bombs set to detonate the relationships, every page builds on the tensions which are anticipated from the character arcs. This has given me everything which i wanted to happen in the story and more which i didn't know i wanted.

I love the multi prospective from the wide range of characters, which i feel that every character in this series gets their moment in the sun and it is a pleasure to see that we get to know more about this new collection of characters. I can not wait to see where these characters go from now one and how Clare takes this to the next level.

One person found this helpful

My one thousand lives

Absolutely loved this book even though it broke my heart

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 29, 2018

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Absolutely loved this book even though it broke my heart

I really enjoyed being back in the shadowhunter world with the blackthorns and everyone else. I loved how the book started off with normal everyday life of the shadowhunter and just got so much more complex and intense as the story went on. There is soo much happening in this book I don't even know how Cassandra Clare kept track of it all. It was so entertaining and emersive i absolutly loved it.

I also loved the charecters in the dark artifices series there all so different and loveable. I really admire how CC gives time to each charecter with her constantly changing POVS throughout the book and i love the relationships and friendships between each charecter and how everyone is connected to everyone else but it somehow worlds like their own little ecosystem. I really enjoyed the development of each charecter in this book as well as the development of relationships with each other. I loved how Kit became really close to Lizzy and Ty and the confusing love triangle between Mark, Keiran and Christiana. I personally think this story is really driven by the charecters and it's one of the reasons I love it so much.

The story had so many sections throughout the book that all connected at the end and there were so many variables that you never knew where the story was going or what would happen next. It was really entertaining I honestly can't find a fault with it, the book was a bit long at 700 pages but I also feel like that it was the perfect size, nothing was to vague or dragged out. The book was so complex that I really can't say much more without spoiling something.

Overall I was so happy to be back in this world I loved the charecter development and the world building and I really enjoyed Cassandra Clare's writing. The story was so complex and entertaining I can't find a fault with it would deffinetly recommend

3 people found this helpful

samia jamil

great follow on from lady midnight

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 15, 2020

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The mark-emma-julian angle was very interesting, as well as mark-christina-kieran. Cassandra made the Blackthorn family far too big, considering how sidelined and underutilised drusilla is both in the first and this second book.... beyond her body image issues and love for detective stuff we know absolutely nothing about her. Cassandra could have just not even bothered by adding this extra blackthorn sibling if she wasn't going to use her for most of the trilogy.

The love stories and chemistry of couples in this series is just amazing.

One person found this helpful

Mr. M. J. Lynch

A great development on the threads started in Mortal Instruments.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 27, 2018

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It helps to read the Mortal Instruments series before starting the Dark Artifices, but it isn't completely necessary. If you liked the MI you will love this new series, Same thread that love is taboo and almost as dangerous as fighting demons. It focuses on the Blackthorn family and the other residents of the Los Angeles institute; Julian Blackthorn and Emma Carstairs. Throughout the book you follow Emma as she is hell-bent on discovering who murdered her parents and why. Dangerous paths leads to the discovery of an unlikely murderer.

One person found this helpful

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