I have been reading Cassandra Clare's work since I was a freshman, and have avidly followed the release dates of her Dark Artifices series. I felt like even just these past four years I could track all the amazing improvements she's made in her storytelling, world-building, and characterization.
Being a writer myself, I know that there is so much that goes behind make choices for the novel or choosing the best paths for the characters. These decisions that can be extremely hard for the author, especially if you're an author as Cassandra Clare, and even more so when those decisions are made for the third book in a trilogy whose ending has been much anticipated.
Overall, I give Cassandra Clare's The Dark Artifices series 5/5 stars. I loved the pacing of the stories and how intimate the storytelling is, even if I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending of The Queen of Air and Darkness, which is what I'll be talking about below. I enjoyed all of the plot twists and turns, and the suspense of the Clave meetings and battle scenes. Clare focuses well on characterization and visual imagery, and even aspects of psychology, which is refreshing.
My first thought after finishing the last book in the series was "Kit?!" and being kind of upset that that wasn't really resolved. Of course, you can argue that Kit's and Ty's friendship ran its course and Kit would be better off living with Tessa and Jem and Ty doing what makes him happy. But my heart hurt for the loss of that relationship and how much richer it would have made the ending if they could have at least said goodbye. I don't think I'm the only one that might feel this way about the end, and that makes me hopeful that they might be able to resolve their friendship in a later story, possibly one of Clare's short stories in the short story series she does with other authors, such as Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, and Robin Wasserman (highly recommend these short stories as well).
The epilogue definitely leaves the story open for another book or possible spin-off series again, so I don't think I'm too far out there when hoping Kit and Ty's relationship could be brought up again in the future. I know, however, that Clare is going to be working on the Last Hours Trilogy (the first one comes out soon!), so I can't imagine that all of these loose ends will be tied up as soon as I would like, which is disappointing, but means that there's room to hope.
I really enjoyed the relationships between Kieran, Mark, and Cristina throughout the series. I was agonized over how it would be resolved all throughout The Queen of Air and Darkness and the end made sense to me. It was refreshing and a new insight on the complexities of love and relationships that may not otherwise be well portrayed in other YA. The pacing of the writing when it came to these three also kept me very interested in what would happen between them, and I think was overall one of the best parts of this whole series.
Speaking of relationships, I loved Julian and Ty's dynamic as well but was again felt like something was missing between them at the end of Queen of Air and Darkness. I didn't feel like Julian went and talked to Ty like he used to, and even though I know both of those boys changed, I wanted them to really talk about everything. I guess I was just really rooting for Ty's happy ending with everyone, but happy endings he didn't quite get. I wanted more concrete evidence that Ty was truly okay with everything, with the loss of Kit and having Livvy around, to a degree. And of course, he would never be "truly okay" but again I hoped for more where Ty was involved and wasn't quite satisfied with how it ended either.
Maybe one of my more smaller criticisms is that I felt like every page I turned there was some mention of the "Blackthorn blue and green eyes." I really liked the descriptions of all the Blackthorns eyes when they were devastated, or angry, or any other extreme emotion, but sometimes I felt like the descriptions of their eyes could be overwhelming.
One of the reasons I'm writing this review is because I never felt like one of Clare's books or stories left me questioning the characters' actions or any of her writing, but this series did. Even though this review might be seen as critical, I'm really just concerned with answering the question of why. Why did Clare decide to make these choices as she was writing and how do they add to the meaning of the work? I understand that it's impossible to fit everything in a series, and that sometimes half the magic comes with leaving some choices up to the readers to imagine. But, to me, it felt almost out of character for Clare to leave so many strings unknotted. Now, that could just be because Clare has written a lot of extra material for all her other book series like The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices, and The Dark Artifices was only just completed. Or it could be something new she's trying, or maybe it could just be because it keeps readers interested that way. I don't truly know. But that does give me hope that there will be more stories on the Blackthorns and Cristina and Emma and Kieran. I'm hopeful that Kit and Ty will be able to meet again. I'm hopeful that there will be more stories with these characters that millions of readers have fallen in love with.
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