I liked it; it was good
Book 1 of the Last Hours series! This trilogy has the thickest books by far, and no readalongs like the others, so I anticipate struggling with them.
Read: Nov 25 – Dec 24, 2024
Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural
Audience: Young Adult
Book contains: monsters & demons, death, violence, mild gore
Purchase a copy from Amazon.ca
After Cordelia Carstairs’ father is put on trial for a mission gone wrong, she and her family move to London—where she can train with her future parabatai, Lucie Herondale. Cordelia is pleased by this, because she’s been infatuated with Lucie’s older brother, James, since they were young. Unfortunately, when dark shadows begin attacking people, James is pulled into the fray, Cordelia right behind him.
My biggest pet peeve about this book was how the characters acted. This storyline takes place in the late 1890s and early 1900s, but the characters acted way too much like modern teenagers. This was exacerbated by the fact that I’ve been reading a lot of Jane Austen lately, but it just felt so awkward to have the teens feel out of time.
Like Clare’s other works, this book is told in third person with switching character focuses; each scene follows a specific character, be it James, Lucie, Cordelia, or otherwise. Something fun this book does is take the chapter titles from lines in famous poems (with the poems in question being included at the start of each chapter).
This book took me so long to read, mostly because of how unmotivated I was to read it. This stemmed at first from how long it is, then the fact that I couldn’t listen along as I read, and lastly because I wasn’t really hooked by the story. Because of this, the book just sat unread for days on end while I was distracted with other things. It was too easy to put down.
Cordelia, James, and Lucie all seem to be the main characters, as the story follows them most of all. Each has their own role to play in this story, but they’re either keeping secrets or sharing information with other people (i.e. James to his friends) rather than each other. Though all friends, they’re not that close, especially Cordelia. There was also the issue of having so many new names and faces introduced at once; it was difficult for me to keep track of everyone—especially since so many last names are repeated because of the lack of Shadowhunter family diversity.
On the back of the book, Cordelia is introduced first, but the book doesn’t start with her, so it’s unclear whether she’s the main-main character or not. She’s definitely the most detached of them all, and while James and Lucie are both somewhat focusing on the same thing, Cordelia’s main concern is her father and the trial he is facing.
Clare’s writing style is, of course, popular with fans, and the dialogue is snappy and witty in a contemporary teenager sort of way. I didn’t like it that much in this Edwardian era tale. They’re just a bit too lackadaisical.
Maybe it’s just the general length of this book, but it felt like the plot progressed a little too slow. There’s so much detail to cover about characters I don’t quite relate to yet, so a lot of what’s going on is flying over my head while simultaneously taking a long time to get through. The actions scenes are fast-paced, though, which fits the tonal shifts the book goes through.
If you were a fan of The Infernal Devices and want to continue with those familiar characters, I encourage you to read this series as well. Recommended to lovers of Shadowhunter stories with a bit of mystery and demon fighting thrown in.
The Last Hours Book 1: Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare
The Last Hours Book 2: Chain of Iron by Cassandra Clare
The Last Hours Book 3: Chain of Thorns by Cassandra Clare
The Infernal Devices Book 1: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
The Mortal Instruments Book 1: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
The Dark Artifices Book 1: Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare
*The Other Side of Daylight by Nicole Chartier*
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