Margaret K. McElderry Books Queen of Air and Darkness, 3

Totally obnoxious.(I am writing this to the author, I hope she reads it!)I cannot believe you hijacked my much anticipated vacation into a beautifully crafted fantastical world and turned into a political commentary! Your about as subtle as a club to the head.Let’s see there is a wall, registration of immigrants, transgender issues, gay marriage, the breakdown of social morals concerning monogamy and so so much more. There is a cat as well, which I enjoyed until you started clubbing me over the head...I suppose you imagine yourself to be Lewis Carroll.Honestly? If you were going to take all of this on, did you have to try to cram into one book? What a disappointing mess. You ruined a beautifully crafted series.Why do you think people read fantasy? Because we spend most of our lives wrestling with social injustice, gender inequality, gender issues, sexuality and the politics of power.And lastly, Iet me make myself perfectly clear, it’s not that I care about the opinions espoused in this book on these issues. No, I object to the sloppy and pathetic way you crammed it into ONE book, the last book in a FANTASY series!Next time I’m tempted to read one of your books, I’ll just watch 6 hours of CNN instead.

Cassandra Clare is a gifted writer and has created a fun universe with her shadowhunters series. I cannot fault her writing skills or story telling ability.In this final book, there is a good payoff for previous readers with characters from the earlier series playing seminal roles. However, it seems to come at a sacrifice of newer characters who were created for the dark artifices series. For example, the titular Lady of Air and Darkness is hardly featured.A number of the new characters are heavily built up as important then sidelined and hastily packed away, probably in the hopes of generating enough interest to score another 3-book deal with the publishers. Or perhaps the writer wrote herself into a hole and couldn't be bothered to resolve their storylines.I'm really irritated that I waited almost 2 years for this.

I've never quite understood the point of books like this one. Where a YA fantasy is told primarily to promote certain points of view, and for no other reason. It's certainly not to tell an entertaining and compulsively readable story, the kind I know Clare is capable of but has refused to write for some time now. Instead, we are given "representative" fiction where nearly every character is gay or bi or polyamorous or trans or something else. There is one straight couple out of all the romances depicted. (I'm not including bit players in this book like Clary/Jace, who aren't given much to do beyond being alive at a certain point.) (Also, really - is there an adolescent polyamorous community crying out in desperation for representation? When you're a teen that's just called messing around. I don't believe that there are huge groups of teens who yearn for polyamory and to see that reflected in their literature. I just don't.) At one point I was wondering with all the couples who've been assembled here how there's going to be any future Shadowhunters.So the anti-Trumpism overwhelms the book to an exhausting degree. Don't get me wrong, I think Trump's a moron, but I am more conservative in my views to government (such as I think people should work for a living and I think government should be small and less intrusive in our lives). Which Clare paints as being a fascist and racist. I don't really understand the point of that either. Like, you're not converting people to your point of view by attacking them and for those that agree with you, you're just yelling into an echo chamber. Nothing's much changed there either.I look at how Rowling handled it in the later Harry Potter books with Umbridge. The politics didn't undermine the story. The politics weren't the entire point of the tale. They were important, but the story wasn't sacrificed just to condemn politicians like Umbridge and movements in government that were like Nazi Germany. The point can be made without making every scene in the story revolve around your political stance.It's unfortunate, because I know Clare can tell a story. A really good one. With the first book in the Dark Artifices, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up half the night to read it because I was so caught up in it. Because it had this incredible story with these characters I cared about and surprised me with the twist of who was responsible. And we went from there to this political diatribe. I don't think you're doing much as far as representation is concerned when you write a bad and depressing story.Because the end in Alicante? Really? Really? You're going to cave in to terrorist's demands and leave your enemy to nurture its hatred of you and show up at a future point to utterly destroy everything and everyone you love? That is beyond stupid. There's a reason nations disarm and defang other nations after they've been stopped from trying to take over the world. It's because you don't want history to repeat itself and rise up against you again. They have to be loved and helped with money and supplies. Not abandoned and ignored, letting them fester in their resentment and anger. Such a cop-out ending. Even the threats of having to walk over the bodies of children whenever they assembled in that room...okay. You mean the same room where other children, including Livvy Blackthorn, have already been killed? Where dozens, if not hundreds, of Shadowhunters have already lost their lives? The only reason that the "heroes" make such a stupid decision is to set it up for a sequel, and I find that really annoying and poor writing.I don't know if I'll pick up more Clare books unless I know beforehand that they'll be real, actual stories and not just a string of vignettes to try and convert people to a political platform.

Let me start by saying I am a huge fan of Cassandra Clare's writing and this amazing world of Shadowhunters she created. I read the Mortal Instruments series about 5 years ago and have been hooked ever since!That being said, this book was painful to read. The story simply didn't flow... characters didn't act like themselves (not just Julian, who at least had an excuse). Certain relationships (both friendship and romantic) felt really forced and unrealistic, and sex was pretty much the main focus point in almost every chapter, taking a lot away from the actual plot. The chapters were repetitive, and about a quarter of the book probably could have been cut. The ending was anticlimactic, and the book read more like really bad fanfiction, instead of the work of an accomplished author.

I read, "The Dark Artifacts" series because I was very interested in Julian and Emma's story. Books one and two were awesome. The final book in the trilogy is okay, but its less about Julian and Emma, and more about polyamorous, and gay relationships, and transgender persons. The underlying story was good, but all the unusual relationships were in the forefront. I felt really strongly that the author was going over board with the relationships and playing to the fad of LBGT .Okay I get it, there are a lot of different types of relationships in the world, and people are good no matter their sexual orientation. Anyway, I liked the book and I hope there is a story coming featuring Kit, Dru, Ash, and Ty.