The long awaited finale to The Dark Artifices book series by Cassandra Clare has finally arrived and it’s beautifully entitled, Queen of Air and Darkness. The third book or “textbook” you could call it, weighs in at 880 pages, full of drama, romance, tormented hearts, and brutal battles. Warning! Spoilers included in this review!

In summary: Queen of Air and Darkness picks up at the very end of Lord of Shadows, with the death of Livia Blackthorn, younger sister to Julian Blackthorn. Julian and his parabatai, meaning bonded warrior for life, Emma Carstairs are then sent on a mission to the whimsical and dangerous land of faerie, where they are tasked with the challenge to obtain the most dangerous book in the world, The Black Book of the Dead. Spells such as necromancy can be performed if a person has the book in their possession. The woman who has the book: Annabel Blackthorn. Ancestor to the Blackthorn family who was killed and then brought back to life by her psycho warlock boyfriend, Malcolm Fade, who used a necromancy spell to bring her back from the dead, only to have his beloved turn around and kill him, as well as Livia Blackthorn, and a high government official, Inquisitor Robert Lightwood.

Knowing all of this, Emma and Julian, with their forbidden love brewing between them, travel into the daunting land of faerie where, at the time, Shadowhunters were not exactly the most welcomed people. There, they go to the Unseelie court where Annabel is with the wanted book. While there, Emma and Julian get captured by the Unseelie King’s guards and are thrown into cells made of curling deadly vines. They then run into their friends, Clary and Jace who, with the help of the Unseelie King’s most favored son, break out of their imprisonment and find themselves in a battle with the Unseelie king when Julian realizes that his brother, Mark, and their friend, Kieran, were also held under imprisonment during that time. During the battle, Emma and Julian realize that they are ‘stuck in a corner’ with only two options: either surrender to the Unseelie King’s guards, or, travel through the king’s open portal that will transport the pair into Thule, a dangerous and menacing alter universe where they will likely die. But seeing that fate as better than surrender, Emma and Julian jump through the portal.

While in Thule, they battle rancid demons and Julian is finally able to avenge his sister’s death by killing the woman who killed her, Annabel Blackthorn. Once back in their real world, Emma and Julian travel to the Shadowhunter homeland of Idris, where they enact in a civil war against their own people, brought on by the corruptness of the Shadowhunter government. After the bloodshed and deaths of hundreds of Shadowhunters, there is a peace that arises as those who are still alive have an option to either chose the corrupt group as the head of their government, or the acceptable group, most of which favor the side that is agreeable. At the end, there is unity among the Shadowhunters as they have all chosen their sides and made their peace.

The book as whole, I would rate a 95 out of 100, this being that the story and the plot were absolutely exquisite. There were constant changes and loops that took me be surprise where it seemed as though every chapter was revealing another hidden

plot or conflict that I couldn’t predict. I was mentally unable to anticipate anything that would happen. It seemed as though the characters were in such thick turmoil that I couldn’t possibly see a solution, but then here it came, their resolution I could not have foreseen. Cassandra Clare did a phenomenal job keeping me on my toes for the entire book. As I flipped every page I held my breath in anticipation because I had no idea what was awaiting these characters around the corner.

When speaking to Jalen Reese, Shadowhunter fan and dedicated reader at ERHS, he told me that he rates the book a 4.5 stars out of 5 “because it gets very frantic and somewhat hard to follow if you’re not paying attention during some parts of the final battles.” But he continues to say that “it has such a good story and [that it] finishes strong.”

Reese concludes by stating how he “highly suspect[s] that [Queen on Air and Darkness] is not the last book in the series.” This could be because the author, as Reese puts it, “left a lot of questions unanswered and a lot of loose ends that could each become the basis for a new book or two.”

Queen of Air and Darkness in whole, was a phenomenal book and The Dark Artifices series is my favorite that I’ve ever read. You can pick up the series at any Barnes and Nobles near you.