Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices Book 1)

So, I guess I finished this book yesterday, and I was lying awake at night, imagining what I thought of it.

First impressions, this book is longer than, I think, any of the other Shadowhunter books. I noticed in particular because I'd actually ordered the hardcover edition, and it seemed huge! I guess that's a point in favor of the Kindle edition. It didn't really drag, though. The pacing was pretty consistent.

I liked all of the "new" characters, though of course we kind of met most of them in City of Heavenly Fire. I loved the Blackthorn family motto, a bad law is no law. A nice contrast to the usual Shadowhunter creed.

I liked the way Malcolm was introduced. At first I thought he seemed like he was going to be too much like Magnus, and I think that was deliberate misdirection because when he showed up with his shirt half unbuttoned I thought that he was going to be show-offy like Magnus. Then he said he'd just forgotten to finish buttoning it. And he'd tied his shoelaces together.

I liked the tie-in to the children's story.

I did not predict the ending at all. I was very sad to learn that Malcolm was the enemy.
At my MOPS group somewhat recently, we had a speaker on the topic of protecting your children from sexual predators. A lot of the things that Malcolm did reminded me of the predatory "grooming" that she talked about. He got the family to trust him, he watched movies and ate pizza with them. He played with Tavvy and gave him toys. This actually made the scenario much more believable for me.

I was interested in the tie-in of the Edgar Allen Poe poem. I was half expecting to read that Malcolm was really Edgar Allen Poe or something. It was pretty awful what happened to Annabel, and it's sad that Malcolm thought that everyone had lied to him about her. I was glad to learn that they didn't know either.

Emma/Julian - That's going to be a problem. All of the main ships in these series has had big obstacles, but I can't see how this one could be overcome.

A lost Herondale! Great surprise near the end. I thought that perhaps Kit would be selected to go to the academy and try to ascend or something. I didn't expect him to be Christopher Herondale.

How awesome are Tessa and Jem?

This book actually wrapped things up more than I am used to for something that I knew would be the first in a series. I appreciate that. The main plot of the book was pretty much ended, and it wasn't really cliffhangery.

I was wondering what would be left for the next book until the reveal of Christopher Herondale, the parabatai curse, and... Annabel waking up.