Spoiler Warnings are labeled. Minor Spoilers for The Red Scrolls of Magic and Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy.
When to read: Recommend reading TMI, TID, and The Red Scrolls of Magic prior. Can read this book before or after TDA. If you are reading TSC for the first time, check out my Shadowhunters Guide & Reading Order under the “more” tab.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
First book Review! Please excuse it for being a bit rough and not organized the same as my others.
I’m still not sure how I feel about this book… like I can’t decide if the plot is better or worse than The Red Scrolls Of Magic (RSM), but I certainly enjoyed it less.
My issues:
Right off the bat – there were not enough Malec scenes in a Malec book. RSM has way more cute/sexy Malec scenes. I think this is partly because there are more side characters involved, which I didn’t mind, but the book to too short to give enough time to Malec and all these characters.
I still don’t like Shinyun. She is a boring character and I have no sympathy for her even though Magnus seems to have endless sympathy for her.
There’s somethings about the plot that just seems over-dramatic.
MAJOR SPOILERS here on ——————————– (Skip down to “Overall” to avoid spoilers)
The throning had me stressed, yes, BUT I knew it would never kill Magnus no matter how much they said there was “no reversing” it, they were going to save Magnus. So I was just waiting to see what crazy way they would reverse it and I wasn’t very surprised or impressed. I wish it would have been threatening to do something that I could believe could actually happen – maybe like take Magnus’s magic or immortality or change him in some other way – something that I could actually be scared about it. Also, I guess I can excuse this a bit bc they were kind of busy and had a lot to worry about – but Alec does not seem scared enough about the thought of his boyfriend/co-parent dying – which again makes it so that I’m not scared as a reader.
Then there’s the going into another hell dimension and fighting another prince of hell (Like Heavenly Fire). It just seems like to big of a task for this small group to take on and survive – all of them – WITHOUT ANY MAJOR INJURIES EVEN! Maybe because Heavenly Fire had such a build up before getting to go to a hell, which was a HUGE deal, this book just seems too short to take that on. (Also how tf did Mayrse react to that when she heard the story bc we def didn’t get to see that!)
Lastly, though this might be a bit nit-picky, I’ve never been a fan of Cassandra Clare’s titles, but The Book of the White is barley important to the story and it’s LITERALLY THE TITLE OF THE BOOK.
What I enjoyed:
I loved all the scenes with Max. One of favorite scenes in the book is Alec’s phone home with his mom watching Max. And the last scene is so cute!
I think Samuel is great. The gang don’t take him seriously enough which is kind of funny. He’s a different kind of villain than were used to which I like.
I’m really glad the whole gang made it on this trip – though I wish we saw just a little more of them and maybe a few of their POVs (Like in the Hell of The Pit of Fire). However, as I said before, I don’t want them to take away from Malec so I just wish the book was longer and included more of them.
The bonus story, In Dreams Begin, was bomb – sadly one of the best parts of the book (But it doesn’t exactly match the Wedding comic that was released in special editions of Heavenly Fire and I really don’t like it when things that are supposed to be cannon don’t match up).
Overall: This book had it’s moments, but not as many as I would have liked. Honestly, just like RSM, the best parts of the book are the very beginning and the very end. I think it tried to take on way too much in far too few pages so the whole thing feels really rushed which adds to it being unbelievable.
After RSM, I had hoped this one would be even better, but sadly it wasn’t. I could forgive more in RSM because of the restrictions with the trip and because of all the great Malec scenes we got, but at this point I’m just getting upset that The Eldest Curses series is so lacking in quality compared to the other series of TSC (I know it’s more of a spin-off than it’s own series but that doesn’t mean it should be bad – and at times not even seeming to fit into TSC timeline! See my Malec discussion post.)
If you are a Shadowhunters fan, also check out my Shadowhunters Stories Chronological Timeline!
Life Is Just A Blur 