*SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD*
Cordelia Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, a warrior trained since childhood to battle demons. When her father is accused of a terrible crime, she and her brother travel to London in hopes of preventing the family’s ruin. Cordelia’s mother wants to marry her off, but Cordelia is determined to be a hero rather than a bride. Soon Cordelia encounters childhood friends James and Lucie Herondale and is drawn into their world of glittering ballrooms, secret assignations, and supernatural salons, where vampires and warlocks mingle with mermaids and magicians. All the while, she must hide her secret love for James, who is sworn to marry someone else.
So it has been probably about 4/5 years since I immersed into the Shadowhunter world and it felt very nostalgic and easy to get back into. This time around the series definitely felt very YA and as the series progressed it was quite easy to pretty much predict what was going to happen. Sure, there were some twists and turns that surprised me but there are quite a few repeat themes that keep popping up from previous series.
With Chain of Gold specifically I thought this was a pretty solid first book. It establishes all the main protagonists pretty well, however and this has been a gripe of mine from earlier series but there is always an influx of Shadowhunter families and characters that we are introduced to all at once and it is really hard to keep track and distinguish everyone from each other and what families they belong to. This book sets up the rest of the series very well and really gives us great insight into all of the relationships our core characters have with each other as well as the overarching mystery that spans all three books.
Chain of Iron broadens out the scope of the series by including more of the secondary characters and a bit more of the adults into the plotline. One things that starts to pop up in the this book is how many secrets each of these characters are keeping from each other which carries over into Chain of Thorns for sure. Had everyone just laid everything out on the table from the start a lot of the conflict could have been avoided which irritates me. It just seems like laziness to come up with all of these reasons why they can’t just come out and tell each other what is really happening instead of creating all these crazy justifications.
Chain of Thorns felt a little too long for me. I think the first third could of really been condensed down and added to the end of Chain of Iron. Was I a fan of the love triangle, no. Do I think it was used as fan service to everyone who were diehard fans of The Infernal Devices series, yes. I just don’t think it was necessary as Tessa, Will and Jem are very prominent in this series. Again, we learn a lot more about the minute details of Belial’s plan and see it unfold. We still have this miscommunication trope running rampant and everyone is starting to acknowledge that. The sex scenes were a very fade to black and awkward to read, I appreciated that it was included but still made me cringe.
Overall, this was a good series. Very on brand with the whole Shadowhunter franchise, it just seems like Cassandra Clare followed the same blueprint just changed around a few details and expanded on those changes. Not my favorite by any means, but very entertaining and you do have this group of friends that you want to root for and see succeed.
I gave all three books ⭐️3/5 stars
