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Molly Eller on 16 Oct 2016
“The plot for Lady Midnight is both familiar and different. Clare tends to have a sort of formula when creating the plot for her novels: young shadowhunters + mysterious occurrences they must investigate + absentee adults + romantic tension and/or forbidden love = Clare novel. This is basically that, with a few minor changes.

The change that stands out the most is that it is much more of a romance than The Infernal Devices and The Mortal Instruments (which is kind of saying a lot, considering the romance in both series is extremely prevalent). This one reminds me more of a plot of an actual romance novel, or a contemporary novel, with magic and the paranormal thrown in. You will either love that or hate that. I had mixed feelings.

On one hand, I was glad that Clare did something slightly different from her other novels. On the other hand, everything else about the novel was so similar, if not identical, to her other novels, which is something I did not enjoy.

The characters were, once again, formulaic. So many characters reminded me of Clare's other characters in other novels. You had the brooding male who felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. You had the kind of feisty female that doesn't really feel like she belongs anywhere. You had the eccentric leader of the Institute who didn't always know what was going on. You had the warlock friend that helped them out. You had the best friend to the female lead, complete with a shopping trip (The Infernal Devices). You had a brother with some mental issues (The Infernal Devices). Even Church was in it.

It was all very similar to TID and TMI. Sure, there were a few added characteristics or events in the story that made them slightly different, but not enough to really make them stand out.

I do enjoy Clare's writing, though. I think her writing is very engaging and, at times, she can be very quotable -- and we all love our quotes. However, at nearly 700 pages, this book can be dreadfully slow. It wasn't until after 100 pages anything happens, everything before that was background. Clare spent a lot of time giving the reader background about the shadowhunter world, the Dark War, and the Cold Peace. At 250 pages there was only one real fight scene. It was hard to get through at times.

I also found Clare's world building of Los Angeles oddly hard to imagine. I am from that area, and she wrote some of the book in that area, but it seemed as if we were in two very different areas of Southern California. For anyone not from here, this probably will not matter, but for someone who has lived here her whole life, I found it hard to imagine. While this is a desert climate, most of the city does not look like the desert as Clare describes (it is only in certain areas it would have this description). However, like I said, this may just be something that affected my view of the book.


I have given Clare and the shadowhunter world many chances. Unfortunately, this book will probably be my last attempt at enjoying this insanely popular world. This book took too long to build up to a climax that I didn't feel was enough, considering one has to read almost 550 pages just to get anything good. The characters are too formulaic to what Clare always writes. I wanted more variety with her characters, but I sadly did not get that. While Clare's writing can be wonderful at times, that wasn't enough of a redeeming factor for me to think this read was worth it. I wanted more, but I got almost exactly what I expected -- another cookie cutter shadowhunter novel. ”