It is a rare thing to be reading about characters at the age of 26 that you were reading about when you were 16.
I picked up City of Bones just before City of Ashes came out. I got both of them from a bookstore that no longer exists. Walden Books was in a mall, in another state, that was about 45 minutes away from my house. I look back and really appreciate my single mom getting off from work at five just to drive home, pick me up and take me to the mall to pick up a book the day it came out, usually only an hour before the store closed. I finished City of Glass in my tenth grade computer class and remember closing it and just being so totally out of reality. Now I would call it a book hangover. At that time I had no friends who read as much as I did. The only people for me to fangirl with were the few people I followed on LiveJournal.
When I was in college I was fortunate to finally find some of my people. I found a friend who had read these books (albeit we were on massively different sides of the shipping wars) but she read them and could squee about them with me. After bonding with this friend, going through college together and reading more Shadowhunters content together, we still proudly call one another parabatai. My peak waiting was for sure between Clockwork Prince and Clockwork Princess. I was (and still kind of am) firmly team Jem, but angst is also my taste in poison and Clockwork Prince delivered one of the most angsty romantic scenes I can imagine. Waiting for what came next was torture. I still pull Clockwork Prince off the shelf and read a particular scene when I fret that I won’t find any good angst again.
Life happened. I continued to read, but I only picked up The Dark Artifices about a month ago. Of course it was amazing and it delivers on romantic angst. If that is also your poison, then trust me, you should read it. I was lucky to not have a huge wait in reading this trilogy.
It’s Tuesday, release day for Queen of Air and Darkness as I write this, and I’m only forty-two pages in, but already it feels so amazing to escape into a world that I am familiar with. I know this place, these characters, their history, and it feels like home. It’s a favorite vacation destination, a calm little cabin in a storm, a portal fantasy in the way all books are and I’m so thankful that this portal keeps opening.
This post also brought to you because on page 19 of QOAAD this happens. And it flooded my heart with nostalgia.
A.J. Eversole 