Poe’s Annabelle Lee, a Shadowhunter?

A book review of Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

*****This post may contain spoilers*****

Who would have ever thought Edgar Allan Poe would hold the clues to solving a series of mundane and Faerie murders?

The newest trilogy in Cassandra Clare’s world of Shadowhunters, The Dark Artifices #1, Lady Midnight brings together the Mortal Instruments and the Infernal Devices five years after The Dark War in City of Heavenly Fire.

True to Clare’s formula, the adventure follows a cast of Shadowhunters as they set out to stop the latest serial killer in the Shadow world. Five years ago, Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn fought in The Dark War, in Idris, and return to their home, the L.A. institute. Because of the faeries’ involvement with Sebastian during the Dark War, the Clave decreed that the faeries no longer deserved their help. Therefore, the Cold Peace was established.

During the war Emma’s parents were murdered, everyone thought they were killed by Sebastian, but Emma refused to believe it.  In her quest to learn what really happened, she visits Johnny Rook, a mundane with the sight, who gives her a clue on something that might be connected to her parents’ deaths. Which ends up leading the Shadowhunters to a string of strange murders, human and faerie alike. Due to the Cold Peace, the L.A. institute works in secrecy to solve these murders with help from Mark Blackthorn, who is half faerie half Shadowhunter. In doing so, Emma learns about her parents and falls in love with Julian, even though it is forbidden to love your parabatai.

““Being told that love is forbidden does not kill love, it strengthens it.”’ Jem Carstairs, pg. 660.

The characters translate the markings on the cave at the convergence, and realize its lines from Poe’s Poem, Annabelle Lee. Edgar Allan Poe learned that Annabelle Blackthorn was killed by her family and entombed by the sea. Clare uses lines from Annabelle Lee for the chapter titles. As well as the poem being written on the walls of the cave at the convergence, where necromantic magic is emanating.

Annabelle Blackthorn is dead.  Malcom Fade is warlock wants to bring her back. Fade follows the Faerie Kings rhyme and takes his anger out on the Blackthorn children because he thinks that no one is innocent. He believes that all of his warlock friends lied to him when they told him that his love went to be an Iron Sister, even when she did not.

““There was a Shadowhunter lady,” he said. “She fell in love with someone she wasn’t supposed to be in love with. Her parents trapped her in an iron castle, and he couldn’t get in. she died of sadness, so the man who loved her went to the King of the faeries and asked if there was a way to bring her back. He said there was a rhyme.

‘First the flame then the flood;

In the end, it’s Blackthorn blood.

Seek thou to forget what’s past

First thirteen and then the last.

Search not the book of angels gray,

Red or white will lead you far astray

To regain what you have lost,

Find the black book at any cost.’”

Pg.501

About Emma…

“Emma had thought [Diana] was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. She was tall and spare and elegant, with the silvery tattoo of a koi fish standing out across the dark skin of one arched cheekbone. Her eyes were brown with flecks of green in them, right now they were flashing with angry fire…. She looked like the dangerous Roman goddess of the hunt she was named for.” Pg. 30.

Emma Carstairs is a strong character but has a vulnerable side.  She’s alone until she discovers she is related to Jem Carstairs from The Infernal devices. She is driven to find how her parents were murdered, in doing so she becomes rebellious and takes dangerous strides to get information even when told not to. She feels a duty to family, her parents as well as the Blackthorns, and an honor to searching for the truth even if it means breaking the law.

About Julian…

Julian Blackthorn is Emma’s parabatai who grows up too fast when he was forced to kill his father during the Dark War, who was endarkened by Sebastian, to save his siblings. His older brother and sister were banished from the clave because of their faerie blood. Arthur Blackthorn was appointed as the new head of the institute, but he was losing his mind, so to keep his family together he secretly ran the institute while also raising his younger siblings. When Mark comes back Julian feels a sense of hope that he might have some of the weight lifted off his shoulders.

A new set of enticing characters, mysterious murders, and a heart-breaking love story that will make you not want to put the book down.

 

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

~Edgar Allan Poe