Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy
By Cassandra Clare
Years ago I read
“City of Bones,” and made it all the way to book five and stopped. Not just
because of the waxing and waning and the intangible marking in the passage of
time, but because the whole delayed gratification thing works best when tossed
in a subconscious luggage for another day. So now I’ve finally made it book six
and moved on to Cassandra Clare’s “Tales
from the Shadowhunter Academy.”
This
collection of short stories runs the gamut with mostly Simon Lewis as the
common tread. Once or twice the narrative strays, but mostly there is Simon.
I’m taking the fifth with regard to my sentiments over this aforementioned straying, mostly because I feel a
strange sort of affinity with Cassandra Clare, separated as we are by my niece
Valerie and Kevin Bacon. These ridiculously unwarranted empathic feelings are
often cast asunder by reality, still the remnants of fealty remains.
Though
each small offering in the “Tales from
the Shadowhunter Academy” strives for excellence, for me, it was the Bitter of Tongue, which achieved this
goal at a notch above the others. Everyone of Ms. Clare’s characters stand out
as almost fully fleshed, easing the suspension of disbelief with human frailty.
But it is the young man imprisoned in the Wild Hunt and abandoned by his own
that made me wish these tales would never end.
“What is a Shadowhunter made of, if
they desert their own, if they throw away a child’s heart like rubbish left on
the side of the road?” –
Mark Blackthorn.
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