The Dark Artifices

About The Dark Artifices

Five years after the events of City of Heavenly Fire, Emma Carstairs is a Shadowhunter in Los Angeles still hunting her parents' killers, bound by an unbreakable parabatai oath to Julian Blackthorn -- a bond that makes the romantic feelings growing between them not just complicated but explicitly forbidden by Shadowhunter law. When a new string of murders echoes the pattern that killed Emma's parents, she and Julian's investigation drags the Los Angeles Institute into a conspiracy involving the Faerie courts and the Cold Peace, a punitive treaty straining relations between Shadowhunters and the fae.

Set in the same timeline as The Mortal Instruments and featuring some of its characters in supporting roles, The Dark Artifices moves the action to Los Angeles and pushes Cassandra Clare's mythology toward morally thornier territory -- a forbidden romance with real institutional stakes, political intrigue with the fae courts, and one of the franchise's most divisive, high-stakes endings. It leans older and heavier than The Mortal Instruments, reflecting an audience that grew up alongside the earlier series.

Three novels tell one complete, continuous story following Emma and Julian from the string of murders through the trilogy's climactic reckoning with the Cold Peace and the Faerie courts.

How to read this series

Read the three novels in publication order: Lady Midnight, Lord of Shadows, Queen of Air and Darkness. It's a complete, continuous trilogy that should be read straight through.

The Dark Artifices is set in the same era as The Mortal Instruments (about five years after City of Heavenly Fire) and features several Mortal Instruments characters in supporting roles, so read Mortal Instruments first for full context. It also connects forward into The Last Hours and other later Shadowhunter Chronicles material, though it can be enjoyed as a self-contained trilogy on its own.