Week 14 Review: Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

From Goodreads:
Simon Lewis has been a human and a vampire, and now he is becoming a Shadowhunter. But the events of City of Heavenly Fire left him stripped of his memories, and Simon isn't sure who he is anymore. He knows he was friends with Clary, and that he convinced the total goddess Isabelle Lightwood to go out with him…but he doesn't know how. And when Clary and Isabelle look at him, expecting him to be a man he doesn't remember…Simon can't take it.

So when the Shadowhunter Academy reopens, Simon throws himself into this new world of demon-hunting, determined to find himself again. His new self. Whomever this new Simon might be.

But the Academy is a Shadowhunter institution, which means it has some problems. Like the fact that non-Shadowhunter students have to live in the basement. And that differences—like being a former vampire—are greatly looked down upon. At least Simon is trained in weaponry—even if it's only from hours of playing D&D.

Join Simon on his journey to become a Shadowhunter, and learn about the Academy's illustrious history along the way, through guest lecturers such as Jace Herondale, Tessa Gray, and Magnus Bane. These ten short stories give an epilogue to the Mortal Instruments series and provide glimpses of what's in store in the Dark Artifices.

My first review of Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

My Review:
I had a great time reading this collection of stories again! I remembered some of them, like the story of the Circle, and how easy it is to follow a charismatic leader to do bad things, and that not all of them graduated and became Shadowhunters, but I'm really glad that I reread this book!

Simon has been a great character from the start as Clary's friend, and he's gone on such an adventure, becoming a vampire, getting the Mark of Cain, and then becoming human again-and losing his memory of all those events. But now he's training to become a Shadowhunter, and I had such a great time watching him learn about this!

This is set after the faeries have betrayed the Shadowhunters, and so the way that Helen and Aline are treated is pretty terrible, along with Mark. I know things are going to get better with The Dark Artifices series, but at this point, yeah, not cool of the Shadowhunters! 

That ending though? Of the triumph of making it through and gaining back his memories, the loss of his friend not, of Isabelle, that ending packed a punch, and I can't wait to see where Simon's story will go from here, whenever we see him next! 

This was a great collection of stories, and I can't wait to continue with this world! 

Authors: Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson and Robin Wasserman
Series: Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy #1-10, Shadowhunter Chronicles 
First Read: March 1st, 2018

Read: April 7th, 2021
Source: Own
Reason Why: Rereading! And it's a Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2021 Book!
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: November 15th 2016

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars

Page-a-Thon Update 9

So I read my next book for Page-a-Thon, and it was Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, and I'll be reading The Merciful Crow next! 

My Reading Journey:

The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid
Started On: April 1st
Finished On: April 1st, 9:04 PM
Pages Read: 403

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
Started On: April 2nd

Finished On: April 2nd, 4:35 PM

Pages Read: 437

The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Maureen Johnson 

Started On: April 2nd

Finished On: April 2nd, 11:01 PM

Pages Read: 507

Unchosen by Kathayrn Blair

Started On: April 3rd

Finished On April 3rd, 4:40 PM

Pages Read: 419

Cress by Marissa Meyer

Started On: April 3rd

Finished On: April 3rd, 11:05 PM

Pages Read: 550

Breach of Peace by Daniel B. Greene

Started On: April 3rd

Finished On: April 4th, 12:13 AM

Pages Read: 141 

Titan Song by Dan Stout

Started On: April 4th

Finished On: April 4th, 10:22 PM

Pages Read: 384

Havenfall by Sara Holland

Started On: April 6th

Finished On: April 6th, 9:02 PM

Pages Read: 400

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, and Robin Wasserman

Started On: April 7th

Finished On: April 7th, 9:50 PM

Pages Read: 655

The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen

Started On: April 7th

Currently On: Page 0 of 384

Read: 9
Pages Read: 3896

WWW Wednesday #521, April 7th

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you'll read next?

Thanks to MizB of Should Be Writing now A Daily Rhythm for starting this meme! And thanks now to Taking on a World of Words for reviving it! 

I'm currently reading Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, and I'm really enjoying reading Simon's collection of stories again! 

I read Havenfall, and I had a great time, and I'm so excited to read the sequel! 

I'm going to be reading The Merciful Crow, and I can't wait, it sounds really good! 

What about you guys? Happy reading!

Page-a-Thon Update 8

So I read my next book for Page-a-Thon, and it was Havenfall, and I'll be reading Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy next! 

My Reading Journey:

The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid
Started On: April 1st
Finished On: April 1st, 9:04 PM
Pages Read: 403

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
Started On: April 2nd

Finished On: April 2nd, 4:35 PM

Pages Read: 437

The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Maureen Johnson 

Started On: April 2nd

Finished On: April 2nd, 11:01 PM

Pages Read: 507

Unchosen by Kathayrn Blair

Started On: April 3rd

Finished On April 3rd, 4:40 PM

Pages Read: 419

Cress by Marissa Meyer

Started On: April 3rd

Finished On: April 3rd, 11:05 PM

Pages Read: 550

Breach of Peace by Daniel B. Greene

Started On: April 3rd

Finished On: April 4th, 12:13 AM

Pages Read: 141 

Titan Song by Dan Stout

Started On: April 4th

Finished On: April 4th, 10:22 PM

Pages Read: 384

Havenfall by Sara Holland

Started On: April 6th

Finished On: April 6th, 9:02 PM

Pages Read: 400

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, and Robin Wasserman

Started On: April 7th

Currently On: Page 0 of 655

Read: 8
Pages Read: 3241

It's Monday! What Are You Reading #453, February 10th

It's Monday! What Are You Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Book Date where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week...and anything in between! This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well...you never know where that next "must read" book will come from!

What happened in the past week:

Weekly Memes:
It's Monday! What Are You Reading #452
Teaser Tuesday #460
WWW Wednesday #460
WOW #456
Will the Time Come #453
Third Sentence Thursday #443
Random Reads #429
First Lines Friday #456
Book Blogger Hop #122
The Reward Challenge Update #438
How Well I Stuck to It #290
Wrote that Review Update #287

Week 6 Reviews:
Golden in Death
10 Bodies Lying
Lord of Shadows
Wild Country
Storm Cursed
Ghosts of the Shadow Market

Random:
We Have the Cover of The Shaw Confessions #3!!!!
We Have the Cover of Sisters of Shadow and Light #2!!!!
We Have the Cover of Alex Craft #7!!!!

OK, so I got 21 posts in 7 days, I read some really fantastic books, and felt pretty productive this week, and I can't wait for this coming week, lots of fantastic books! What about you guys? Happy reading!

So this week I want to read Buried in My Past, Honor Among Thieves, Honor Bound, Honor Lost, Queen of Air and Darkness, and Shatter the Earth!

She's desperate to stop the panic attacks. But the truth won't set her free...

Jamie Kendal sees life through the bottom of a bottle. After surviving assault and betrayal, she is forced back to her hometown to care for her mother. Not long after her return, she's plagued by terrifying slivers of memories from the night her twin brother disappeared forever...

Unearthing new evidence, she's shocked to learn she'd been found wandering in the woods that same night-- covered in blood. More than one person from her past hid a haunting truth that's bubbling to the surface. The deeper she digs into the horrors from her past, the more she fears anyone could be a killer, including Jamie herself.

Can Jamie expose what happened that night, or will she join her missing brother?

Space renegade Zara Cole may have finally met her match. Lifekiller—a creature that can devour entire planets—is spreading terror throughout the universe, and it seems nothing can stand in the monstrous godking's way.

Reeling from a series of battles, Zara and her wounded band of allies are going to need a strategy before they face Lifekiller again. Zara's street smarts may not be enough when their enemy could be anywhere, destroying civilizations and picking his teeth with the bones.

And just when it feels like she's reached a special place in her bond with Bea and Nadim, an ex from Earth with an ax to grind comes after her with nefarious intentions. With human enemies, alien creatures, and mechanical stalkers on her tail, it's down to the wire for Zara to save the galaxy—and the people she calls home—before the godking consumes them all.

Dark secrets and forbidden love threaten the very survival of the Shadowhunters in Cassandra Clare's Queen of Air and Darkness, the final novel in the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling The Dark Artifices trilogy. Queen of Air and Darkness is a Shadowhunters novel.

What if damnation is the price of true love?

Innocent blood has been spilled on the steps of the Council Hall, the sacred stronghold of the Shadowhunters. Their society now teeters on the brink of civil war. One fragment of the Blackthorn family flees to Los Angeles, seeking to discover the source of the disease that is destroying the race of warlocks. Meanwhile, Julian and Emma take desperate measures to put their forbidden love aside and undertake a perilous mission to Faerie to retrieve the Black Volume of the Dead. What they find there is a secret that may tear the Shadow World asunder and open a dark path into a future they could never have imagined. Caught in a race against time, Emma and Julian must save the world of the Shadowhunters before a deadly curse destroys them and everyone they love.

Ironically for the time traveling, chief seer of the supernatural world, time has never been on Cassie Palmer's side. There has always seemed to be too much to learn, too much to master, and never enough hours in a day. But the tables have now turned, and the fluctuating timelines of earth and faerie are diverging, slowing time in faerie relative to earth, and giving humans an advantage for the first time in their war with the fey. It is one they desperately need, for a literal war of the worlds is about to take place.

To win, or even to survive, Cassie and her allies, the powerful vampire senator Mircea Basarab and the formidable war mage John Pritkin, will have to pull off their greatest feat yet. And find a way to become more than the sum of their parts.

Week 6 Review: Ghosts of the Shadow Market

From Goodreads:
From New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Cassandra Clare comes an exciting new short story collection that follows Jem Carstairs as he travels through the many Shadow Markets around the world. Ghosts of the Shadow Market is a Shadowhunters novel.

The Shadow Market is a meeting point for faeries, werewolves, warlocks, and vampires. There, the Downworlders buy and sell magical objects, make dark bargains, and whisper secrets they do not want the Nephilim to know. Through two centuries, however, there has been a frequent visitor to the Shadow Market from the City of Bones, the very heart of the Shadowhunters' world. As a Silent Brother, Brother Zachariah is a sworn keeper of the laws and lore of the Nephilim. But once he was a Shadowhunter called Jem Carstairs, and his love, then and always, is the warlock Tessa Gray. And Jem is searching through the Shadow Markets, in many different cities over long years, for a relic from his past.

Follow Jem and see, against the backdrop of the Shadow Market's dark dealings and festival, Anna Lightwood's doomed romance, Matthew Fairchild's great sin, and Tessa Gray as she is plunged into a world war. Valentine Morgenstern buys a soul at the Market and a young Jace Wayland's soul finds safe harbor. In the Market is hidden a lost heir and a beloved ghost, and no one can save you once you have traded away your heart. Not even Brother Zachariah.

My Review:
Oh, yeah, I really enjoyed reading this collection of stories! I technically haven't read the last two, since they're set after Queen of Air and Darkness, but I'm going to read that shortly, and read those right after. I just want to read things in order, you know?

A lot of these stories, they had fantastic, great moments-but they also had pretty low moments, and the first one, espcailly, ended on that low note. The second one was a bit of a mixed bag. And espcailly since these first two stories star characters from the generation of the coming series, The Last Hours, well, it's sad that they were tortured like this before they make their big debut, but it was great getting to know them!

Brother Zachariah, or Jem when he's remembering Will, he's in all of these stories. And a lot of these stories wove between his quest to find the Lost Herondale, and the narrator of the current story. Because while it takes place at the same time, they don't intersect all that often. They do, but only for brief moments of time.

The whole story about the Lost Herondale, we learned so much about Kit's heritage, and what threats he faces, and it's so fantastic to read! We also just got moments in time with these various characters that added so much to the world. I just love these collections in this world!

Yeah, I loved reading these so much, they're such great reads!

Authors: Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, Kelly Link and Robin Wasserman
Series: Ghosts of the Shadow Market #1-10
Read: January 7th, 2020
Source: Ebook.bike
Reason Why: Love this world, and these authors, and it's a Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2020 Book!
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: June 4th 2018

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars

Week 9 Review: Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

From Goodreads:
Simon Lewis has been a human and a vampire, and now he is becoming a Shadowhunter. But the events of City of Heavenly Fire left him stripped of his memories, and Simon isn't sure who he is anymore. He knows he was friends with Clary, and that he convinced the total goddess Isabelle Lightwood to go out with him…but he doesn't know how. And when Clary and Isabelle look at him, expecting him to be a man he doesn't remember…Simon can't take it.

So when the Shadowhunter Academy reopens, Simon throws himself into this new world of demon-hunting, determined to find himself again. His new self. Whomever this new Simon might be.

But the Academy is a Shadowhunter institution, which means it has some problems. Like the fact that non-Shadowhunter students have to live in the basement. And that differences—like being a former vampire—are greatly looked down upon. At least Simon is trained in weaponry—even if it's only from hours of playing D&D.

Join Simon on his journey to become a Shadowhunter, and learn about the Academy's illustrious history along the way, through guest lecturers such as Jace Herondale, Tessa Gray, and Magnus Bane. These ten short stories give an epilogue to the Mortal Instruments series and provide glimpses of what's in store in the Dark Artifices.

My Review:
I really enjoyed reading this 2nd collection of stories! Because sometimes it's Simon and his adventures, and other times, it's the stories told by others that relate to what's going on. Like the one tale of Will's son at school and yeah, that was kinda hard to read!

I think one of my favourite stories was the one that Robert Lightwood told, of the beginnings of the Circle, to show the students how easy it was to fall. And he demonstrated it by having Isabelle entice the students, and that it was a lesson and almost all of them failed, yeah. That was a pretty amazing story!

Another one of my favorites was when Alec and Magnus become parents by means of adoption of a warlock baby abandoned at the academy. How Magnus wasn't expecting that they'd permanently take care of the child, but the Lightwoods gathered around the first grandchild/nephew. It was so cute and so moving! I loved it!

There were so many ups and downs with Simon and Isabelle's relationship. That she had these memories of them that he didn't, and that's why he came to the school, to get away from those expectations. And the push-pull because they didn't know how to be this new couple.

This covers the 2 or so years that Simon was at the academy. Of how he changed minds and attitudes towards Mundanes and Downworlders just because of who he was. Of the friends he made, and of the stories that were told that deepened the world. But oh, that ending was so bittersweet!

This collection of stories was so fantastic and I really enjoyed reading it!

Authors: Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson and Robin Wasserman
Series: Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy #1-10
Read: March 1st, 2018
Source: Bought
Reason Why: Love this series, and these authors! And it's a Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2018 Book!
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: November 15th 2016

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars

Week 23 Review: The Book of Blood and Shadow

From Goodreads:
It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark. 

But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead. His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also—according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone—a murderer.

Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine; it is said that he who controls the Lumen Dei controls the world. Unbeknownst to her, Nora now holds the crucial key to unlocking its secrets. Her night of blood is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

My Review:
I enjoyed this book a ton! The beginning was a bit hard to get into, but I got through it, and yeah, it was really just fantastic! I enjoyed the Lumen Dei, and the groups that want to control it, the idea of it, almost sounded like what I remember of the Lara Croft? movies.

So, to have your friends killed, and your boyfriend being the one that is thought to have killed them, is not an easy thing to go through. Though any who've been through a similar thing, I don't think that if they followed the same path, that they'd go on the one that Nora went on!

I kinda guessed that the two of them were a part of the group. What with the speed that I was reading at, I had some brain power to actually think about this book, and with their backgrounds, well, it just made sense!

If there's a sequel, I'd really like that, because this book didn't close all the doors that it opened, so yeah, I'd love to spend more time in this world! It was pretty interesting, and there are probaly more secrets to discover!

This was a pretty great book, and I enjoyed it a lot!

Author: Robin Wasserman
Read: June 2nd, 2012
Source: Library
Reason Why: Sounded like a great book!
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: January 19th 2012

5/5 Hearts

4/5 Books

4/5 Stars