Ghosts of the Shadow Market, by Cassandra Clare & Co

Hey, all! 

The time has come! A whole series of novellas based on my one and only favourite character that I will love and cherish until the end of my reading days: James Carstairs. A set of short stories, following Jem both as a silent brother and as a human, though time, looking for the Lost Herondale. 

I laughed, and cried, and wanted to hug the characters. I had to stop reading because of surprise, and yet couldn't put it down. My only wish is that some of the stories may have been longer. 

This review will contain spoilers of The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, and The Dark Artifices! 

"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. As a Silent Brother, Brother Zachariah is 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.

Follow Brother Zachariah and see, against the backdrop of the Shadow Market’s dark dealings and festive celebrations, Anna Lightwood’s first romance, Matthew Fairchild’s great sin and Tessa Gray 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..."


This review won't be very thorough - each author that contributed brought their own voice to the story, different writing styles, and different ways of expressing crushing feelings. 

Now, anyone who has read my blog before, be it a tag or anything Shadowhunter-related, knows that I am a sucker for Jem Carstairs. His heart, his ways and his beliefs are absolutely beautiful, and I could not wait for this book to come out. Luckily this book showed up in my local bookstore almost two weeks before its initial release, so I had an earlier opportunity to let a bunch of strangers use words to break my heart.

Ah, isn't the reader's life sadistic? 

My most feel-y parts
I have said before, and will say again, that the concept of Parabatai is my absolute favorite fictional concept ever. Jem being with and remembering Will always got to me, because it was done so smoothly. They could never properly be friends as they were again, so there was always a tinge of melancholy when they were together. 

Worse, however, was some Jem and Tessa moments. Cassandra Clare, how dare you make me feel such things? This book was excellent in making you understand just how difficult Jem's life as a silent brother was. How he couldn't feel, how his emotions and even memories were fading slowly. Tessa taking care of Jem who almost died during World War One, Jem at Tessa's bedside after she gets stabbed, realizing that this is what he made she and Will go through while he was sick... 

Their daughter, Mina... 

I had so many emotions reading these parts it was difficult to keep up! 

The passages relating to the things that Jem was missing or had lost were particularily difficult to read, because everything lead to a sea of emotions. 
Integration
I actually really liked how Jem's story fit in with all the different timelines, and character's lives. I particularly liked his interaction with Alec in Argentina. However, the last novella kept me curious - I do realise that I have not read Queen of Air and Darkness so I may be missing a lot of plot to fully understand what happened in the last novella, but even then, I feel like Jem's story was just background, compared to the main plot. 

I loved getting to know how Alec and Magnus adopted Rafael, how some characters that have only been mentioned went through the struggles of being unlike the others, I liked seeing Ty and Livvy grow up, and Jace's first meeting with the Lightwoods. There is SO much that happened, that I was very happy to read! 

One day, when everything is published, I want to read all of the Shadowhunter set, in exact order. 


General impressions
This novella was full of memory, hope, and peace. Sometimes repetitive (yet that was quickly forgiven), the novella set was exactly what I needed nowadays. 

My favourites were... 
- A Deeper Love
- Learn About Loss
- Through Blood, Through Fire
- The Land I Lost


This made my fangirl heart happy, I'm giving it 4/5 stars <3

Stay bookish!