I finished Chain of Iron an hour or so ago.
So… I just have to review it. Considering it’s March 3rd, the book released yesterday (although I got it Monday evening), the book is 688 pages, I’ve had work duties for the past couple of days, and I’m already 5 books behind in my Goodreads reading challenge, I suppose you can guess that it was a book I couldn’t put down. In fact, I stayed up until 3 AM two nights in a row to read it.
But… wow. That ending.
This review assumes you’ve already read Chain of Gold (click the link for my review of that book).
Lucie is on the cover of Chain of Iron, but this book spends a great deal of time on James and Cordelia. Which I love, because they’re my favorite couple in this series. The book begins right before their wedding. And after that… everything falls apart.
There’s a killer on the loose again, and James is having dreams about the murders. Elias, Cordelia’s dad, returns, but he’s still drinking. Matthew’s still drinking–if you’ve read “Cast Long Shadows” from Ghosts of the Shadow Market, then you know why he started drinking, although Matthew does tell someone what happens during the course of this book. Lucie and Grace are working together, trying to resurrect Jesse.
It’s hard to say too much without giving away spoilers. But… we have some of our suspicions (if you have them) confirmed about Grace, some of the relationships in the Shadowhunter’s Found Family tree are foreshadowed, Belial makes a comeback, and Lucie turns out to be a little more conniving and interesting than she was in Chain of Gold. Grace and Alastair are shown to be… sympathetic characters? Chain of Iron doesn’t excuse their actions, but it does give reasons as to why they behaved the way they did. Maybe they’ll even be redeemed in the last book?
And then there’s the elephant in the room. The ending. It’s not as bad as the ending to that one Shadowhunter book where a major character is literally stabbed to death in (I think) the last chapter, but it comes close to it. If you don’t like cliffhangers–wait to read this one. There isn’t a major death at the very end, but there is a–misunderstanding–that could easily be cleared up under normal circumstances, but Cassandra Clare literally throws every obstacle in the way so that it doesn’t, and now we have to wait a year to see it resolved.
That being said, I’m willing to bet that Chain of Thorns is going to be MONSTER sized (like pretty much all of her last books in trilogies are). There are so many things that have to be done in that book. Matthew’s secret is going to have to come out, all the characters that are supposed to get together and have kids in the Found Family Tree are going to have to find love together, and the epilogue will probably end up showing us how they live happily ever after. Clare has said that after The Last Hours, she’s going to write The Wicked Powers (which deals with the modern-day timeline) and that’s going to be it. Since this will be the end of our London timeline, I’m sure she won’t leave us with loose ends. I’m sure I’m going to ugly cry hard like the end of Clockwork Princess.
In a nutshell–amazing book, noooo!!!! ending because of the cliffhanger. I need Chain of Thorns ASAP. Chain of Iron will most certainly get a reread before next March.