Bookclub: The Bane Chronicles – The Midnight Heir
We are reading The Bane Chronicles.
Join us this week, where we discuss The Midnight Heir
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13th January 2025 @ 3:56 pm
I doubt you’re still concerned about this four years later – but where you talk about how this reads like a mystery novel that is never solved, the “mystery” is resolved in The Last Hours (Clare’s series which is set in the Edwardian period, with James etc as the protagonists).
I’m pretty sure when she wrote the Bane Chronicles neither TMI or TID were finished, and TLH is the most recently published book (aside from TLBOTW maybe but TLH was definitely published after TDA). So she is once again setting up a book in a book which is…tedious! It’s my least favourite story in the whole thing by FAR – I really was SO uninvested in TLH as a whole (I think TID is some of her strongest writing but I didn’t care about the characters that much; the TMI characters are what have always kept me reading – TLH has neither of these things because it’s set before TMI characters are born and after Shadowhunter-book-oversaturation!). I vaguely remember that at the time that TDA had been outlined and we knew the idea behind it (Blackthorns/LA), and TLH had been announced as the series that would come after TDA (announced in such an odd way – it was just TLH and the meaning behind the acronym was a secret and we couldn’t know any of the characters except that they were the kids of TID characters – meaning this story seems to exist only as…promo for a series which was three books away from existing???).
Some of the weird things you pick up in the episode similarly are to set up for TLH (spoilers though I don’t think you’ll care about as you’re not reading TLH – James’ amber eyes, for instance, are amber because he’s possessed by Tessa’s demon father, Belial, and the eyes are a marker of that). It honestly feels like such a waste of space to me in TBC! I agree that it’s well written in terms of tone/atmosphere etc, but I hate it so much because I really don’t like all the Easter Egg-yness – because really and truly I don’t care about the non-TMI characters! And so to write a whole story to set up for a series which doesn’t even exist??? Like, it wasn’t presented as promo, but looking at the publication dates really does make it seem like that!
This was so very long for no reason. With so many acronyms! Sorry 😅
13th January 2025 @ 4:02 pm
Actually, now that I think about it TID must have been finished because the resolution of the Will/Tessa/Jem love triangle is made obvious in the story – but CoHF definitely wasn’t out (hence it ending on the Malec breakup voicemails) and TDA was released straight after TMI. So TLH was still, at minimim, reliant on two books being published before it could even be properly conceptualised and it’s like…what?! Why are we doing this! Can we please let the Herondales be! Just for one book!!! Lol