Bookclub: The Bane Chronicles – The Midnight Heir
We are reading The Bane Chronicles.
Join us this week, where we discuss The Midnight Heir
Live tweet using #tDiE if that’s your jam.
Our Patreon page is here. Join us now to gain access to our discord chat, full of lovely awesome people talking Shadowhunters, as well as a whole bunch of other cool stuff.
Come talk to us on Twitter and Tumblr, or email us and please review us on iTunes.
27th July 2025 @ 3:02 pm
yes, you’re probably right about signing contracts, i hadn’t thought about it that way!
the news article seems interesting – she last spoke about the malec books saying that it’ll come out after the wicked powers book #1, bc it’s set after it and according to her tumblr, “some of what happens in the wicked powers is significant to the black volume”, so i guess her response could could mean “im working on TWP bc im working on book 1, and TLBOTW after that, and THEN finishing the trilogy”, which based on current info places TLBOTW to come out mid-late 2026.
Part of the delay is because covid backed up all her releases, part is because she took a break from shadowhunter books for a while (though shes back on them now), part is because she changed publishers (which tbf does make me question TLBOTW bc surely thats contracted w the other malec books with her old publisher???). Idk, man…i hope it comes out 😭😭 Cassandra Clare did an amazing thing by inventing magnus bane and then did a horrible thing by putting him in all her stories making me need to read all them. CAN SHE JUST RELEASE THE FINAL ONE AND LET ME REST 🙏🙏
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
10th July 2025 @ 3:22 pm
every additional month that goes by with no announcement of the third malec book to finish up that series makes me think of this comment… WHAT?! Why are we doing this?!? is something I find myself thinking quite often… lol
Xx
27th July 2025 @ 3:11 pm
telling myself shes using the time to make sure it’s better than book of the white was, but lets be honest, shes using it to write about golden, liony, herondales 💔
10th July 2025 @ 3:34 pm
haha there were a lot of acronyms, sure, but that just goes to underline your point, right?
I was just thinking about CC again and wondering whether she is still THE THING!! and so I found myself hitting up the news section on google (wow, I never go here lol) and reading an interview from April this year, which ended with
FFW: Are you working on anything new? We’d love a sneak peek or a hint if you can share anything!
CC: I try not to work on things all the time, but there are a couple of things right now. I’m back to working on the Wicked Powers series, which will be the last trilogy in the Shadowhunters world. There will also be a third book in the Chronicles of Castellane called The Bone Conjurers, and this is the first time I’m sharing that title, which is cool. I also sold my first non-Shadowhunters series to Random House and right now the first book is currently called Foretold.
so it seems official… we are never getting that third malec book ::FACEPALM:: but yeah, the combination of ‘I try not to work on things all the time’ and currently working on three things, when there are also so many unfinished things… god, it drives me mad being on this side of things, I don’t understand how she’s not scraching her skin off, having that many unfinished things…
I assume, ultimately, what you’re saying about in book promo for stuff that may eventually happen, is true. and I also assume that she wanted to start as many shadowhunter worlds things and get contracts signed for trilogies, with the assumption that fans would wait around, and that those who weren’t going to wait would still have a high return rate when a new book does finally come out. meanwhile she can write other things and ride the wave… i dunno. it’s all weird. but one day, maybe, there will be another book… we hope?
Xx