Review: The Red Scrolls of Magic

The Red Scrolls of Magic by Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ahhhhh, Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu - a combo I didn't expect to see until I heard that it was actually happening, writing a new series of Shadowhunters novels following the adventures - and adventurous love - of Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood? I'm totally in for it on this series, even if I totally find myself picturing Harry Shum, Jr. and Matthew Daddario far more easily than Godfrey Gao and Kevin Zegers. Sorry, but I'm actually more of a show fan than a movie fan in a lot of respects, and the casting of both halves of Malec is one of them for sure...but I digress.


In this, the first volume of The Eldest Curses, it's still officially marketed as YA but it does feel the least YA of all the Shadowhunters stories released thus far. Well, maybe a little more so when we're in Alec's POV, though he's more of NA age than anything else. And Magnus...well, there's no literary age group to hold him in, technically. Lol. But still, for the early buzz that this was to be the first "adult" Shadowhunters series, and then ultimately being changed to YA for marketing purposes...it still feels pretty mature, and Clare and Chu pull that off without, let's just say, dipping too many toes into Sarah J. Maas' erotica pool. I think that was a common concern point in the fandom, that the book would get labeled as "adult" simply because it would have more explicit sex or whatever. Ironically, Queen of Air and Darkness had more explicit scenes in it, and nobody's questioning that book's YA status, are they?

Overall, it's a fun little story that Clare and Chu give us, filling a bit of narrative gap about what Alec and Magnus were up to during their madcap European vacation around the time of City of Fallen Angels. We get a couple of phone calls that connect Alec back to his friends in New York, a few call backs to the original trilogy and the war against Valentine (we get to see many Downworlder establishments as well, where Valentine's name is such mud that even Valentine's Day is no longer celebrated.) We also get some much needed nostalgia from seeing Tessa again - she always brightens my day even if her extended life tends to be so hella tragic. And also we get a call forward or two to Johnny Rook and his little boy Kit, which makes me smile a bit because we all know how cool Kit's gonna be in the future...

The only real point against this book, for me, is one that I've seen other readers echo. Partly because of its status as a midquel, the stakes feel a lot lower - by design, a lot of major characters can't die or anything. But the ending, when a previous death appears to undo itself...that's when you know you're in for some serious shit come the second book, and the third too!

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