Catchy Name Needed

 I made a list of what I've been reading lately, and I was going to talk about several different series that I've been reading. But I'm in the middle of the latest Shadowhunters book, and I seem to have Feelings about it. So I don't figure I'll get much further than this tonight.

I used to say "I'm reading a Cassie Clare book" or "I'm reading a Mortal Instruments book" but Shadowhunters is the name of the TV series (on Disney, switching to Netflix, I hear) so I figure they're all Shadowhunters books now. I'm sure not everybody has read these books and not everybody even knows about that series, either. (it's on Disney, after all - if you don't have kids you don't necessarily follow what's on Disney channels, at least I don't.)

"The Mortal Instruments" was the name of the first six books - or was it only the first three? I forget. I can't keep all the series names straight, anyway, which is why I'm perfectly happy to switch to a nice simple(-ish) name like Shadowhunters. I can remember The Mortal Instruments for some reason but I can't ever remember the name of the series that was set in the 1800s or the one I'm reading now. It's "The Dark Artifices" but I only know that because I looked earlier today, and who knows if I'll remember by tomorrow. Maybe I will, because I was thinking about why it's called that. This is the set of books that's set (generally) in California - although really only the first book stayed put in California, and since then they have bopped around and large parts of it have taken place in Europe and some in Faerie, too. I decided that Dark Artifices makes sense because it has running plot-lines about necromancy and there's a physical Book of the Dead that everybody keeps looking for. (And also a xeroxed copy of it, which I was amused to find that the Fairy Queen doesn't know what to make of.)

(I just took a detour of an hour or so over to my old Livejournal because I was pretty sure I remembered talking about Shadowhunters, and I found it. It was at the time - almost three years ago - when the Shadowhunters series was starting up, and I went on at some length about the casting with reference to the book and also the very bad feature film (City of Bones) from a few years back. That's here, and also a little bit in the entry before that, here.)

Well, so anyway, the third book of the fourth trilogy about Shadowhunters has just come out (Queen of Air and Darkness). So there's an actual dozen books - not even counting the short story collections about Magnus and Simon and the one reference book. I'm about a third of the way through, I think, so nobody tell me any spoilers. (I was thinking that the one thing I really miss about reading physical books is that you can look at where you are and make a good ballpark estimate of how much is left and how long it might take you to finish. "34%" tells you that you're a third of the way through but not how long the damn thing is.) I re-read the two previous books plus the last Jace-and-Clary book (City of Heavenly Fire) because that's where these characters were introduced. I realized that I found the previous book (Lord of Shadows) a long slog, in particular. It's very talky. I enjoy the plot, when it finally happens, and it's not that I hate the rest of it, but I think it could have stood some editing down. I'm kind of impatient generally with the whole Emma-and-Julian doomed lovers business. Maybe it's partly because Cassie Clare has kind of worn that trope out, really. We were in the car the other day and for some reason I started trying to explain the whole thing to Rob about how Jace has had about three or four different last names and he was Clary's brother - no, he's not! - and all of that stuff. (I never believed that he would turn out to be Clary's brother for a minute.) Anyway, I like the characters of Emma and Julian aside from the whole romance thing but man, is that one plot that I'm bored with. (The romance that I'm really feeling is the whole Mark-and-Christina-and-hot-fairy-prince threesome thing.)