Last week, I finished The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and maureen Johnson. This is a collection of short stories about events in the life of Magnus Bane, one of the major characters in Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments, Infernal Devices, and Dark Artifices series (possibly others but these are all I’ve read). I did my best in this post to talk about this book without spoilers, but it was difficult given how closely tied to Clare’s other work this is.
I really liked this book. It’s a lot of fun, but at the same time, it’s not entirely fluffy adventures. There is definitely some dark stuff in these books. What I particularly like is the ability to see several big events in history (centuries apart) from the same point of view character. Over the course of these stories, we see Magnus’s adventures in Peru (which may or may not have led him to be banned from Peru), his attempt to save Marie Antoinette and the royal family during the French Revolution, his stint running a speakeasy in the late 1920s, his discovery of a ring of vampires getting high on humans addicted to drugs in the 1980s, and more. I liked how cohesive this book was, and I had fun putting together what I learned about Magnus in each story.
There was, as I’ve mentioned, some overlap with the existing books in Clare’s shadowhunter universe. In one story, we meet Will Herondale’s father, Edmund, and in another story Magnus encounters James Herondale, Will and Tessa’s son. Later on, we see Magnus’s first interaction with Valentine’s Circle, the story of how he first meets Jocelyn and Clary from Magnus’s point of view, his first date with Alec, and another story about Magnus trying to figure out what to get Alec for his birthday. The final story is all the messages on Magnus’s voicemail after what happened at the end of City of Fallen Angels. While all these stories were interesting, I thought they were on the whole weaker than the stories that were just about Magnus and his adventures, with the exception of the first date with Alec because that is a great story. These stories were burdened by the fact that they were connected so heavily to the plot of the other books. For them to be complete short stories, there had to be a fair amount of exposition that wasn’t necessary in the other stories. At the same time, as I worked my way through these stories, I was definitely looking forward to seeing Magnus’s perspective on the crucial events in the main books of the series. I think I would have been disappointed if there was no overlap at all. And I definitely did enjoy these stories. So while these stories weren’t as strong on their own in my opinion, connected to the broader universe they are great.
If you haven’t read any of Cassandra Clare’s books before, I’m not sure I would recommend this as a starting point. I don’t think it would make a lot of sense. But if you’ve read any of her books, this collection is great fun and I definitely recommend.