Cassandra Clare
I’m Cassandra Clare. I write the Castellane chronicles and the Shadowhunters books. The Last King of Faerie is out November 3!
Updated: 1 day 9 hours ago
Will Ty be a centurion at the start of TLKOF? And how will he be able to leave the Scholomance for their road trip?
The Scholomance isn't really about chasing down students and making them come back if they don't want to. It's voluntary to be there.
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Hi Cassie, Thank you for writing such wonderful stories all these years. Your characters have me in a chokehold since I was 11. My question is regarding the new management style lol - young shadowhunters in every series have a habit of going over the...
This is a very funny question. I do get what you mean: in the past, young Shadowhunters have had to deal with a corrupt or incompetent Clave along with other enemies. Now we know the Clave is neither corrupt nor incompetent, and hopefully not too many jerks are in positions of influence. I can promise that Alec has not gone mad with power or anything.
So indeed, in this iteration of things, the Clave is not the problem. The Clave is also sort of split, and the Cohort remains a threat, along with plenty of other evildoers. As for why the kids have to handle some of this themselves and not have the Consul etc. handle it, well. Let's just say things are chaotic and it isn't possible for the adults to handle all the kids' problems.
(Ty, Kit and Dru are not currently doing any necromancy, although they will have to all deal with the fallout from past necromancy. )
Also, I set my alarm to remind me to open up my inbox for questions, then it didn't go off! I am technologically cursed. Trying to be more reliable, though!
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I don’t know if this would be considered a spoiler but I’m curious. Are there going to be flashbacks in TLKoF like there was in Lady Midnight/ Chain of Gold or is just set in the present timeline?
There aren’t structural flashbacks, but between each chapter there are interstitials. These can be anything from pages from a book of Faerie history to the viewpoints of characters we haven’t seen much in the main narrative stories or an alternate perspective on a scene we’ve already experienced. There is one big flashback I can think of but it’s more like a vision of something that was forgotten than a journey into the past. At the moment there are more flashbacks in LPOH.
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Hey Cassie, it’s been a while, I’m 33 next week. It been a fun 15 years reading your books. Recently I read Castellane, also beautifully written. Shadowhunter world remains my favorite though, and I’m a Blackstairs girl. I’m still gathering up the...
Bred in the Bone is sad, but not because anything terrible happens to Julian or Emma. It is more sad in the philosophical sense of reminding us that nothing is permanent, that as Stephen King once titled a story, "All that you love will be carried away." Mortality, human nature, love, you know. The little stuff.
So it's not so much sad as haunting, I would say. And Emma and Julian are fine; we see them in book one. Still happy, still together. :-)
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You mentioned a while ago that we have clues about Kit’s powers, but today I can’t connect anything to them. Like, making the fairies disappear and increasing Magnus’s power – is that related? Any clues? Spoilers?
Yes, those things are related, but they may not be as they seem. Helpful? Possibly? :-)
My inbox is open briefly at the moment and I'll open it back up Friday around noon EST.
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Who’s been your favorite one off character in TLKoF so far? (As in barley appears in more then a few scenes)
Oh, that's always fun. There's a redcap named Bonecrusher who is always in a bad mood, but it's probably Ash's friends Callen and Cuan, who are twins and while not unhinged, they are not entirely hinged either.
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Who is the model on the cover of TLKOF?
Her name is Ella John. We checked with her to make sure she was ok with us sharing that! She said it was fine and she's looking forward to reading the book. :) You can find her portfolio:
Ella John | Natural Model Management, LLC
She is lovely.
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Hi Cassie! I was wondering if the Sherlock book Kit sent Ty for Christmas and the herondale necklace will come up in their conversation at some point? Just curious
They will likely discuss Sherlock* at some point. They talk about the Herondale necklace a lot because It's the thing Magnus enchanted to strengthen Livvy and Ty's bond and Ty always wears it.
However, do they discuss that Kit basically provided the pendant to Magnus for the purpose and that Ty was supposed to have written him a thank you letter? Well, they have agreed not to discuss anything about "their past" at the beginning of the book, so they kind of talk around it. They may think about it, though.
*Kit didn't send Ty a Sherlock book as an Xmas present but I figured this was about the Sherlock book Kit left for Ty in QUAAD.
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Hi Cassie! What year does each Better in Black story take place and can you order them chronologically? It’s clear for some of them but unclear for others.
Im away from home so i cant dig through notes for dates, and some of them are pretty unspecific because when they happen exactly isn’t hugely important. I’ll give you a few with hard dates that align with canon events. In chronological order:
The Good Storm: 1879
A Surfeit of Annas
Zachary’s Day Out
The Beautiful Ajatara
Who the Wolf Loves: 2007, detailing the events of around 1975-1990
Too Wise to Love
City of Broken Hearts
Judgement of King Kieran
The Time of Two
Bred in the Bone
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Hi Cassie! I wanted to know if in tlkof we will learn why Nene lied (and how she managed to that if so) about not knowing Ash and him being kept away from the court, considering we learned in BiB that Nene raised Ash and that he would run freely...
Yes, we find out the Queen put members of the Seelie Court under a geas that prevented them from saying certain things about Ash to outsiders/non-Seelie Court members. We find this out from a different faerie under the geas, who tells it to Kit, and it's mentioned in relation to Nene as well. We haven't explored the concept of the geas much before, but it's an old part of Faerie folklore and would supersede the "not lying" — especially since most of what Nene says in TDA (that she doesn't know exactly how old Ash is now and wouldn't recognize him) — is true.
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Hi, Cassie! Can we expect by any chance an Ash’s POV at some point in TWP?
Yes, you'll see his POV in Last King of Faerie.
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Hey Cassie! Any intel on what Matthew and Sylvain got up to after A Sea Change? If not, will they be mentioned in TWP at all?
In the Anna and Ariadne story in Better in Black, we do see what Matthew and Sylvain are up to! There are also hints about them in several of the other stories, like Who The Wolf Loves (Luke/Jocelyn.)
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hi cassie!! could you share with us a quote or a fun fact about dru and ash? i’ve been obsessed with them for soo long
I will share a thing to think about? Ash has the power to make people love him and want to please him, so how does that go when he can't turn it off? Even if he wants to? :-)
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hi! first of all I’d like to thank you for creating a world filled with stories and characters that have been with me through my youth and I still cherish dearly in adulthood. I was wondering if there was any character that was particularly memorable...
I mean, I have adored writing Dru. She is so sharp and so funny, and I loved writing her reactions to Faerie, especially when things are ridiculous. And her annoyance that you cannot find a bra in Faerie because of course not.
I love her dynamic with Ash, too, and writing a plus-size Shadowhunter was incredibly interesting and fun. I got to draw on a lot of my own teenage experiences (not that I was ever a badass demon hunter) which is always interesting and revelatory.
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it’s been a while! hope you’ve been well x Q: considering outside of his time among faeries ash morgenstern was lived with and was raised by both THE sebastian morgenstern and THE jace herondale (janus) how is it that he isn’t trained fighter by the...
Hi! I hope you've been well, too.
I am not sure where the idea comes from that Ash is not trained? He is very well trained and an excellent fighter.
In Forever Fallen we already know Ash can fight; Sebastian dropped Ash into a pit of demons with only a sword and Ash fought them off. So that is canon. At that point, he is a much better fighter than Kit.
In FF, Janus agreed to try to train him as a Shadowhunter but in TKLOF we learn that due to his nature, there is some angelic magic Janus cannot access. That doesn't mean Ash isn't trained though; he has been training for years. He just doesn't know a few Shadowhunter things. He knows, however, plenty of other fighting skills Shadowhunters do not know. He has his own training room and weapons, etc.
Kit and Ash are not in competition — not in the books or, I hope, outside it! Ash's strengths are not Kit's weaknesses nor are Kit's strengths Ash's weaknesses. They are very different characters, just as Kit is very different from Will or Jace and Ty is very different from Dru or Julian.
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Do Jem and Tessa know about Kit and Ty? Do we see more about them as Kit’s parents?
They know Kit and Ty had a fight and that things are weird between them. They are not dumb, and know there was a romantic aspect to Kit and Ty's relationship even if they think Kit and Ty themselves might not have known that. Without being able to answer any questions about whether they are even around to see Kit and Ty's relationship develop in TLKOF I am sort of stuck saying anything else. :) We do see how the Carstairs-Herondale family functions a bit though. They're very cute.
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Can you say something about Thais’s love interest? And will we find out who it is in the first book?
I think you may well suspect who it is the first book.
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hi cassie! i am SO excited we’re going to hear from clary after so long in TLKOF and have her as a minor narrator, i was wondering will she be separated from the rest of the tmi gang in New York during TLKOF? can you tell us anything about what she’s...
It would definitely be fun to do an event in LA for the Wicked Powers, as the roots are there for so much of the story! And we do go back to Los Angeles in Wicked Powers — it's not just where Kit, Ty and Dru are from, it's the place Ash sort of lived in Thule.
Hmm, we do see a little of Clary and Jace in Better in Black, in terms of the years between TDA and TWP, and what happens in that story does reflect into LKOF. (Not in a way where you'll be lost if you haven't read it, just remember the word 'prophecy.' But it gets explained.)
I will say there's a scene in Pandemonium at the beginning of the book, with all the TMI gang there, and it was nice to go full circle back to the very beginning of TSC. Whether they stay together I cannot say. :)
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