Play Book Tag discussion

Cast Long Shadows by Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan

Summary:
Matthew Fairchild is the Consul’s son and the golden-haired boy of the Nephilim. He has the love of his family and his parabatai James Herondale, and nothing to wish for, except excitement and artistry and beauty that do not seem to fit in with a warrior’s way of life. Matthew gets more than he bargained for at the Shadow Market, where he commits the greatest sin of his life - something he can never tell his parabatai, or any of the honorable Shadowhunters around him.

My thoughts:
It was a good family drama story for only 56 pages, however I found it hard knowing who was from what family. This might be because it's been a second since I've brushed up on my Shadowhunter family history, but I feel like the inclusion of a few family trees would be helpful to the reader.

In this short story, Matthew's sexuality was not directly talked about but there were different hints here and there that he is in love with his parabatai James (it was also said in the summary). I thought this was going to be the base of the story since it took place in 1901 and therefore very frowned upon, but it was about something completely different (I won’t spoil it for anyone wanting to read the book). I was glad it wasn’t the main focus because any story that uses someone part of the LGBTQ+ community as a shocking twist leaves a sour feeling in my stomach. It’s not a step in the direction of making people’s sexuality that is not considered “traditional” more normalized.

The plot of parabatai falling in love with each other has been used before in another one of Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter books (I don’t think that James felt the same way, but the story didn’t take much time in James’s head). This is something I’ve run into a lot with the Shadowhunter series (that plot ideas are reused a lot), and it still bothers me that she does this but I get that when you have so many books as a part of a series, events are bound to repeat themselves.