Life is good for Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood. They're living together in a fabulous loft, their warlock son, Max, has started learning to walk, and the streets of New York are peaceful and quiet-as peaceful and quiet as they ever are, anyway.
Until the night that two old acquaintances break into Magnus's apartment and steal the powerful Book of the White. Now Magnus and Alec will have to drop everything to get it back. They need to follow the thieves to Shanghai, they need to call some backup to accompany them, and they need a babysitter.
Also, someone has stabbed Magnus with a strange magical weapon and the wound is glowing, so they have that to worry about too.
Fortunately, their backup consists of Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and newly minted Shadowhunter Simon. In Shanghai, they learn that a much darker threat awaits them. Magnus's magic is growing unstable, and if they can't stop the demons flooding into the city, they might have to follow them all the way back to the source-to the very realm of the dead. Can they stop the threat to the world? Will they make it back home before their kid completely wears out Alec's mom?
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IT WAS NOT QUITE DAWN when Magnus Bane rode into the low clearing with death on his mind. PROLOGUE, IDRIS, 2007
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(@simonschusterUK, 1 September 2020, 400 pages, hardback, bought from @AmazonUK)
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So, I'm a massive fan of the author and the Shadowhunters and Magnus Bane is my favourite character, so loving this book was a given. I enjoyed it a little more than the first Eldest Curses book, The Red Scrolls of Magic. This features all my favourite Shadowhunter characters from all of the series. Alec and Magnus being daddy to baby Max is so adorable it's almost nauseating especially when he performs magic without realising it. Like baby Wyatt in Charmed. The events of the original series, The Mortal Instruments continue to resonate with the Cold Peace between Shadowhunters and Downworlder's still having unpleasant knock-on effects. Magnus is the central character here as his mentor, Ragnor Fell, thought to be dead for some years, under the thrall of Sammael, a Prince of Hell becomes a threat and Magnus battles to save him and himself and the world of course. The ending leaves the way open for another book when Sammael tries to encourage the other Princes of Hell to pay a visit to Lucifer.
