Cassandra Clare shares Valentine’s Day snippets and art

Happy Tuesday!
I hope you guys had a lovely Valentine’s Day no matter how you spent it. Cassandra Clare naturally also celebrated yesterday’s holiday and she treated her readers to a new issue of her newsletter. There’s new art, snippets and a letter by a certain book shop owner turned headmaster. 😉
Let’s have a look at the art first because it is super cute! ❤

I love these two! You can read the Valentine’s Day entry if you click on this link.
Something that was alluded to in yesterday’s Secrets of Blackthorn Hall entry is explained in a letter from Luke to everyone at Shadowhunter Academy:

Here is Luke’s memo:

Dear Students, Staff, and Faculty,

 Love Spells Are Bad News.

As all of you surely know, last night the Academy was briefly overtaken by the effects of a classic “love spell” that grew unmanageable. While—as you also know—magic of all kinds is forbidden to Shadowhunters generally, and that does include the ones who are Academy students, so-called “love spells” are a particularly terrible thing to experiment with, for a variety of reasons. Here are four of those reasons.

1. Love spells are mind control.

There’s no getting around this one. Love spells are neither morally nor ethically acceptable, because they involve changing a person’s feelings against their will. Consider the horror of a demon using such magic to wreak havoc. Even the Spiral Labyrinth, who do not ever usually intervene in the behavior of warlocks, will come down hard on one of their own doing something like this.

2. Shadowhunters don’t do magic.

This is for a reason! It’s not just a point of pride. Shadowhunter history is full of examples of mundanes experimenting with magic, and inevitably it tempts its users to corruption, to power, to controlling others. It’s believed that it is precisely this temptation that caused Raziel to provide us with the magic of the Gray Book and only the Gray Book. (Even there, some runes are unreadable in the book except to Silent Brothers, because of the possibility of tempting the user to evil.)

3. Love spells are imprecise and temperamental.

You are not Magnus Bane! You will be, and now have been, amazed by how easily a spell intended to work on one person can instead grow to an enormous cloud of magic that covers an entire Academy campus.

4. Love spells are disruptive to the community.

This is true emotionally, but also more directly, as we found out last night. And sadly, I must address some of the specifics.

First: you’ll be relieved to hear that official apologies have already been sent to the High Warlock of Seoul as a result of an estimated three hundred fire messages falling on the heads of a certain band during a concert. Also apologies are due to a certain Ms. T. Swift. Details to follow. My conclusion: You must all stop listening to mundane music immediately. It is clearly turning your brains.

Many of you chose to spend the evening singing loudly below the windows of your beloved. Please return all Spanish guitars to the weapons room as soon as possible. No questions asked.

I don’t know how a kissing booth was constructed so quickly, but it is in the process of being dismantled as I write.

None of the spontaneously declared marriages will be recognized by the Clave, or mentioned to your families.

Those of you who have been delivered breakfast in bed from a mysterious benefactor may as well go ahead and eat it. The breakfast itself is likely unenchanted.

Classes are canceled this morning, but will resume this afternoon. The staff will take care of turning away whatever doo-wop groups, singing telegrams, candygrams, etc. were ordered to appear at lunch today. Professor Loss and I will be available in our offices for either personal or relationship counseling for the rest of the day and, I’m guessing, well into tomorrow.

Let this be a learning experience for us all.

Luke Garroway

Okay, wow. Dru and Thais really caused a lot of trouble. 😀

Like I already mentioned, we also got snippets, first there are two short Chain of Thorns snippets and then there’s another Sword Catcher snippet.

“Daisy, I know you think that I’ve never loved you,” James said, “and that therefore you can’t trust my feelings. But I want to show you something.”

By the Angel, Cassie is such a tease! How are we supposed to wait until 1st November when she shares such a snippet? What is James going to show Cordelia?
The second snippet features two characters that you don’t see together very often.

“Don’t just stand there, Alastair,” said Matthew. “Thomas needs you.”

Wow, this caught me by surprise. I hope Thomas is okay and maybe Matthew is warming up to Alastair a little bit?

And now for the final snippet, this time from Sword Catcher.

“I have to say,” Merren said. “I’m finding this situation a bit confusing. In terms of your . . . intentions.”

“I’m going to kiss you,” Kel said.

Merren looked relieved. “Oh, good.”

Hah, I like that Kel is so straightforward. I wonder who this Merren character is, though.

Cassie also reminded her subscribers: “Next month’s newsletter will be all about Sword Catcher. I’ll take you through the setting and writing process, complete with exciting photographic images. Well, I find them exciting. I suppose there is a reason that writing a novel is not a filmed sport…yet.”

This sounds fun, I cannot wait!

Have a great week and let me know your thoughts about the art, snippets and Luke’s memo!