Book Review: ‘The Last King of Faerie’ and happy release day! 🥳➰

A very happy book birthday to The Last King of Faerie and Cassandra Clare! ♥
The beginning of the end aka the first book in her The Wicked Powers trilogy is finally out and readers can return to the Shadow World to experience new adventures with Dru, Ty, Kit, and Ash.

Happy reading to everyone once you have your copy! 🙂

Since it is tradition, here is my spoiler-free review for The Last King of Faerie. A massive thank you to Walker Books for sending me an ARC/proof!

How do you write a review for a book you’ve spent more than a decade waiting for?

Back in June 2013 (!), Cassandra Clare announced her fifth Shadowhunters series, then only called TWP. Over the years we of course found out the title of the final trilogy (The Wicked Powers, derived from ‘And bronze to summon wicked powers’), and consequently the titles of the individual books: The Last King of Faerie, The Last Prince of Hell, The Last Shadowhunter. We got to meet this trilogy’s main characters in the prequel trilogy The Dark Artifices, although they were younger then, read Q&A posts on tumblr, saw clips on social media where Cassie shared some titbits. We read snippets and saw beautiful artwork of the characters.
The last Shadowhunters book I wrote a review for was in January 2023, this time for Chain of Thorns, which was set in 1903. Fast forward to November 2026 in our world and 113 years later in Cassie’s fictional world. I am excited to share my thoughts with you!

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“All the stories are true. And all true stories must come to an end.”
(Quote from the FairyLoot edition)

The Wicked Powers is the culmination of a journey that started almost twenty years ago. A journey that is sadly coming to an end. We are returning to the Shadowhunters universe for the final time; the final first book. Writing this review is making me feel quite wistful, but I am nevertheless going to focus on the positive things.

I do not think it is an exaggeration when I say that Cassie has outdone herself with The Last King of Faerie! If I could give it more than five stars, I totally would. ♥

It is a phenomenal start to the final trilogy, and the following sentences are what I told Cassie after I had finished reading it: “Reading The Last King of Faerie felt like coming home and being with good friends. That sounds like a cliché, but I don’t care. It was just so lovely to be back in the world of the Shadowhunters, to experience new adventures with them together.”

The book is split equally between Dru and Kit, which gives it a good balance. I didn’t feel like one POV/storyline did take away from the other. Both were important and were tied together nicely.

One thing that I loved, maybe because my teenage years are long past me, is that the protagonists were all a bit older than the main characters from previous books (Magnus and The Eldest Curses excluded of course 😉).

Dru was my MVP! She was feisty, vulnerable, and so funny! Kit was as well. Some lines will definitely make you laugh out loud!
Dru shone in every single scene in my opinion; she’s opiniated and not afraid to speak her mind although it does get her into trouble sometimes. I cannot wait to see her again in book two!

Ty has grown so confident – not that he wasn’t before – and he knows exactly what he’s capable of. He’s still a bit quiet, but I loved seeing the development he went through.

Ty’s bond with Livvy worries me so much; everything else is a spoiler, sorry! The majority of her scenes with Kit were much more light-hearted, not all of them, though.

Kit has also really matured and obviously struggles with being a descendant of the First Heir – who wouldn’t, though? Despite being a Herondale and a distant relative of Jace, he sometimes reminded me of James Herondale. He was thoughtful, but there were also moments where he was really funny!

From one faerie guy (kind of) to the next: Ash. We barely saw him in previous Shadowhunters books but now he’s finally sticking around so that we can meet him properly (and maybe also fall in love with him). Although he is a morally grey character, I have come to like him. It’s not his fault that he has horrible parents or spells were put on him as a child. You can definitely tell that he cares about Dru, although she also irritates him quite a bit. 😊 I thoroughly enjoyed their dynamics, especially their verbal sparring.

Jaime Rosales is back in this book and not aware that people have been worried about him due to his long absence. He and one other character make an important discovery that is going to be important in the second book.

Dru’s friend Thais from the Rio Institute is introduced and despite not having that much page time, she was lovely! Thais is an amazing friend to Dru and very caring. I hope we’ll get to see a lot more of them together in the future.

Cassie shared that we would see the characters from The Mortal Instruments at the beginning and this was such a lovely throwback! I missed them although I have only read about Clary and Jace like two weeks ago.
On the topic of Clary and Jace, I simply have to mention the prophecy that Max Trueblood found and we first heard about in The Time of Two (Better in Black). It is Bad. Yes, it deserves a capital B.

Janus is a horrible man, and I barely feel any pity for him now. Maybe my feelings will change again in the next book – my thoughts on Conor from Cassie’s The Chronicles of Castellane did a 180 in the second book so you never know – but I somehow doubt it this time.
We do see some surprise characters but most of them were quite welcome and added some gravitas to the story; others I totally could have done without because their appearance only foreshadows bad stuff. 😦

Of course, you cannot have a Shadowhunters book without a villain or more than one; one name in particular made me shake my imaginary fist at Cassie because their introduction pretty much solidifies that sh*t is about to go down in the next book! The stakes are high and getting even higher. (In fairness, I have been waiting for this character to show up for pretty much a decade now and although they are bad news for our characters, I know Cassie is going to create an amazing story arc with them!)

Returning to Faerie after The Dark Artifices and experiencing it from a completely new perspective was interesting, but I still prefer the world our Shadowhunters live in. It is rather funny that Cassie ended up writing about faeries so much when she wasn’t a fan of them at the beginning. She does pull it off beautifully, though.

We know Kit and Ty are travelling through Europe (London, Bruges, Budapest and more) and I can totally picture some readers visiting the places the boys visited. Tessa and Jem have Blackfriars Bridge; Kitty shippers could have a site in one of the cities in the book. I know I’ll definitely pay one site in particular a visit and take some photos there. I loved the quest the boys had to go on. At times Kit and Ty were able to have some carefree moments, but then there were of course also really serious and/or dangerous moments for them.

Cassie already shared that there would be a lot of kissing, and boy, she did not exaggerate! My fangirl heart was so happy! If you were to ask me which couple or future couple I loved reading about more, I could not give you a straight answer. I loved Kitty, but I also loved Morgenthorn – I feel like Cassie needs to do a poll on Dru & Ash’s ship name.

Anyway, both couples were great: Kit and Ty obviously have history, and we already know Kit’s feelings. I love a second chance romance and this book is clearly one!
One particular Kitty scene made me giggle and smile like crazy. My annotation was in all caps and had a lot of !!! 😊The scene also lived rent-free in my head for several days.
Ash is still a rather new character, but we know that there was a certain ‘je ne sais pas quoi’ between him and Dru previously. Ash did keep Julian’s painting of Dru after all! Some scenes with Dru and Ash were just terrific and I was cheering for my girl Dru.
The yearning in The Last King of Faerie was just so good! I obviously can’t reveal who I’m referring to, but I’m sure you won’t be disappointed once you read the book yourself.

Cassie’s writing seemed so effortless, although we all know that she’s put a lot of work into it to make it seem that way. The plot was flowing the whole time, there was no lull in the pace, and I simply couldn’t put the book down!
One line made me gasp and be like “I knew it!” Blink and you might miss it. Yes, I know this is super mysterious and unhelpful, but maybe you’ll know the scene I’m referring to when you read the book.

There is so much more that I could write about this first book, but I don’t want to overwhelm and/or bore you. 😉

Overall, The Last King of Faerie was everything I wished for! It was so good to be back in this world. ♥
Despite being quite serious at times, it was also a very romantic book, something I truly enjoyed! Now it is finally published, I cannot wait to read it once more to fangirl all over again. 😊 I am also already impatiently waiting for The Last Prince of Hell and can only tip my imaginary hat to Cassie for the beauty (inside and outside) that it The Last King of Faerie!

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If you’ve already read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The Last King of Faerie is available now wherever books are sold.