"Every decision you make, makes you. Never let other people choose who you're going to be." (Catarina Loss)
After reading City of Heavenly Fire, I was excited to read Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy for three reasons:
1) Simon is one of my favourite Cassandra Clare characters. He's nerdy and relatable, but he's also kind, caring and heroic.
2) I really wanted to read about a Shadowhunter Academy and witness Simon training to become a Shadowhunter.
3) I'm Sizzy trash. Isabelle is one of my favourite Shadowhunters and I love the idea of Simon and Isabelle. She's a popular fighting goddess and Simon's the nerdy guy who can't even fathom why a girl like Isabelle would be interested in him.
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy doesn't just revolve around Simon and his life at the academy. It revolves around many other prominent Shadowhunter families and characters. It was so awesome to read about my favourite characters from The Infernal Devices going after Jack the Ripper in The Whitechapel Fiend and I was living for the Will Herondale and Gabriel Lightwood banter. I also enjoyed reading about the generation that comes after The Infernal Devices characters in Nothing But Shadows and James Herondale and Matthew Fairchild's friendship. It's made me so excited to read Chain of Gold. The stories, Pale Kings and Princes and Bitter of Tongue, have happy moments, bittersweet moments and sad moments and the Blackthorn family situation is so terrible and sad.
My favourite story is Born to the Endless Night which is about Alec, Magnus and the Lightwoods. It's nice to see how much Alec has matured and how secure he is about his relationship, and read about the Malec moments and the new addition to the Lightwood-Bane family.My least favourite stories are The Fiery Trial and The Evil We Love. I didn't like The Fiery Trial because I dislike confusing drugged-up dream sequence stories and I wasn't a fan of The Evil We Love because I don't care much about Robert Lightwood and I'm so done with the Circle. However, I appreciate that he's trying to make amends with his family and be better.
Ultimately, Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy is about Simon's journey. It's about him trying to reconcile the old and heroic Simon with the new mundane Simon and figure out who he is and his purpose in the world. While, I love Sizzy, I couldn't deal with the forced public declarations of love, the back-and-forth and the angst. However, in later stories, the relationship between Simon and Isabelle becomes the relationship that I fell in love with in The Mortal Instruments series. I also enjoyed witnessing the changing and developing relationships between Simon and the people he meet at the Academy. George Lovelace is an amazing addition to the Shadowhunter world and his death is so pointless. I also like Catherina Loss and her dry, sarcastic and defiant nature.
While some stories weren't as good as others, there's no story that I wanted to skip or skim. The reason for this is because I was really invested in the characters and their lives. I had a blast reading Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy and I'm so excited to read The Dark Artifices and The Last Hours series.
"All the beautiful surprises of life are what make life worth living." (Magnus Bane)