Lady Midnight Cover Analysis

Today was the day that the cover for Lady Midnight was revealed during the Shadowhunter's panel at New York City Comic Con and on Cassie's instagram.

Lady Midnight is the first installment in The Dark Artifices trilogy, which is still set in the Shadowhunter world, but is five years after the events in City of Heavenly Fire, and takes place in Los Angeles. We get a new cast of characters to follow, mainly Emma Carstairs and her parabatai Julian Blackthorn as a mysterious string of murders begin happening in Los Angeles and an impending war against the fair folk is almost upon them.

Synopsis: Los Angeles. It’s been five years since the events of the Mortal Instruments when Nephilim stood poised on the brink of oblivion and Shadowhunter Emma Carstairs lost her parents. After the blood and violence she witnessed as a child, Emma has dedicated her life to to discovering exactly what it was that killed her parents and getting her revenge.

Raised in the Los Angeles Institute with the Blackthorn family, Emma is paired as a parabatai with her best friend, Julian Blackthorn. A series of murders in the city catch her attention — they seem to have the same characteristics as the deaths of her parents. Could the murderer be the same person? And her attention isn’t the only one caught: someone has been murdering Downworlders as well. The Fair Folk make a deal with the Institute: if the Blackthorns and Emma will investigate the killings, they’ll return Mark Blackthorn to his home. The catch: they have only two weeks to find the killers. Otherwise it’s open war between faeries and Nephilim.

The Shadowhunters of the Institute must race against time to catch the killers, even as they begin to suspect the involvement of those closest to them. At the same time, Emma is falling in love with the one person in the world she’s absolutely forbidden by Shadowhunter Law to love. Set against the glittering backdrop of present-day Los Angeles, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches from the warlock-run nightclubs of the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica.

And the cover....

This is by far the most gorgeous Shadowhunter cover we've had had, and I thought it couldn't get better than Clockwork Princess. I was kinda sad that the spines will no longer match the previous Shadowhunter books, but honestly the spine looks pretty gorgeous. I wonder if the rune on the spine will change with each book release.

The girl on the cover is most certainly Emma Carstairs, who of course is our main character. It wasn't until upon further examination of this cover that I realized that in the background it shows inverted church spires as she floats suspended underwater. I honestly have no idea why she is wearing a dress in the cover, but I'm pretty sure it will be explained in the novel as for Cassandra Clare is not one to have a typical girl-in-dress-cover without reason being for it.

As soon as I saw this cover it reminded me of the Fair folk for some reason. There is a black spiraling darkness rising from the bottom to met her. I have a reason to believe that this might be connect Unseelie Court. Cassie confirmed to me on twitter, that we will be seeing the infamous Unseelie Court and it will be very creepy. Not much is known about the Unseelie Court in the Shadowhunter books, besides that the location of their Court is unknown to many and they're even worse than the Seelie Court.

Could it be that in the cover Emma is traveling to the Unseelie Court, which happens to be underwater. She also has a fear of the ocean so this may be her overcoming it. There's not much to go on from this cover, but it definitely makes me all the more eager to pick up this 786 page behemoth when it comes out on March, 8th 2016.

What do you guys think of the cover? What do you believe will happen in Lady Midnight?