London is Calling: A Guest Post from Cassandra Clare, Author of Chain of Thorns
Hardcover $24.99
Chain of Thorns
Chain of Thorns
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Hardcover $24.99
Shadowhunter fans rejoice – this stunning conclusion to The Last Hours series will answer all of your burning questions. Cassandra Clare once again delivers a sweeping tale full of secrets, betrayal, and of course, demons. We can’t wait to see what comes next in the Shadowhunters universe. Keep reading for a guest post from Cassandra Clare about how the city of London has influenced her writing and life.
Shadowhunter fans rejoice – this stunning conclusion to The Last Hours series will answer all of your burning questions. Cassandra Clare once again delivers a sweeping tale full of secrets, betrayal, and of course, demons. We can’t wait to see what comes next in the Shadowhunters universe. Keep reading for a guest post from Cassandra Clare about how the city of London has influenced her writing and life.
London has always been one of my favorite places. When I arrive there, as soon as I touch down on the tarmac, I start to feel the excitement of anticipation, even if it’s not about anything more specific than “I’m about to be in London.”
I’ve never been sure why—I don’t have ancestral ties to England, that’s for sure. It might be because I lived in London for a year with my parents when I was nine. They took me out of school (which I’m sure I enjoyed) and created a homeschooling program built around reading books set in London and visiting significant sites in the city. (There is a famous story in my family: when we visited Westminster Abbey, my father turned to me and said, “Mary Queen of Scots is buried here in two pieces,” and I immediately threw up, after which I assume we were banned from the premises.) Despite that mishap, it was one of the most exciting years of my life, during which my love of reading, travel, and London was cemented.
It’s that love of London that led me to write my series the Infernal Devices, and more recently, to return to London, now in the Edwardian era, with my latest Shadowhunter trilogy, the Last Hours. One of the things about the Shadowhunter world that most delights me is that it’s a world where magic hides in plain sight. Where every street, every monument, has two histories: the history we all know, and a secret, magical history known only to Shadowhunters and Downworlders.
I was able to pull in some of my favorite London locations to serve dual purposes in the Last Hours. The Devil Tavern on Fleet Street, for instance, where Ben Jonson established the Apollo Club (frequented by Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, and Jonathan Swift) though long demolished, became the headquarters of the main characters.
St. Bride’s Church, off Fleet Street, became the London Institute. Mount Street Gardens became the site of a massive battle between good and evil, Chiswick House a tumbledown ruin filled with ghosts. When the pandemic struck, I was grateful for the many research trips I’d taken to London as, unable to travel, I used firsthand accounts of the times, old maps, and my own photographs to reconstruct geography and architecture, down to hidden chambers in Westminster Abbey itself.