Dru is a good choice of protagonist because she has never been the chosen one, and the Faerie court is the right setting for her: a place where manners are a weapon and every compliment has a price. Clare is very good at this specific kind of social menace dressed in silk, and the Ash material plays to her strengths. The Kit and Ty thread is the one that will decide how this trilogy is remembered, and the book treats their estrangement with more patience than I expected.

James Marsters narrates seventeen hours and forty five minutes and is a known quantity in this universe, which helps: the returning names are distinguished clearly and the Faerie sections get a colder register. The cast is enormous after this many books, and a narrator who can keep them apart is doing half the work.

My complaint is that this is very much a first instalment. Several threads are set up and deliberately left hanging, and the middle stretch spend time reacquainting the audience with a world most of them know better than the author needs to explain.

If you are coming back to this universe, Better in Black is the other recent Cassandra Clare title, and Psycho Fae is a much faster, meaner take on a fae court with fewer obligations to a back catalogue.

The Faerie material is the strongest thing here. Clare writes courts where etiquette is a weapon, and Ash is a good sparring partner for a heroine who has spent years being underestimated. The romance is slow and uneasy rather than sweeping, which suits both characters.