Friday 56 and Book Beginning: Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1) by Cassandra Clare

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

Please join us over at RoseCityReader every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Synopsis:

     It’s been five years since the events of City of Heavenly Fire that brought the Shadowhunters to the brink of oblivion. Emma Carstairs is no longer a child in mourning, but a young woman bent on discovering what killed her parents and avenging her losses.

     Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn’t lead her in treacherous directions…

     Making things even more complicated, Julian’s brother Mark—who was captured by the faeries five years ago—has been returned as a bargaining chip. The faeries are desperate to find out who is murdering their kind—and they need the Shadowhunters’ help to do it. But time works differently in faerie, so Mark has barely aged and doesn’t recognize his family. Can he ever truly return to them? Will the faeries really allow it?

Book Beginning:

     Prologue

Los Angeles, 2012

Shadow Market nights were Kit's favorite.

   They were the nights he was allowed to leave the house and help his father at the booth. He'd been coming to the Shadow Market since he was seven years old. Eight years later he still felt the same sense of shock and wonder when he walked down Kendall Alley through Old Town Pasadena toward a blank wall-- and stepped through it into an explosive world of color and light.

Thoughts:

Kind of a 'meh' opening. 

My 56:

Julian stared after Ty as he went into the house. The look on his face-- it was as if Emma were looking at one of his paintings, but crumpled and torn, the colors and lines jumbled. "They all think that, don't they?" he said slowly. "They all think Mark is going to stay."

Thoughts:

I am almost to this part of the book. And I am still not 100% sure on how I feel about this book. It might be how long it's been since I read the last book in TMI, or after being disappointed with both the movie and even more disappointed with the show adaptation of that series, but I am kind of not really feeling these Shadowhunter books anymore. 

But then again, I wasn't really sure how I felt about TMI series until around the middle of the second book. But those characters were slightly more interesting than these characters so far. We'll see how I feel after I finish it.