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We already had the stuff with Helen so wasn't that enough advertisement for Dark Artifices? Apparently not. We needed some snippets from that “new�� trilogy.

Just like we didn’t have enough of Simon’s whining so far. Here we get that he wasn’t a Shadowhunter, not yet—but he wasn’t exactly a mundane anymore, either, and he was tired of pretending to be. He should better get used to it as it would be part of his future job to pretend. If this were done by better writers I could assume this and his fantasies about the "better, braver Simon" were part of an interesting story arc, but based on all, this is just pointless whining. And after him apparently making Isabelle sit through a Star Wars: The Clone Wars marathon and didn’t notice when she fell asleep, accidentally insulted her taste and the dates ending with a good night handshake I asked half-jokingly whether Magnus's dad didn't alter Simon's entire personality after all. Or was it just Clare?
You know what is really hard in these stories? Knowing whether something is from Simon or the narrator. I mean how would he know whether the Clave considered the faeries worthy of extinction? Is he that judgmental? He also considered all Shadowhunters (also his “friends?��) idiots. Which is an elephant in the glashouse situation here. Furthermore I do wonder whether Simon is the bigger asshole. I get why Helen�� no wait Julie�� or was it Beatriz? No idea, I cannot keep them apart, it was the one whose brother was sliced in half by faeries. I get why she acts the way she does, but what is his excuse?
And the idiocy only continues when we get to the story of how Helen and her brother were conceived. Apparently her father fell for the old trick of hurting someone in the fairy realm and per reflex he sucked the blood, thereby took in fluid and so belonged to the faerie queen. A trick the hunters really should be prepared for, and yet these people are claimed to be clever and the faeries even more so. The same faeries that are stated to break the rules whenever they can get away with it. So why should anyone trust such people?
As a matter of fact Helen's conception was basically due to rape according to the story told here. Or is this "spell does not count" as rape? After all, this isn't just pheromones or so, her father was under a spell and the same faerie tortured her uncle at the same time. And according to this, he was not just whipped but burned alive several times. How exactly are you supposed not to feel harsh towards faeries after that? This is pretty sick shit. But yet the story seems to blame the hunters entirely despite from their perspective every faerie being pretty damn evil. And if her biological father and her stepmother allegedly knew deep down that she and her brother could never fully be trusted due to their faerie heritage, then why keep them to begin with? And based on what was shown in prior books I doubt the preferred faerie weapon is "human love", I would say it is Shadowhunter idiocy. Sure, the authors later did a complete cop-out and tell us, completely as a narrator, that in truth Helen’s mother loved her father (she is still an asshole though) but his “useless brother�� (who was actually tortured by another faery) came between it and her lover found out about the torture. So it was all memory wipe and all, but no one would ever know because the faery died. Not that this cop-out surprises me but damn is that idiotic, especially since now the former “do not blame faeries�� makes “sense,�� because the authors could not actually separate what they know from what the characters would know. Which is probably why the possibility of faery rulers using Helen and Mark was never brought up.
The authors were apparently to busy somehow claiming Beatriz is anti-Downworlder and full of self-righteousness when she straight up says that she does get along with vampires, werewolves and warlocks. Simon of course never considers the possibility that she might know more than he does. He rather insults Shadowhunters. Which brings up the question I had for some time already and which I think has never been answered: why does Simon want to be a Shadowhunter if he apparently constantly thinks they are so terrible?
However, naturally, the story does not dwell on that but rather wants to press on with its screwed up tolerance message by coming with “you don’t blame all because of what one does.�� Which is really fucked up because from all the books from the series I read so far there were maybe 2, maybe 3 (maybe I forgot one), faeries that weren't deceiving, back-stabbing assholes or generally presented as a danger. So "one" is a bit of an understatement. Later on Isabelle’s statements get ridiculed also; at least I have no idea what other purpose that Star Trek reference was supposed to have.
And of course it never occurs to anyone that since during the "war" faeries either attacked or stayed out of the fight, no one knows which ones to trust after maybe 1 year. But screw that, we instead got this:
He’d spent enough time in Hebrew school to know how that kind of thing ended.
I know too, genocide sanctioned by Yahwe, but this book probably means Nazis. Who of course have sooooo much in common with the Clave. Even though if they had been as incompetent as the Clave they would have never posed a danger to anyone.
Funny enough, one bit of Clave doing that could be considered competent is just used to whine some more:
It seemed hideously unfair to Simon, that the people who cared most for Helen were the ones least involved in deciding her fate.
Yeah, because they would be biased towards her and not think clearly, which is why surgeons should not operate on their relatives or juries not decide about people they know.
This story reads like being written for pre-teens and not someone on the way to adulthood. Speaking of that, the attempts to make Simon seem troubled become more ridiculous as the stories go on. Now he freaks out about not being able to deliver what Helen, a person who barely knows of him, might expect something of him.
Also apparently too many memories is not exactly his problem, even though he could have fooled me there (not that these authors seem to know how memory loss works). Just like being able to have me fooled into thinking that Alicante would not be neutral dating territory. Or fooled me into thinking that Catarina Loss would rather do hospital work than be a teacher, then again, using her is easier than creating a new warlock, right?
The authors cannot even handle the characters they have though. You see, Isabelle was taking dating advice from Jace. The rampage psychopath. So these characters here are neither Isabelle nor Simon. This is totally out of character for both. She even states dating Jace would be disgusting when in COB she said the direct opposite. Not to mention that of course this story had to bring up the great love between Jace and Clary, and confuse love with obsession. That and the idiotic Naruto and D&D references we had before.
In the end we get some token anti-racist message:
But I know your blood doesn’t define you. What defines you is the choices you make.
To which I say: Sorry, not based on what was presented in this series. In fact this very story constantly acted as if Shadowhunter behavior and culture is deeply embedded in their genes. And it is no different for vampires, werewolves and faeries, or demons for that matter, in the other books. So this story stating something like that is pretty hypocritical.

In non-faery-related stuff:
Apparently Simon now has some sort of switching back and forth between Shadowhunters being so awesome and them sucking. However, as usual the reasons for it are pretty screwed. It is stated that Shadowhunters make everything look so easy.�� True, except for normal human interactions, strategy, common sense, making a society work, having realistic relationships, keeping the Accords going.... really, by any means they should be the biggest fuckups there are.
Leave it to Clare to make Magnus's coffee theft in COB look even more criminal then it already was. Or am I supposed to belief the shop he stole it from had such a magical coffeemaker as the one he made for Helen?
Also Simon was always for gun control and is already proficient with every weapon�� after 1 year at the academy��. No comment

PS. The title is from a poem by Keats, that is quoted here and includes “I saw pale kings and princes too��... so... where were they here? This had no connection to the stories except maybe that both works contain faeries.