Published Oct 30, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT
Ryan O’Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided’s CubbiesCrib. Whether it’s taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what’s going on. Outside of entertainment, he’s a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor’s in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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Readers are spoiled for choice when it comes to YA fantasy books, from the classic Harry Potter novels to The Hunger Games, An Ember in the Ashes, and Throne of Glass. However, few have been as long-enduring as Cassandra Clare’s The Shadowhunters Chronicles. The universe began in 2007 with the release of City of Bones, the first installment in a six-book series titled The Mortal Instruments, following 15-year-old Clary Fairchild as she learns of her half-angel heritage, powers, and place in the world as a Shadowhunter. Since then, it has exploded into a massive world, featuring five book series and a bevy of short story collections and graphic novels, a widely panned movie, and a much better-received Freeform show. All good things must come to an end eventually, though.
Next week, on November 3, the final trilogy of Shadowhunters, titled The Wicked Powers, will begin with the release of The Last King of Faerie. Set four years after the final novel in The Mortal Instruments sequel series, The Dark Artifices, the book follows Drusilla “Dru” Blackthorne, her brother Ty, and his former love interest, Kit Herondale. Dru finds her fourth year at Shadowhunter Academy interrupted when she’s kidnapped after a nightclub confrontation and brought to the titular land of Faerie by Prince Ash Morgenstern, finding danger at every turn, but also an unexpected and treacherous connection to Ash and the darkness around him. At the same time, Ty and Kit must put their bitterness aside to save everything they hold dear after a disappearance sends ripples through the Shadowhunter world.
Before it flies onto shelves, Collider can exclusively share an excerpt from the novel narrated by a beloved star from the teen supernatural fantasy realm — James Marsters. Best known as Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he brings life to an action-packed sequence which sees Dru clashing with a false Jace Herondale, who has captured Clary. Initially, things seem to be going well when she lands a sharp blow with her sword, but the impostor quickly shows his strength, sending her to the edge of the roof where they’re fighting. With one fatal misstep, he sends her plummeting, seemingly to her death, until something swoops in to save her before she can hit the pavement. It takes her a second to realize, amid the adrenaline, that it’s Ash carrying her to safety on his black wings. The draw she feels toward him is apparent in how Marsters describes the young man, and the rescue sets the stage for their complicated relationship to unfold.
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there.
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated.
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you.
Expectations will be high for how The Mortal Powers brings the chronicles to a close. Shadowhunters has made Clare a New York Times #1 bestselling author and one of the most recognizable names in YA fiction and romantasy, with an empire to rival some of the biggest book series. Through its many installments, the author has also managed to construct a deep and interconnected fantasy world with yet more room to explore. In an exclusive interview with ScreenRant, she spoke about how The Last King of Faerie and Wicked Powers as a whole give her a chance to play around in the land of Faerie more after only scratching the surface in previous installments. This will be a chance to dig deeper into the mythology within the Shadowhunters world and understand how the land operates, from how its people live to the hierarchy of power and the many rules that define it.
“I’ve written about faeries before, and got to use a lot of things I enjoy from mythology, like the Wild Hunt. But in The Wicked Powers I do get to explore Faerie as a place where people actually live, rather than somewhere Shadowhunters visit on a dangerous mission. I’d say I love the extremes of Faerie. It’s a place of extraordinary beauty, but also tremendous danger. It’s full of power but that power can be wild and uncontrollable. It’s full of strict rules, but everyone spends their time figuring out how to break them. And there is no punishment for breaking them if you do it cleverly enough. Which is one of the great things about Faerie, it’s a place that respects style and flamboyance more than brute strength or wealth.”
The Last King of Faerie releases on November 3. Listen to an early excerpt from the novel narrated by Marsters in the player above. Explore the Shadowhunters novels and more with a free trial of Audible.
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