Start with City of Bones. It is the first book Cassandra Clare published in this world, it introduces the Shadowhunters through a narrator who knows nothing about them, and every later series assumes you have read it. The tempting alternative is to begin with Clockwork Angel — the Victorian prequel trilogy is generally considered better written, and it is set more than a century earlier, so beginning there feels chronologically tidy. Resist it. The prequel spends a great deal of its emotional energy on names, families and objects that only mean something once the modern books have introduced them, and its final volume gives away a large piece of the modern plot.
So: publication order, with one refinement. Do not read the six modern books straight through and then double back. Clare has published a recommended order that interleaves the two early series, and the reading path here follows it, because the crossover payoffs were written to land that way.
Start here: the first three modern books
City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass form a complete arc. Clare originally intended to stop there, and it shows — the third book resolves the central conflict and would work as an ending. The first book is the weakest prose in the sequence and leans hard on urban-fantasy furniture; if it does not grab you by the halfway point, the series probably is not for you, because it gets stranger rather than more restrained from here.
A warning worth stating plainly: this trilogy contains a sustained plot thread built on a possible sibling relationship between the two leads. It is resolved, but readers who find that premise unbearable should know it is not a throwaway.
Then interleave the Victorian trilogy
After the third modern book, read Clockwork Angel. It opens the Infernal Devices trilogy, set in 1878 London, and most readers rate it the strongest thing in the Chronicles — tighter plotting, a better-drawn cast, and a love triangle that is actually about friendship rather than jealousy.
From there the path alternates: City of Fallen Angels, then Clockwork prince (the catalogue record carries that lowercase form), then City of Lost Souls, then Clockwork Princess, and finally City of Heavenly Fire, which closes both series at once. Reading them this way means the Victorian revelations arrive just before the modern books need them, and the last chapter of Clockwork Princess — widely regarded as the high point of the whole sequence — hits before its consequences are spent.
If you would rather not alternate, read the modern six first and the Victorian three second. You lose some resonance, not the plot.
The Dark Artifices, then The Last Hours
Lady Midnight opens the third series, set in Los Angeles five years after the modern books end. It is longer, darker and more adult than what precedes it, and it is where the sequence stops being a young-adult series in anything but shelving. Lord of Shadows ends on the most brutal cliffhanger Clare has written, so have Queen of air and darkness to hand before you start it.
Chain of Gold, Chain of Iron and Chain of Thorns return to Edwardian London with the children of the Infernal Devices cast. They are the least essential of the four series and the most rewarding if you loved the Victorian books; read them last regardless of when they were published.
What is missing here, and where to stop
Our catalogue holds the four main series. It does not currently hold the companion volumes — the Bane Chronicles, Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, Ghosts of the Shadow Market, or the Eldest Curses novels. That gap is ours, not a judgement: they are genuinely optional side material, but several of them fill in gaps the main books skip.
A clean stopping point exists after City of Heavenly Fire. Ten books, two complete series, every major thread tied off. Continue only if you want more of this world rather than more of that story. Browse other series reading orders if you want the same treatment for a different shelf.
Follow the full ordered path here: The Shadowhunter Chronicles Reading Order: Where to Start.
