When Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder. Much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with odd markings. This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons - and keeping the odd werewolves and vampires in line. It's also her first meeting with gorgeous, golden-haired Jace. Within twenty-four hourse Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in an ordinary mundane like Clary? And how did she suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know...
Review of 'City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Overall I'd say a mediocre everyday ya fantasy story, but what really annoyed me were the constant continuity errors. And not even "I wrote it 261 pages ago and sometimes I forget what I said" errors, but errors within two paragraphs of each other.
Yes, it's a sensitive topic for me, I'm probably overreacting. Within the masses of ya fantasy novels, I would recommend finding one with a better editor, though.
Review of 'City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2)' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Well then. I spent a lot of this book moved - often to swearing at it for tropes and, "Be censored honest..." But that last is kind of a refrain for me, even if this book did give it seventeen kabillion extra nudges. Well done, even within the trope confines.
Review of 'City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2)' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This is an enjoyable read, nothing at all challenging about it. The plot has some nice twists and turns to it to keep you interested. The characters have been well developed, pretty standard stuff though, some you'll hate and the others you'll love, there is no middle ground as the book has been written to make you choose. Bane is easily the best character, finding out more about him is what has kept me reading these books.
Suitable for teens, no crazy amount of violence, has the usual vamps, wolves, magic and cute boys that you'll find in many other YA novels.
Review of 'City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I like a book that has vampires and werewolves and magic stuff in it. The mortal Instruments has all this on a grand scale. It is well written with a great cast of characters. Reading this I knew I was going to be hooked on the whole series, the way Clary is gradually introduced to the world of the Shadowhunters is done so well and at a nice pace, you don't need to know much about vampires and werewolves as this is a great introduction to the genre.
Favourite character for me is Simon, the geek somehow surviving in this world by pure luck gives us all confidence we'll survive once the vampires come out of the closet and eat the weak.
Review of 'City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2)' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Yeah I basically PLOWED my way through this book. This one only gets 4 stars because it is officially "the book where every damned thing goes wrong". At least in my view.
Review of 'City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2)' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
So at this point, if you just ignore the fact that Clare is drawing liberally from Star Wars and a few elements from Harry Potter, you might find there is a fairly entertaining book underneath. Enough so that you definitely want to continue to the next chapter even when you should be trying to get some much needed sleep.
City of Ashes picks up right where City of Bones left off and runs (hard) to a somewhat predictable conclusion (see below). Clare and Jace struggle with their "relationship", Simon get's an "upgrade", and Valentine is up to no good. We find a bit more about the Clave, but less about the Circle than I would have hoped (there are deeper things Clare could delve into that she doesn't, perhaps because of the YA audience).
A few irksome things continue. First, her story is incredibly predictable. Characters never feel in danger …
So at this point, if you just ignore the fact that Clare is drawing liberally from Star Wars and a few elements from Harry Potter, you might find there is a fairly entertaining book underneath. Enough so that you definitely want to continue to the next chapter even when you should be trying to get some much needed sleep.
City of Ashes picks up right where City of Bones left off and runs (hard) to a somewhat predictable conclusion (see below). Clare and Jace struggle with their "relationship", Simon get's an "upgrade", and Valentine is up to no good. We find a bit more about the Clave, but less about the Circle than I would have hoped (there are deeper things Clare could delve into that she doesn't, perhaps because of the YA audience).
A few irksome things continue. First, her story is incredibly predictable. Characters never feel in danger because she hasn't killed anyone off (or shown a willingness to evoke fear in the reader). Plot twists follow cliche tracks (especially the diner conversation at the end of the book... Wow. Didn't see that one coming). I've made predictions on what I think will happen in the last book and I will be exceptionally surprised if I'm not correct on most of them.
Second, she never develops a sense of scale. Rowling is actually also guilty of this. All this power, in what... 20 people? Huge armies of bad guys fought by two protagonists? You never get the sense there is much of anything outside the little band of heroes, which is unfortunate, because I think the mythos is begging to be expanded.
However, I do appreciate the villain, Valentine. In a twisted way, I understand his motives and his calm charisma adds enough nuance to be interesting. Unfortunately, the same at the moment can not be said of our group of "heroes," but perhaps that will change (to Clare's credit, they have shown small signs of character development and evolution).
Review of 'City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This is a tough book to review. If you look at the plethora of reviews out there, there is very little middle ground -- people either hate it or love it. I understand both points, so I came down in the middle. This may be a book you have to judge as part of the entire series, rather than an isolated work.
They mythos is well constructed. Demons (and half-demons) exist throughout the world (some good, some bad, and some neutral). There is a group called the Shadowhunters who are like peace keepers and enforcers all rolled into one. Most of the rest of the world goes about their day, not noticing. Clary, with her friend Simon, are dragged into the world and the adventure takes off.
Let's tick off the negatives: Clare has borrowed way too much from a certain epic space opera... Enough to the point that it …
This is a tough book to review. If you look at the plethora of reviews out there, there is very little middle ground -- people either hate it or love it. I understand both points, so I came down in the middle. This may be a book you have to judge as part of the entire series, rather than an isolated work.
They mythos is well constructed. Demons (and half-demons) exist throughout the world (some good, some bad, and some neutral). There is a group called the Shadowhunters who are like peace keepers and enforcers all rolled into one. Most of the rest of the world goes about their day, not noticing. Clary, with her friend Simon, are dragged into the world and the adventure takes off.
Let's tick off the negatives: Clare has borrowed way too much from a certain epic space opera... Enough to the point that it feels like it taints a lot of the good in the book (even the dialog once it's revealed is painfully similar). Clary and Simon too readily accept this new world. A huge chunk of the back story is told in one rambling monologue chapter, where I felt cheated -- it was too easy and sloppy of a reveal.
I enjoyed it enough to want to read the second. Not very much reaches a conclusion in this first installment, which is understandable considering the trilogy.
Really, if it weren't for the borrowing from said space opera, I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more.
