City of Bones by Cassandra ClareMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
How I Got it: Own a copy, :)
When fifteen-year-old 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 strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing -- not even a smear of blood -- to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?
This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours 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 ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know. . . .
First of all, if you saw this book on my currently-reading shelf for a while, that is not because I did not enjoy the book, rather this was part of crazy time in which reading was almost impossibly for me.
So let’s talk about this book. First of all I can’t talk enough about how fun this book was to read. I love laughing out loud when I read something and I love characters who are generally witty and adorable. This book had both, so even in those few minutes a day when I could sneak in a few pages I was rewarded.
The book is modern fantasy and follows a young girl ‘waking up’ into the world she’d been made to forget. Miss Clare pulls in a lot of classic fantasy ingredients, putting a fine spin on them all and adding some new ideas into the mix. Everything she added felt natural, as well. I wasn’t reading about characters in a setting that reminded me of a square peg in a round hole.
Clare has a unique writing style that is sometimes simple yet effective, and other times surprisingly intricate. I was really pleased to see that she could really bring out all the stops when it came to writing this novel, and instead didn’t keep it going at the general pace she’d started it as.
Her plot twists were interesting, in a way that I liked them. Usually if something happens in a YA novel, it’s the same old sh*t, different title. Hers were pretty fun, and I enjoyed finding them because I knew they’d be unique.
There are, of course, things I didn’t quite understand. First of all some of the twists sit heavy on me and I’m still wondering how she’s going to address them. At times her writing style is a little too simple, to where I feel like she didn’t get a fair chance to edit a certain section before it was published. Also, some of the characters I felt I was supposed to have natural, negative feelings towards just because that was the author’s intention, and t hen their personalities would change or other’s opinions of them would switch around, and I was a little confused as to how that could happen so quickly.
This is a really fun book for readers of all ages. If you like to have fun and laugh, dig right into this one. It’s a series, which I love, so I can’t wait to read the next ones. The world-building was enjoyable, the writing very nice, and the character memorable. I am super looking forward to reading the rest of the series, and I understand she has written another series similar to the world she created for this one. I am happy she has become so prolific, but at the same time I hope that she keeps the quality of her writing and the wonderful characters and world she h as already created.
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Clare does a great job with the twist in her novels. I like the Infernal Devices series which is the sequel series.
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