Name: City of Bones
Author: Cassandra Clare
Pages: 510 (excluding bonus content)
Publisher: Walker Books
Overall Rating: 3/5
Synopsis: Clary Fray is seeing things: vampires in Brooklyn and werewolves in Manhattan. Irresistibly drawn to the Shadowhunters, a secret cadre of warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, Clary encounters the dark side of New York City – and the dangers of forbidden love.
“All the stories are true.”
So, I thought that I would do a mini book review of the individual books of this series, because I plan to do a ma-hoo-sive one on the series as a whole, which will include the Netflix adaptation.
Clary’s story begins when she starts seeing things, a vampire here or there, sometimes werewolves, and even things that aren’t in the more popular fairytales; greater demons, and foul smelling things called the Forsaken. The person to unlock the mystery behind these sightings is Jace; who, coincidentally, is a Shadowhunter. When Jace realises Clary is one of them, he takes her under his wing and helps her on the dangerous mission of saving her mum, whilst stopping Valentine getting his hands on the Mortal Cup.
I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the Netflix series, which is what encouraged me to buy the books in the first place – I say me, I mean I guilt tripped my Mum into getting them when I was meeting her for coffee – anyway, tangents aside, I’ve only seen around two or three episodes of Shadowhunters; not enough to know what the plot twists would have been, but enough to be intrigued by the story.
Also, this is my first YA book in a very long time, so I may be a little cynical about it, although I’ll try not to! However, I was a little disappointed, to be honest with you, it was basically a book about Jace through Clary’s perspective. Clary doesn’t come into her own in this book at all, which is what I was looking for, especially towards the end of the novel. And the more I read, the more I was sick of hearing about Jace’s achievements. He was the only character that the author made particularly memorable, which is annoying as Clary’s supporting characters like Simon, Isabelle and Magnus Bane, seemed much more interesting to me.
Although, I do appreciate that the author is setting the foundation levels of the Shadowhunter world, mainly using Jace as her foundation of knowledge for Clary, but I sincerely hope that moving forward with the story, other characters will step up.
On the other hand, I admit that Jace’s humour is probably my favourite aspect of the novel, the author characterises him as sharp-witted, and reflects that in his humour, not only in his personality and actions. To conclude, the humour can stay, but The Jace Show has gots to go.
I look forward to the next book, regardless of how underwhelming I found Clary, her supporting characters are wonderful; and I feel that I have a lot more depths of Isabelle and Alec to explore. I applaud Cassandra Clare on her creativity.
P.S. I know I said mini review, but once I started I couldn’t stop. So, thank you for reading a medium-length review of City of Bones.
xx
Kayleigh's Bookshelf.❤ 