City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
Series: The Mortal Instruments #1
Published by: Margaret K. McElderry Books on July 2, 2007
Genre: Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
Pages: 448
Source: Purchased
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Rating: ★★★★

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...

Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.

My Review

I feel like the last person in the world to have read this book! But I’m definitely glad I found it because I really enjoyed it.

For a long time I was kind of iffy about the whole vampires and werewolves thing. I just wasn’t able to get into it for some reason. I always thought it was a little farfetched, lame, and not done very well. But I think this book is really starting to change that for me. I really liked how all the mythical creatures were portrayed and everything just seemed to work really well.

There were a lot of ideas similar to stories like Harry Potter and Star Wars that made me really enjoy City of Bones.. not in a bad “copied” kind of way, but in a really general enjoyable way. Like looking at Harry Potter, there are a lot of similarities between Death Eaters and the Circle, the whole pure blood vs mixed/half blood thing, and so on.

The one thing I wasn’t crazy about was the love triangle. In general I’m not fond of love triangles, but more than that, I just didn’t feel like I ever got invested in the relationships. I didn’t love Jace or Simon. In fact, sometimes I was really annoyed at both of them. Like there were times when Jace just acted like a girl throwing a tantrum or something, with the way he just ignored everything and stuck to his own interpretation. Then, at the end, he literally seemed like a brainwashed moron. Although I had my issues with him, he always seemed like such a strong and independent character, which I admired. But I felt like at the end, all of that changed and he was a bit of a pushover (though he did make a bit of a comeback).

I definitely did love all the twists and turns. Things got super juicy towards the end when we started learning about the past and the events that occurred before, during, and after the uprising. I loved all the different ‘interpretations’ of what happened and I loved not knowing who was telling the real story. As soon as I decided one story was true, I was eating my words.

I’ll try to avoid spoilers here, but I did feel like the story ended a bit too soon. It wasn’t really a cliffhanger, but it was more like a small annoyance that made me think, “What? It ended?” Things didn’t fully get wrapped up with Clary’s mother, but it wasn’t really huge enough to be a proper cliffhanger. It was just… annoying 😛

But despite that, I definitely enjoyed City of Bones overall and I’m really looking forward to reading the next book, City of Ashes!

The Verdict