ByMarlida

What I’d kind of realized was that the books had a very similar build-up. In part 1 you got to know the aftermath of the previous book, in part 2 it slowly built up towards part 3 where all the action happened. That was something I was struggling with in the first three books because it was often a little boring reading part 1 and 2. In City of Fallen Angels it’s just exciting from the start. 

The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most importantly of all—she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.

I’m not going to lie, I do love the books badly, and reading them gave me the same sensation as I have reading other series. I love the fact that they keep going on and on towards an epic ending. The thing about the Mortal Instruments series is that it kind of goes slowly, you have six books, which means that you have to read all six in order to know what happens in the ending, like every other book. I feel like book 1 and 2 was kind of boring, but it was also slowly introducing us to this whole new world - and I often feel like I understand it better because it was so many books, so many pages of descriptions and explanations. 

But at the end of the day, I feel like this could have been an awesome trilogy and not a series. There’s a lot of the same conflicts repeating itself in these books, and I would have loved to just encounter them once through the books. That said, this was probably the best of the four first books in the series! I also feel like the more I read of them, the more I argue if the first reviews of the other books are really as on-point to what I really feel right now. So I'm thinking about doing a full review of the series when I'm done. 

The Mortal Instruments have that quality that makes them build up towards a point where it just makes it impossible to put the book down. What I liked about this book though was the way Clare made this “point of no return” that made it seriously impossible to put it down. I even had to start “City of Fallen Angels” right after finishing this one because it was soooo exciting! 

The thing about this book is that we literarily pick it up where “City of Ashes” ended. We get to go to Idris, which is a place we’ve been wanting to visit for the previous books. I also waited for a revealing that came in this book, which made me smile and almost cry because of happiness, but the book is so dark and full of revelations about the Morgenstern family! 

I’m hoping that at least ONE OF YOU give me some kind of comment on this review, because I want to know what you thought about it - or if you’re looking forward to this book!

What I like about Clare is that she’s able to give the dead branch on the ground some life. That’s really unusual, and what I also care a lot about is the way she describes the characters and the places they visit. I often feel like I’m there with them. I also love the way she makes that tension between Jace and Clary, but also with Simon, who’s so incredibly familiar and relatable it scares me sometimes.

I love the Mortal Instruments world, but this book was hard to read at first. Maybe it was the lack of action? I don’t know. But when I got about halfway through the book, things started to happen and the book was impossible to lay down.

This is also one of the reasons why I love Cassandra Clare, because she can make each book so exciting, you just have to read it. To my annoyance it actually took me three months to get through this one, but as I said, halfway through; and I read the rest in a day. Now I’ve just started City of Glass, and I can promise you that the next book is going to be epic!

After christmas I went to my local bookstore and bought the four first books of the chronicle, and started the first book almost immediately, and I was so amazed by the way Cassandra Clare writes, how you can see what happens to Clary (the protagonist) when she finds out about the Shadow World and what lives inside it. It’s been a really long time since I read a book with this many turns and twists, action filled scenes with vampires, werewolves, the Nephilin’s, it’s so exciting, and here’s why. 

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...

Cassandra Clare is extraordinary good at writing detailed descriptions of what happens, when you read the books you can smell the taste the air has, the way the floor feels under someone’s feet feel like, you can see the people in front of you so clear it’s almost a little scary. I really liked Clary from the start, she was this smart girl who liked to paint and for so many reasons I felt like I could really connect with this character. Then we had Jace, a Nephilin (Half angel, half human), who joked his way through the books with awesome comments and witty comebacks, and with his golden hair and strong muscles we kind of saw ourselves holding his waist while riding a motorcycle. 

There aren’t many characters in this book, we have the Institute, which is where the Nephilin’s of New York live (Jace, Alec, Isabelle and their teacher Hodge), we have Clary, her mother Jocelyn, Dorothea and Jocelyn’s old friend Luke. Simon, Clary’s best friend gets dragged into this mess of the Shadow World, and what once seemed like a blossoming relationship between them got totally screwed up in the process. We have the Warlocks, the men of The City of Bones, we have vampires, a pack of werewolves, and last there is Valentine, the evil Nephilin who wants the Cup in order to change humans into Nephilin’s so that he can kill the Downworlders (which pretty much means every creature except humans and Nephilin’s). 

I think that the reason why this book works so good is because of the small pond of important characters, we don’t get lost in a ocean of names, and we kind of carry on through the book, knowing a lot about the few characters. Like the fact that Hodge, the Nephilin’s teacher, has a bird called Hugin, or that Alec and Isabelle are siblings, we get to know that Jocelyn is not the woman Clary thought she was - and there are so many details in this 500-page book that you’ll be amazed and quite pleased to know that it’s worth reading every page of it. 

As we speak, I’m going to start the second book; City of Ashes, and I’m so excited to get to know the Nephilin world even better, and this time, the pages aren’t that many. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, and that you’ll leave a comment below if there’s anything you’re wondering about!