City of Heavenly Fire (Mortal Instruments, #6)

by Cassandra Clare

[shannonmiz]

Actual rating: 2.5 Stars

I'm going to be honest here, I wasn't super eager to read this one. I didn't know how exactly 725 more pages of this same group of people would be possible, really. Didn't we kind of cover it all already? Who loved who, who fought who, who was good, who was evil, who was and was not related to who... It really seemed like this group had run out of steam.

I actually read this book quicker than I'd thought I would. I must say that it moved pretty fast, despite the length and general repetitive nature. I'm going to just break this down into some likes and dislikes.

Likes:
The Supporting Characters. I have always loved Simon, and Magnus is so fun. Even though I was annoyed that some characters were introduced just to gain interest for the next series, I was glad that there were some new people around.
I enjoyed the ending. I probably shouldn't have as much as I did, but I did. It wasn't creative, or even particularly exciting, but I liked it.
There were a few really sweet life-lesson-type moments that I really enjoyed.

There were also a few (not a ton, but a few) scenes that left me with a pretty solid amount of feels.
Dislikes:
Didn't I read this one already? Sebastian. Clary and Jace are just soooo in love. Vampires. Werewolves. Parents only mildly involved. Runes. Portals. Yep, definitely read it already. It was boring then, and it is boring now.

There were a lot of convenient moments. As in pretty much all of them.
I kind of have no idea why Jace and Clary are in love. Actually, why any of the couples are in love. It's just like, "oh, blah-blah loves so-and-so", and I'm just supposed to accept that without any evidence. Great plan.

There were so many characters. Seriously, there were names being thrown at me that I couldn't have told you the significance of if my life freaking depended on it. These weren't even actual necessary characters in most cases, more like fillers (or God forbid, another spin-off?) but they threw me off, because I had to spend time trying to figure out if they were important enough for me to worry about remembering who the hell they were.

Not much actually happened, considering there were 725 pages. It just wasn't interesting to me at all, seemed drawn out, and mainly unnecessary.
Bottom Line: There were good moments. I was glad I read the whole book. But I would be lying if I rated it any higher. And if I didn't have legit OCD issues with stopping a series midway, I probably never would have made it past book three. So sure, read it if you're invested in the series, it is a nice enough farewell. But in the grand scheme of books? Pass.

Full review can be found here