City of Bones (Mortal Instruments, #1)

by Cassandra Clare

[Ashley]

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 did feel like the story ended a bit too soon when Jace and Clary were going to the hospital to check on their mom. I felt like the book should have ended with them at the hospital and Clary's mom waking up, but I was annoyed when it just ended when they were on the way to the hospital. I mean it's not like it was a huge cliffhanger that will make you dying to read book #2 so why end it early? I thought it was just a bit 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!