Book Review: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Rating 8/10

Hello everyone!

I’m not dead! I just feel like I lived about five years in the last couple of weeks. In those few weeks, I got a lot of reading (and rereading) done at least. But I wrote absolutely nothing and thus am behind on everything. Here’s hoping lockdown will help me catch up. 

Today I am reviewing City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. It’s the first in her Mortal Instruments series and the first in the Shadowhunter Chronicles. I first read this book in 2008, and have read it roughly every two years since as I would reread the whole series from the beginning every time a new one came out. I have never done a review for it however and I thought it would be fun to evaluate the book by itself without taking all the other books into account. I still remember my reactions from years ago and I will channel those, in addition to my improved analytical skills gained later. Now, as usual, we are venturing into Spoiler Land, stay out of Spoiler Land if you still haven’t read this book. 

Our main narrator is Clary Fray, a feisty sixteen-year-old who is the most Gryffindor-y Gryffindor I have come across in literature. She has positive and negative Gryffindor traits and demonstrates them over and over again. For example, at the beginning of the book, she follows people with knives into a dark room and away from crowds and safety. She doesn’t go for help, she sends poor Simon to do that. I would never follow someone with knives into a dark room. I would go for the police, but Clary with this one action establishes her pattern of behavior for the rest of the book. I liked Clary, despite her rashness and conviction she’s right. She is also: loyal, stubborn, a quick learner, and full of determination. She’s a flawed character and those are the best kinds of characters. While I don’t always approve of her choices I can understand them. 

This book is very clearly an opening book, it reads like one. Everything that comes into play, later on, is established here. It’s a good opening act, and still a good book. It was never meant to be a standalone novel so expecting it to read like one would be ridiculous. I enjoy watching relationships develop, characters grow and change, and exploring a new world so I didn’t mind any of the exploratory parts. There was plenty of action to balance it out. Action that provided set up for what happens later on. 

I already talked a little bit about Clary, but I also wanted to mention that the relationships in her life are the things that drive her to action. When her mother disappears in a violent altercation she's ready to do anything she can to get her back. Give a crazy cult leader what he wants so he would give her back? Sure! I’ll worry about what his evil plan is later. My best friend gets turned into a rat and kidnapped by vampires. Okay, let’s go to a vampire infested hotel to get him back! This girl will do anything, face any danger to help those she cares about. It never occurs to her that by doing that she might be putting someone else who cares about her in danger. She asked Jace to go along to the vampire hotel and he agreed. She asked Isabelle, Alec, Jace, and Simon to go get the Mortal Cup with her and they did, in the process facing a greater Demon which almost killed Alec. She doesn’t force anyone into anything. They just go along so enticed by her conviction that it's the right thing to do. 

Jace is similarly determined to jump into every anger but he’s self-destructive and not determined. He will jump into danger just because it’s there and he’s capable. Unlike Clary, he has the training, but that still does not make his behavior any less traumatizing for his friends. Especially poor Alec, who is Jace’s Parabati, and thus feels responsible for him. The more we find out about Jace in this book the more his behavior makes sense, it was psychologically proven that victims of abuse and individuals who witnessed violence at a very young age handle it by acting exactly like Jace is acting. They try to prove their worth to themselves and others by trying to be the best at everything and by doing anything they can to be seen as good enough. Jace is not self-aware to this extent, but he does realize his behavior is not exactly healthy. I think that at the beginning Clary fascinates him because she acts as he would act, but for completely different reasons and without any kind of skill to back her up. He wants to figure out what makes her tick. And of course, Clary soon finds out she has a memory problem things quickly become complicated. Then the next thing we know he sees his father’s killers in Luke’s living room, they go to a Warlock party, Magnus Bane prefers Alec over Jace (which was very traumatizing for him as we all want Magnus Bane to find us irresistible), vampires and werewolves go to war, Clary produces a powerful artifact out of a Tarot Card, a greater demon tries to kill them, Alec almost dies, than he gets handed over to his supposedly dead father, who is in fact Valentine, like some sort of ritualistic sacrifice, and finds out that the girl he is pretty much in love with is his sister. To say a lot happens in this book to Jace is an understatement. At the end of the book, Clary sees how fragile Jace actually is but really doesn’t have time to worry about him. 

Let’s talk about that ending for a second. This is one of the few endings where my jaw hit the floor and stayed unhinged for a good amount of time. I was shocked. What do you mean they are siblings, Cassandra Clare? What do you mean by that? How dare you? If only I knew how many times I would say “How dare you???” to Cassandra Clare. That ending messed me up. They had to be together! They were perfect for each other. I know many people read Flowers in the Attic and were all for incest, well I was all for incest after this book. I had a lot of theories about how this would all play out. Not to mention Jocelyn was in a coma and we had no answers. We still didn’t know what Valentine was planning, and why he did the things he did. 

Speaking of Valentine, as many of you know I have been doing a lot of research on cults recently (just because it’s fascinating and not because I’m planning to start one FBI), and Valentine falls perfectly into most of the characteristics of a charismatic cult leader. He’s terrifying to me. People like him happen all the time, and just like him, they know exactly how to pick their victims. They know who will go along with them if given the right incentive. Hodge says it, and Luke says it. They admit Valentine went after the people he did because they had a weakness he could exploit. Valentine is also convinced he’s right. He’s on a holy mission from god. What makes this worse is that Shadowhunters actually have a mandate of heaven, but he chooses to believe he knows the will of heaven better. This makes him a fascinating villain, there are many layers to him. He’s capable of intense love that can turn into equally intense hatred, and as such he’s capable of intense good but instead does intense evil. In his head, though it’s all justified because he’s special. By jolly Cassie, you did amazing with his character and I wish more people talked about how fantastic of a villain Valentine is. 

I didn’t really talk about the other characters too much, because this wasn’t their book to shine. I loved that Simon killed the greater demon when everyone forgot he was there, I love that Magnus hit on Alec and I love how uncomfortable Alec was because of it. I love that Isabelle combines fashion with demon-fighting. I loved them all, but in this book, they are still very much a supporting cast. As I said, this is very much a setup book and these characters have been set up for many more things. I will say that I got annoyed at the potential love triangle set up between Clary, Jace, and Simon. Why can’t we just have a beautiful friendship between Clary and Simon? There isn’t enough friendship in books and I want it. Having Clary and Simon argue because she doesn’t love him back felt like a disservice to them both. I was not a fan of that bit of the story. I was, however, an instant fan of Magnus Bane who wears more glitter than a Bachelor contestant during the Rose Ceremony and throws birthday parties for his cat. If I had a cat and was an extrovert I would throw birthday parties for it. 

So here we are, this is all I have to say about this book for now. I just wanted to let you all know that this review was probably the hardest for me to write so far, and I don’t know why. I’m still not happy with it but after six attempts I give up on writing it again. I feel like it’s only fair to let you know of my struggle Dear Reader. Now I’m off to search for a cat to throw a party for. Oh, wait, I can’t because we’re all in isolation. 

Love you all, and thank you for reading

Anna