His Mortal Instruments: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (audiobook)
So, I will always have a special place in my heart for the movie adaption of this thrilling piece of young adult fiction because I saw it on a really excellent “not date” with the person I ended up dating. Lucky for the movie, since it was otherwise pretty forgettable, and I was probably done thinking about it the morning after I saw it.
But there are a lot of these books and they are super popular with teens and honestly, teen lit is really good right now, generally, so I figured there was something to it.
And I proved myself right because it was actually great.
It’s the story of 15 year old New Yorker Clary Fray, whose hobbies include drawing, going to gothic/nerdy clubs, bonding with her Mom and father figure Luke and failing to realize her best friend Simon has been in love with her for the last ten years. Pretty normal, until one night she witnesses three teens murdering another one in a club, only to realize that the murderee wasn’t exactly human. At once she’s thrust into a world that her mother had been keeping from her, a world of (somewhat unoriginally named) Downworlders and Shadowhunters, a world where everything she thought she understood about herself, her past and her future, is proven to be completely wrong.
Now, I was a little slow to warm up to the story. Clary started off with a pretty dull Mary Sue like personality. Jace was boring, brooding and kinda used the single character trait of “arrogant” as his whole personality. Isabelle was a mean girl, Simon was the text book “friendzoned” character (if “friendzones” were a thing) and the villain was just as black hat, mustache twirling villain as possible. But the longer it went on, the more the characters grew on me and also grew as characters. It was great.
I particularly loved the back story about the Circle and the parents of all the main characters. It was like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, only a little more mature and without quite as much angst driven shouting. The world is intricate and beautiful, with the lovely contrasts of the real world. Dark and light at the same time. The Downworlders are funny and neat, with their own cool cultural backgrounds. The characters had genuine and complex interactions with each other and their own pretty compelling reasons for doing whatever they do.
There might also be a tiny bit of Luke/Leia surprise sibling chemistry but I don’t want to spoil anything.
And I’m looking forward to reading (or listening) to the next one.
Seriously, it’ll be great.
Last movie I watched:
The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug. Probably the only case in human history where I was disappointed that my favourite book was ruined by a movie adaptation not because they left out too much but because they put in too much.
Last TV episode I watched:
Arrested Development. Is. Awesome.
musingofanunemployedlibrarian 