Hello Everyone!
This is the first of my spring 2016 reviews. My apologies for being absent from the blog for so long. Senior year is intensive and, with my school’s production of the Sound of Music closing as well as my family moving, I have had very little time to do anything. However, I am trying to read more and tend to the blog more often. I am also thinking about starting Top 5 Wednesdays, but let me know what you think. There are a ton of fantastic ARCS that I got my hands on recently that will have reviews published in the coming months, so watch out for those. Anywho, here is my review for City of Bones.
*Warning: these are my honest opinions. I am not hating on the author, the fandom or the series and am, in fact, hopeful for the future books in this series. Please do not attack me for my review. I am not invalidating your opinions about this book or the TMI series in general.*
I wasn’t underwhelmed by this book because I knew, going in, that the majority of people who have read City of Bones, as well as the other books in TMI series, say that this is the weakest of Cassandra Clare’s books. The writing style had some major issues, such as intentionally vague writing, info dumps and intensive background stories. Many of these are unavoidable when establishing the world in a fantasy book, specifically the first book in a series. However, (and I will get more specific in the spoilery section of this review) there were some stylistic things that I didn’t jive with. I also didn’t love as many of the characters as I thought I would, specifically Isabelle, Raphael, Jace and Luke. Isabelle was a real let down for me, character wise, which I will talk more about the spoilery section. Finally, I feel like this book could have been shorter. There was a lot of time spent between important plot points where characters are struggling to find or fight their way out of situations that could have been condensed. Ultimately, I have a lot of hope for later books and honestly think that they can get better so I am going to push myself to read the next couple in the series and see how I feel. I hate to say it, but for City of Bones, I prefer the adaptations over the book itself.
**Spoilery Section**
So the first and primary thing that has been said about City of Bones is that Cassandra Clare’s writing style in this book is the weakest, which I agree with. In the beginning of the novel, Jace’s info dumps were the most annoying to me. Not because Clare was providing the reader with an immense amount of information at once, which was admittedly overwhelming. No, the info dumps annoyed me because Jace intentionally left Clary out of the loop until it was absolutely necessary or they were in a life threatening situation. This got on my nerves because a significant amount of the novel’s beginning chapters were spent in Clary’s head as she is trying to figure out a part of the Shadowhunter world, or her past, that she didn’t understand. Rather than immediately clearing this misunderstanding up, Jace waits for Clary to get good and agitated before he tells her some important and revealing piece of information. The writing began to frustrate me more towards the end, but for a different reason. It was a combination of writing cliches that got to me. The first cliche was the “yes you are, no I’m not” banter or the “pining love interest” that goes on between Clary and Jace while Alec is recovering in the Institute. The second cliche (that lasted a little bit longer than the first) was the “intentionally vague dialogue (usually between someone evil and the protagonist) that is supposed to propel the story and create a super intense climax when the reality of the situation is revealed.” This one came when Clary and Hodge were having there “showdown” of sorts. I think that I was more annoyed by these because they came one after another, followed by Luke’s massive backstory dump. I feel like there must have been a better way to frame these conversations other than the use of writing cliches.
Now for the characters. I was very disappointed by the character of Isabelle in this first novel. She was very whiny and didn’t really have much character development. She kind of felt like the dumb blonde that was given a little too much power, which is really unfortunate. The actress that is currently playing Isabelle on the TV Show has all of Isabelle’s quirks (like her inability to cook and her affinity towards clothing and fashion) but she also radiates power. She holds herself in battle and wears more revealing outfits because she wants to and she is confident enough in herself that she feels comfortable in that type of clothing. I didn’t get any of this from book Isabelle, and as she is one of four prominent female characters, it made me sad that she didn’t seem a little bit stronger. Raphael was the same way. I felt that his character was a little underdeveloped and I didn’t enjoy how little time we got to spend with him. He transforms from a vampire in hiding to an all out bloodthirsty leader in no time at all, with very little development in between. Finally, Luke a little of a let down too. Less character wise but more because of how little time we actually get to spend with him in the book. Most of the time, Clary thinks about him and her mom and then moves on. Only closer to the end does he become a prominent character and even then, he has a massive backstory dump that turned me off from him a little.
In the end, I have very high hopes that this series is going to get really good. I wish, however, that I could just skip over the beginning couple of books and fast forward to where the writing style has developed and the story has fleshed itself out. I might save the next book to get me out of a reading slump, but I think I want to at least give the next book a shot. At the moment, I don’t know how dedicated I can get to a series that is massive and rather intensive.
Overall:
2 ½ out of 5 stars
60% out of 100%
-Jaime