Book Review: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
Title: City of Bones
Author: Cassandra Clare
No of Pages: 442
What it says on the back: Clary Fray is seeing things: vampires in Brooklyn and werewolves in Manhattan. Irresistibly drawn towards a group of sexy demon hunters, Clary encounters the dark side of New York City - and the dangers of forbidden love.
My thoughts:
How I came to read this book is a story that continues to amuse me :-) On the recommendation of a friend, I tracked down the ‘Cassie’ books. Somehow along the way of my often distracted mind, this became the Cassandra Clare books, even though it was completely wrong. Was I happy with the mistake? I am going to say - half yes.
The books I was aiming for were about time travel, and City of Bones is about demon hunters and vampires (etc). So, not what I expected (hence my discovery of reading the wrong book) but not bad either.
It’s impossible not to compare the Mortal Instruments series to Twilight - vampires and werewolves and love triangles are the latest ongoing craze, so... it was uppermost in my mind. The first bonus for City of Bones - not a first person narrative. Second bonus - no love triangle! \o/ I like a good love triangle, don’t get me wrong, but I prefer them to be complex and intricate. What do we end up instead with City of Bones. Teenage coming of age type story? Yes, indeed. Secrets and plots being revealed and mysterious backgrounds interweaving together? Yes. Did I like it? Yes.
And here’s why. I was surprised!! Yes, Cassandra Clare, you used well understood tropes and types, but you still managed to pull the wool over my eyes. I was not expecting the twist. In the chapter when it is revealed, I had an inkling and happy days it was a great little twist J And it definitely makes me want to read the next book - pronto.
The world of Clary Fray is very interesting, with a neat mixture of various vampire, faerie and werewolf mythology with a modern twist. With the added mixture of a demon hunter world and its own internal politics, the story has a complicated mix of different genres but luckily a not over complicated plot.
In a nutshell, a happy mistake, that I will keep on reading :-)
*I need a reading icon*