I blame a co-worker for getting me started on this series. I don’t ordinarily read young adult books, because they’re usually unsophisticated and derivative and safe. But the descriptions of the books in the Mortal Instruments series sounded too good to ignore. Unlike other contemporary fantasy series writers, Cassandra Clare writes in trilogies. There are endings, spectacular endings.
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| City of Bones |
The first book, City of Bones, introduces us to the Shadowhunters’ world. Clary Fray, the protagonist, sees three teenagers kill a demon in a night club. Clary tags along and gets a quick, brutal introduction to vampires, werewolves, warlocks, and–yes–demons. The teenagers are Shadowhunters, part of a group of humans with special abilities who keep the world safe for mundane humans. Even though it’s a young adult novel, Clare isn’t afraid to write a dark story that gets darker over the course of the series. In most of the young adult novels I read when I was one, it always seemed like there was a safety net, a spot on the violence spectrum that the author wouldn’t cross. This isn’t to say that the books are cover-to-cover violence. It’s just that the author doesn’t pull the punches. There is a palpable sense of danger. When we meet the bad guy–who is bad on a Voldemort scale–he doesn’t monologue and give away his big plan until the near the end of the third and last book. All our heroes can do is guess and try and thwart him whenever they get a chance.
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| City of Ashes |
Book two, City of Ashes, picks up right where the first book left off. And, fortunately, it doesn’t suffer from middle book syndrome. This book centers around its own, discreet mystery: a series of child murders. (See what I mean about not pulling punches?) Even though it has the same bad guy, we still don’t know what the big plan is. Further complicating things is the interference of the Inquisitor, a representative of the Shadowhunter government. The Inquisitor, who has hated the antagonist since he caused the death of her son years ago, it taking it out on everyone, especially the second protagonist, Jace Wayland. Instead of being a bridge between the beginning and the end of the series, like many middle books, this book deepens the story, makes it more complicated, and raises the stakes.
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| City of Glass |
The last book, City of Glass, is where everything comes together. The other books have had big battles, but the battle at the end of this book approaches the epic level. The first two books take place in New York, but this book takes place in the fictional Shadowhunter homeland. The change of scenery is okay, but I missed New York. Part of the fun of the series was having all this action take place in a major city but without any humans paying attention to this huge story playing out around them. This book also reveals the bad guy’s big plan, which is no less than to destroy and remake the Shadowhunter world. This book steamrollers right to the end. Things look utterly hopeless until the protagonists get their individual acts together and cook up their own plans to save the day.
Cassandra Clare’s series is very well written. The only thing that took some getting used to was the teenaged protagonist’s habit of using English major vocabulary and making cultural and literary allusions that are beyond most fifteen years old in the early twenty first century. Aside from that, these are solid, well constructed adventures. I was hooked right away and I ended up reading all three in about two days. They’re great stories and, even though they’re written for young adults, I’d recommend them to any fans of contemporary fantasy.