City of Bones, a review

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, a review

So here we are: my first book review. What an interesting concept. I should do it more often. I won't, but I should.

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder — much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Clary knows she should call the police, but it's hard to explain a murder when the body disappears into thin air and the murderers are invisible to everyone but Clary.

Interesting fact: The author of this particular series got really famous for writing Harry Potter fanfiction. Yeah. She wrote mostly Draco fanfiction, it took off and she somehow crossed over into 'actually' writing books. So, keep at it NaruSasu fan writers. Perhaps you, too, shall cross over.
Basically, Harry… err- 'Clary' finds out she's a special daughter of a special mother, who's coincidentally kidnapped, so she goes to a special academy where she learns about her special power, meets special friends and that one special boy who she's oddly drawn to, even though he's a jackass and treats her with lots and lots of insults (because that's what women want in a relationship apparently).

An interesting and my personal favorite aspect of the series is the magical veil. See, the whole book takes place in New York and slowly, Clary starts to see magic 'fill in' her magical sight. She notices vampires at dance clubs, mermaids in the Hudson and finds an interesting fact that Werewolves live off tips by delivering Chinese food.

The characters are tolerant enough. If you can sit through an episode of a CW show, you won't mind these characters. Best of them is Clary's best friend, Simon, who acts as a Ron Stoppable of the series and is actually funny at points.

And there's a bit of controversy too. In order to prevent moaning from fans, I will cut off a section of this review and mark when I'm beginning and ending Spoilers.


SPOILERS

Okay, so the big hubbubs are two things: first is one of the side characters, Alec Lightwood, is apparently gay.  No one seems to care but Isabelle, his twin, says not to tell their parents because they're old-fashioned like that.  They also pair him up with a flamboyant night club owner who glibs a lot.

2nd Controversy is that the main character, Clary, and her main love interest, Jace, are actually brother and sister. They happen to share the same father and only find out this icky truth after… they totally kissed the night before. Talk about awkward conversations.

END OF SPOILERS


So, it's essentially "Harry Potter" meets "Buffy" meets "gay fanfiction", then… yeah, you pretty much got it. I'm not sure how else to put it. That doesn't make it a bad novel per say, it just makes all the bits and pieces stick out a bit more.

I don't know. By the end of the day, I would've liked TMI if it had concentrated more on the 'humor' aspect and doing self-riffs on its genre than 'let's try and imitate Harry Potter' stuff. And ultimately, the 'taboo' relationships don't much raise an eyebrow from me because I don't much care about the characters themselves as individuals outside their respective relationships.

Do I recommend a read? Sure, why not? It's certainly miles above Twilight and you can tell the author is 'trying' to be a good writer, setting up lore, plot twists and believable dialogue. It's just a shame it ends up settling for conventions.

Rating: Renting it from the Library.