What do you do when your entire world is turned upside down and the only person that might have all the answers has gone missing?
When you’re thrust into a new world of magic and demon hunting, only to discover your father is a homicidal psychopathic leader of a cult determined to commit genocide.
The City of Bones by Cassandra Claire is a young adult fantasy romance adventure about a young girl, Clary Fray, who one day starts to see things that can’t be real.
A group of three teens commit murder in a back room of a nightclub, only the body vanished into thin air. They claim it’s a demon and they’re angel blooded demon hunters.
The next day one of the teens, Jace Wayland, tracks her down saying he was told to bring her to his mentor, Hodge. She runs away from him after a frantic call with her mother and is attacked by a demon. Only for Jace to save her.
He marks her with a healing rune, which lets them know she’s one of them. And takes her to the institute where she’s introduced to Isabel and Alec Lightwood.
They go back to Clary’s home to discover her mother missing and stumble onto a portal to Luke’s, a good friend of her mother’s. Where they meet her best friend Simon and find out Valentine, the man who took her mother and the leader of a dangerous group called the Circle, is Clary’s father.
Later they discover more secrets, such as Clary’s mental block and that a Warlock named Magnus Bane put it there.
Clary also comes to the realization that her mother must have hidden a very important magical artifact, called the Mortal Cup. An artifact that Valentine is looking for.
Unfortunately, I found the first book in this series rather bland.
And much like Throne of Glass, of which the author voice is very similar, it felt as though it lacked a good deal of reason or well-thought-out plot development.
I still enjoyed the story and found the characters quite entertaining and well developed multi-dimensional people. Though, Clary’s inability to stop and think her action through, even if quite believable for a 14-year-old, was frustrating at best, annoying at most, and downright infuriating at its worst.
I also agree with a commit I read somewhere that claimed the book would have been better if the main point of view had been Isabel and Alec’s.
This being because the siblings grew up in the Shadow World, which is the main attraction to the story. Though, less so in this book and more the series as a whole. Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunters world is by far one of the most interesting and thought-out ones I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Though, I will reiterate the point that that fact is less so in City of Bones.
So I defiantly recommend reading the series, just be prepared to have to work through a bit of frustration and annoyance during City of Bones. As well as a rather anti-climatic ending.
But the second and third books are well worth it!