City of Glass
Ratings523
Average rating3.9
So this month I've been continuing on with my goal to finish The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare and I'm proud to say that having read City of Glass I am now half way there being now 3 books into this 6 book series and I would say that at this stage for me it felt like the books were themselves reaching a turning point in the series.
From the outset of this book, we are aware that things are going to be different, for a start the action moves away from New York and into the Shadowhunter homeland of Idris and it's capital city Alicante. This marks a change in the pace of the books as we are made aware quite early on that there is limited technology in Idris and that it is the home of the Clave, the Shadowhunter council who govern over the laws and codes that our characters live by. The Lightwoods are headed to Idris to inform the Clave of the events of the previous book and to prepare them for the potential upcoming attacks that can be expected from Valentine and they take their family and Jace with them. Clary also is headed to Idris in search of warlock Ragnor Fell who holds the secrets of how to wake Jocelyn, Clary's mother, from her self-imposed sleep like state.
As the action moves, we are allowed the scope to begin to introduce even more new characters to our narrative. We are introduced to the Penhallow family who the Lightwoods stay with whilst in Idris and we also meet the sister of werewolf Luke, a Shadowhunter who has seen little of her brother since his transformation to Werewolf but who's past marriage would seem to be significant.
As well as introducing new characters I felt this book really began to finalise some of the stories we've been working through in the first few books and to really give more depth to some of the people we've come to know and love. We get to meet Clary's mother Jocelyn properly for the first time, Simon is growing more accustomed to his life as a vampire and with this we see his strength and confidence beginning to grow and the growing relationship between Alec Lightwood and Magnus Bane is a highlight and they brighten up any pages they are on together.
I liked that this book seems to conclude one major plot we have been following since Book 1, I feel it is the right time to say goodbye to certain characters and to draw a line under some of those niggling plot twists that have been stopping the story from moving forward. I also feel that it may be time to move a little of the action away from Jace and Clary and to allow some of the amazing surrounding characters to have their moment in the spotlight. I like Jace and Clary very much but I almost love the other characters more.
At this stage in the series, I'd have to say I still prefer The Infernal Devices as a story overall as I felt it was slightly better developed and the writing more engaging. I am absolutely going to keep moving forward with The Mortal Instruments but I am also aware of The Dark Artifices series which is getting a LOT of attention and I'm really interested to be able to delve into that once I'm done with this but I'm aware that Lady Midnight the first in that series has major spoilers for the end of this series so I need to read books 4-6 of Mortal Instruments in order to move forward so I absolutely will be completing this series in the weeks ahead.
Penutup seri bagi trilogi pertama. Karena seri ini ternyata sambutan pembaca luar biasa jadi Cassie akan membuat trilogi kedua.
I really liked this book. The fact that Max died was so sad though, especially with how everyone was ignoring him the entire time before it happened. I'm not quite sure how Sebastian (ok, jonathan) thought that Isabelle was most like him. I love that Clary and Jace find out they are not siblings, that was what I was waiting for the entire time. I'm interested as to how the tv show is going to portray that as well, since they are taking things so out of order...Overall, great book, it develops the plot quite well, and if Cassandra Clare wanted, she could probably have left it there as a trilogy...but thank god she didn't! :)
I have no freaking words to describe this book?
OH. MY. GOD. It was by far the best of the series. And if you haven't liked the first ones, I bet this one will change your point of view overall.
This was... woah. GIGANTIC. My love for the characters just got stronger and stronger and I'm so so happy to find out that Jace and Clary weren't actual siblings, even if I already knew it. And I'm soooo in love with the sexy vampire version of Simon.
CASSANDRA CLARE YOU'RE MY FIREWORK
CONTAINS SPOILERS
OMG the amount of plot twists in this book are absolutely unreal. The Jace and Clarey thing I always knew was garbage, but Sebastien caught me completely off guard with his role in the story. I am totally pissed about Max dying because that was completely unnecessary. Overall I think the character development in this book was so much better than the previous ones and I am so much more satisfied with the ending. I must say that Clare's writing style is very confusing at times to the point where I'm not always sure who's point of view that I'm reading from. Also sometimes during the story I feel like she was just very lazy or ran out of motivation because she develops a scene so quickly, almost like she just wants it to be over and done with. The whole scene with Jocelyn waking up was quite possibly the laziest writing I have ever seen, and even further when she finally decides that she wants to go after Luke. Even the Valentine scene, the one we've all been waiting for made me feel so empty inside because it was over so quickly. While I enjoyed the story overall, there are some very obvious plot holes and noticeable points where the story is lacking.
Started not so good, a bit boring and repetitive, but ended okay. Although not sure how there's a fourth and fifth book?!
Read previous reviews and or my blog. Since I read all of them in a week, it all blurs in my head.
So I'm finally done withy he original trilogy. This was definitely the best book of the three.
It's definitely not a perfect saga nor is it close, but I did ended up enjoying it most of the time while I was reading, and that deserves recognition.
Proper review to come.
Hmmm. This series is getting worse. I didn't think it was possible for Clary to get more annoying, but this book certainly proved me wrong. And don't even get me started on Jace and Simon (why is he around anyway, other than to create useless drama?). I can't say that anything that happened in this book was at all surprising (or original), and I found myself skimming large portions of text that weren't dialogue.
Another great book in the Mortal Instruments series. I loved the characters, the plot, the flow. Just great fun!
Great book! I really liked this series and I kind of enjoy that I don't really have to move on to the rest of the series if I don't want to since this book tied up all of the loose ends present in the past two novels.
This is probably once of the first series where the ending didn't disappoint me, even though this isn't really the ending. XD
I truly am not a huge fan of these books. As I mentioned in my first review, City of Bones, I bumped the series up on TBR because of all the hype surrounding the books.
This book was meant to be the third and last book of the series. Although I'm not a fan I do want to say that Cassandra Clare did a good job of weaving in all the loose ends nicely. There were some things about the book that annoyed me and I will list them but they weren't bad enough to score this one a one.
As I've mentioned before I'm not wow'ed by the writing. It's ok. In this book as in the other two there were reminders of other books that I shall not name since I've already named THE book.
In the last book we are introduced to the youngest Lightwood, Max. He's about ten. In the book he is killed and in the oddest of ways. His killing really didn't make sense and I couldn't understand why the author would choose to kill him of all people. Clary is still her whiny self. Jace is still his repugnant self. Clary now wants to get more serious with Jace and Jace is now saying no they should just be brother and sister...wackadoo...
Besides that there were some more off the wall things plugged into this book that I found... well... off the wall. For example, in the middle of a fighting scene Alec stops to yell at Magnus because he wants to know...wait for it... wait for it... wait for it... WHY HE HASN'T ANSWERED HIS CALLS.
What the heck?
In the middle of a battle of all things to stop and talk about!...It was just ridiculous. I also found Clary's reaction to her mother odd after she had tried so hard to revive her. The only other thing I didn't really like was the lack of a connection with some characters. A lot of these characters were supposed to feeling sadness and a whole lot of other emotions and I just didn't get that from them.
I'm on to the next book and I will tell you this: Simon is ALREADY annoying me.
I just have to get this out: This series has a rather contraversial twist thrown at the reader in book 1. Here, in book 3 that twist is rectified. But the question reamains, and I will ask this is the least spoilery way I can, why was this done at all? Was Cassandra Clare trying to make some sort of point and if so what was it? Was forbidden love is all of it's previous forms too played out to be interesting? I cannot fathom what went through the author's head while creating this odd plot contrivance (nor can I imagine how this will be portrayed in the film version that the author insists is in the works) but it's rectification is for the best.
This is the longest of the Mortal Instuments books and in my opinion the best so far. It's well paced, and well plotted. Besdies what's mentioned above, every character shows growth and makes positive changes.
My biggest complaint, and as it's a YA book I can forgive it, is that it's all too easy. The resolutions flow freely in this book and while the stakes of this story have never been higher, you know it will all work out in the end. The antagonist is defeated with almost cartoonish ease and that's well after the real drama of the story has peaked. While I fully recommend this book as I devoured it, having to slog through the first 2 books to get to this point is something I find difficult to endorse. Overall, I enjoyed the series, but that twist is so left field and so mindbogglingly overplayed that even knowing how it works doesn't help you when looking back at the story. It just raises the question of WHY???
I was in such suspense through this book, and when Clary found out for sure that Jace wasn't really her brother, I called out “Finally!” aloud and my husband looked at me funny. This is definitely my favorite “urban fantasy” so far though I must say I haven't read many of them and I'm not sure how fond I am of the genre in general. I was completely hooked on this whole series and read it all in the span of a few days, compelled to keep going.
Can't wait for the next book. There are still some disturbing ideas about brother and sister relationships in these books that makes me uncomfortable. But overall it's a great fantasy novel.