I recently finished reading Cassandra Clare’s second book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Ashes. I thought it was great. You may recall that I read City of Bones a few months ago and I said that it was just good, but I expected better from books after that, since that was an early book of hers.
As this review is the second book in a series, it may contain spoilers for City of Bones.
I was correct in thinking that, because I thought that this was a great book. My problems with City of Bones was that there were a few occasions of infodumping, and I found the reaction of the characters to some of the situations they were facing to be unrealistic. I didn’t see those problems here. I did see one paragraph that seemed like a little infodump, but it didn’t affect my thoughts of the book at all.
As City of Ashes begins, the character’s lives have been upended. Clary and Jace seem to have feelings for each other but are evidently siblings, their mom is in a coma in the hospital, and their father, Valentine, is causing trouble.
Jace’s adoptive mother is having trouble believing all that happened in the first book, and calls upon the Inquisitor to find out the truth. The Clave can use the Mortal Sword to force him to tell the truth. But… dun dun dun! Valentine seems to have stolen it. Will he cause even more problems?
The Inquisitor seems to have a thing against Jace from the moment she sees him, and tries to make things difficult for him. Unfortunately, Jace and his friends are also the only people that see what’s going on, and they have to overcome both Valentine’s forces and the Clave’s representative in order to put things right, or at least as right as they can be.
Meanwhile, Jace and Clary still obviously have non-brotherly/sisterly feelings for each other. Clary reacts to this by forming a love relationship with Simon. I personally didn’t like them together. They didn’t seem to have more than friends chemistry.
I love the characters and the world in this book, and although I can’t keep all the different types of demons and blades straight, I doubt that there will be a quiz on it later. I definitely think that City of Ashes was a great second installment to the Mortal Instruments series, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book.
I am such a fan of the Shadowhunters. I loved TMI, loved TDI even more, and am really enjoying TDA.
I think that The Queen of Air and Darkness has consistently appeared towards the top of Goodread’s YA Books of 2018 list tells you that it must be good :-). That’s actually how I found this series in the first place. I was browsing that list and saw that book, and then figured that I better start at the beginning.
It would make sense that her later books are better than her first ones. I think that people generally improve as authors over time. I know that I have improved.
Brooke!
I am glad you liked the second book more than the first. From my experience, Cassandra Clare just keeps getting better with each book she writes. Do you have any pairings you want to become canon in the story? Oh, and I hear you on the Simon/Clary ship. It was not my scene at all. Incidentally, I think Simon is up there in terms of favorite characters for me. He makes me laugh but without also being endearing. I think, if everyone had a Simon friend, the world would be infinitely better.
Well, since I did a little googling after reading City of Bones… I actually know who ends up together, and I’m pretty happy about it :-). If I said who my favorite was here, I might be giving away spoilers.
Simon would be a really good friend. And I realize that sometimes friends can become more, but the fact that Clary was never really feeling anything other than friendship until she was trying to get over her feelings for her “brother” shows me that she wasn’t actually into it. And she was oblivious to his feelings until that point, even though they were obviously there.