Review: City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1) by Cassandra Clare

Synopsis (via Goodreads): 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. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing - not even a smear of blood - to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know....

Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.

My Take: I have a rule of thumb: If a book or series makes me want to climb inside it and roll around in the dirty streets and barrows (it's urban fantasy, dirty streets are a given) and I'm wondering if I'm going to die if I can't read the next one right away, I count that as a good book.

City of Bones gave me what I was looking for when I picked it up.  I wanted adventure and romance and that touch of the mystical that I sometimes crave.  I wanted a creepy, gritty landscape overlaid with the interactions between characters that might not be human, exactly, but that behave with distressingly human emotions.  I got all that.  Plus, some things that weren't even on my list.

The only thing that could have made this better would be to have book 2 already in my hands.

Without giving anything away, my heart broke a little at the revelation toward the end.  Broke.  I was picking up pieces and shoving them back in my chest.  That said, I still hold out hope that the things I long for, the things that this revelation temporarily quashed, will somehow come to pass.  I don't know how this will happen.  I don't know when, but I believe!

To make a long story short, I pretty much loved this book.  Books 2 and 3 are going to be in my immediate future and Clockwork Angel (book 1 of the prequel) is sitting pretty on my bookshelf as I type.


Other books by Cassandra Clare

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