2007 50 Book Challenge: Book Seven - City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

This is the publisher's review of City of Bones - Book One of The Mortal Instruments Trilogy by Cassandra Clare.

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 thoughts?
To be honest I was a little disappointed. This really is not to say that it wasn't a good book. It had a pretty good storyline and the characters and setting were interesting. I guess my problem was that I found it a little too young for my liking. It's not that I couldn't get the references but it was just more adolescent, geared more towards the young 'uns than to an old fogie like me. This can't be a real negative for the book because it is a young adult novel. I believe that I would have enjoyed it immensely when I was a kid.

So some background about Cassandra Clare.
In the Harry Potter fanfiction world, she is the It girl. Everyone loves her, everyone wants to know her. I'm being dramatic, but the truth is that she's written some works that are highly popular in the fandoms that she writes in.
Now I am one such big fan of Cassandra Clare's fanfiction and I've read her big HP trilogy, the Draco Trilogy. (well I have yet to read the end of DV but that's neither here nor there at this point.)
So in this fandom world, there's been some apparent talk of Clare having plagiarised in her fanfiction. I don't really know too much about all of this hullaballoo. I'd heard some things but obviously don't know the details to have any opinion really one way or the other. I suppose if the accusations are true and Clare did take someone's work as her own, it's unfortunate for that someone that I enjoyed the Draco Trilogy. As for Clare's book, again I don't know enough about plagiarism to be able to determine whether she has done so in her book. I can say though that there are some familiar themes that run through the storyline, common traits that show up in her characters and settings and story details that I've seen before or can recognize from popular culture. I mean, science fiction/fantasy is so often not completely original in its setting when dealing with demons, vampires, werewolves, fairies, etc. I obviously can't help seeing a huge similarity between Jace, one of the main characters in City of Bones, and Draco from Clare's Draco Trilogy. I suppose there can be a link between Jace and JKR's Draco but only in the sense of how Clare has portrayed Draco in her fanfiction. There is one thing in the book that she's taken almost directly from DT, so does it count for her to plagiarize herself? I dunno... The issue is all a little above my understanding.

At any rate, I did enjoy this book from an entertainment standpoint. The plot held my interest enough to get through and I liked some of the characters. Unfortunately, the characters that bothered me the most were the two main characters! It's not that they were unlikable, I just felt them to be a little adolescent for my taste. The banter and play between Clary and Jace seemed to be contrived and not as natural as I would have liked.

I wouldn't go so far as to recommend the book to my friends, but it's not as much that it's an awful book as it's not as good as say Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl or the Bartimaeus Trilogy (as far as young adult novels go). As for me, I'll likely pick up the second and third books of the trilogy when they get released. I'm a trooper that way.

So next up, I'm working on JKR's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But I think I'll also finish Anne Rice's Christ the Lord. I've already started it so I should finish it up. If it doesn't hold my interest I'll see about picking up Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay or perhaps Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. lol now that's quite a range of genres if I ever had to pick from.