Book Review

by Mariella Cecilia Hunt

I was supposed to take my time reading the two awesome books that I got a couple of days ago. (Plague by Michael Grant and City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare.) Make them last. It’s not every day that I can look forward to enjoying a new installment of my favorite series. It will be a long time before there’s a new one at all. But I can’t help it. I eat books, and especially when they’re this awesome—well, this probably doesn’t sound like a review. None of my reviews ever sound like reviews. They’re not helpful, they rarely criticize anything: If I like a book, I really like it. What I spend days drafting in my mind as I read are fangirlish rants where I pretty much squeal about what I loved about said book.

But I think writers appreciate that as much as they appreciate the critique. I know I sure do.

Today, I ate City of Fallen Angels—the newest Mortal Instruments book. They never fail me. They’ve become my favorite books ever. I never really wrote about it on Goodreads or Facebook, or anywhere. But today I am because I just need to do my fair share of screaming and dancing around.

SPOILER ALERT—SPOILER WARNING—IF YOU DON’T LIKE SPOILERS, DON’T READ PAST THIS POINT, BECAUSE THERE WILL BE SOME.

I want to be a Shadowhunter. Just like I want to be a witch in the Harry Potter world. The two series have their ways of pulling me into an environment where I just absolutely start building my character. I make a plotline for myself. I create my life in these worlds, the way I imagine it’d be if I were in them. Some might disagree and say that Harry Potter is superior to TMI and doesn’t even call for comparison. Well, it’s okay to have that opinion. A lot of people pointedly don’t like YA and get testy when HP is compared to other books because NOTHING can compare to HP—and on many aspects I agree. HP is a legend, nothing will ever be like it.

But a reader’s reaction to a story might be similar. A reader’s opinion can put both of these lovely series on the same top bookshelf where all the favorites go, and they’ll share the same amount of glory in the reader’s heart. That’s how it is for me, because both of these series have me absolutely wishing I could melt into the book and be with them. Talk to the characters, help them, change the course of the story—and sometimes, smack the villain.

That’s how it is with me. In both cases I’ve wanted to do things like leave a stick in Voldemort’s path so that he would trip because he’s such a strong villain that the last thing he’d expect to be defeated by is a stick, so he wouldn’t look out for it. In TMI, it was Sebastian.

I read the first books a while ago so I can’t comment on them. But I can gather my thoughts on City of Fallen Angels in a blog post before they drift out the window into the chilly Lima night, floating off over the ocean to some remote land.

I will now abandon all formality in this blog post and list my thoughts as they first come to mind:

• AAAAAAAAAAHHHH I WANT TO BE A SHADOWHUNTER WHY DO THEY GET TO DO ALL THE COOL STUFF IT IS SO NOT FAIR!!!!
• Wow. Two girlfriends. Is it me or does Simon always get into so much trouble that it’s comical?
• Why didn’t these two girls beat him up after they found out? That makes no sense!
• For about half the book, I kept thinking, “WHYYYY IS JACE BEING SO WEIRD?! HE IS MESSING EVERYTHING UP!!! AFTER ALL IT TOOK TO—gah. What is his PROBLEM?!”
• I got all excited when she mentioned that Kyle might be a Catholic. Because of the medal he wore. Of course it wasn’t a religious medal, but since I like medals, OH WELL.
• It really seems like the only way to keep Jace out of trouble would be to lock him up somewhere and have him never be by himself. Or like, keep an army of backup fighter ninja Shadowhunters behind him. He’s just always being attacked by something.

Of course they always make it out alive in the end of every book. Right? Well…they didn’t really get a happy ending this time. I can’t recall if they ever do get a happy ending. I feel really bad for Jace, he can’t ever have just a day or two where he can sit around and not worry about one thing or another. Now there’s the weird bond with Sebastian?! What?! I thought he killed Lilith—wait, no, that would be too easy.

I can relate, of course. I never give my characters happy endings or easy solutions, either. It’s just so rare. So I can kind of imagine what was going through the author’s mind as she set him up for yet another nightmarish adventure which we shall read in the next book.

In summary? Things are getting good. For us, I mean. We get a really good read. But for the characters, uh, I’m sure they’re not that thrilled.

I gave it four out of five stars. I don’t like knocking stars off of books that I really like. But the only thing I can really say I disliked about City of Fallen Angels is all the scenes I had to skip because of, uh, romance. I think I had to skip a whole chapter somewhere in there. I can only take so much romance and when a book has so much of it that I have to roll my eyes and turn a chunk of pages, that automatically loses it a point. For all its epic awesomeness, I think that you can do without all the extra slapped-on make-out scenes. They make me uncomfortable, and they don’t all really help with the story in the end.

But apart from that. This book was pretty amazing. And I want to be a Shadowhunter. GOSH, I want to be a Shadowhunter—why do they get to have all that cool action and not me? NO FAIR. ;-;

**dreamy sigh** **puts this book on her Favorites shelf**

Cassandra Clare, please hurry up and write the next one—I’m going NUTS!!!

That would be all.

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare is available in hardcover, paperback, and audio CD at Amazon.com