Thursday, October 13, 2011

Review: City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

City of Ashes
(The Mortal Instruments, #2)
Cassandra Clare
Published March 25th, 2008
by Simon & Schuster

A murderer is loose in New York City ...

... and the victims are Downworlder children. Clary Fray and her fellow Shadowhunters have a strong suspicion that Valentine, Clary's father, may be behind the killings. But if he is the murderer, then what's his true motive? To make matters worse, the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, has been stolen, and the mysterious Inquisitor has arrived to investigate, with his eyes vigilantly targeted on Clary's brother, Jace.

Clary will need to face some terrifying demons and even more terrifying family decisions. No one said that the life of a Shadowhunter would be easy.

City of Ashes is the sequel to City of Bones. It's a strong and gratifying installment. It had a lot more happening than in the first, very action packed, still witty and sarcastic, though the storyline as a whole didn't advance very much. I did still enjoy it, maybe even a bit more than City of Bones.

The characters weren't any more developed in this book. Everyone is basically the same, well except for one. We're introduced to a few new characters though. The one that stands out the most is Immogen, she's a Bitch! But keeps things interesting for sure. Also, I know it's going to be resolved (or so I'm told) but the Clare/Jace relationship is still weird to me. I guess being in their shoes it would be hard to accept it and move on, but still icky.

Just one quick note on the writing. I notice the re-use of a few eye rolling quotes from the first book : "quick as a flick of Isabelle's whip"? Just reading that makes me feel awkward.

There weren't as many twists in this one. And the few given weren't hard to figure out, however it didn't make them any less interesting. I'm really loving where they're going with Simon. I'm intrigued to find out why he's as he is. There are a lot of openings for City of Glass and it's bound to be very interesting and hopefully we'll have a lot of questions answered.

4 Hot Espressos
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Previously reviewed in The Mortal Instruments series: