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

Title: City of Bones
Series: The Mortal Instruments #1
Author: Cassandra Clare
Published: 09/07/2013, Walker Books Ltd
Pages: 506
Source: Bought
Format: Paperback
Rating: 4/5
Clary Fray is seeing things: vampires in Brooklyn and werewolves in Manhattan. Irresistibly drawn to the Shadowhunters, a secret group of warrios dedicated to ridding the earth of demonds, Clary encounters the dark side of New York City - and the dangers of forbidden love.

Once again, I'm asking myself "why haven't I read this sooner"? It took me a while to get into City of Bones, but damn... how action packed is this book? I couldn't put it down.

So, City of Bones is set in New York, but to me, it didn't feel like New York. But, then I'm not very familiar with the city and only recognise major landmarks. I only knew it was New York because the characters mentioned it. To me, it could have been any city in America. (I should probably educate myself more.)

The characters were all so likeable. Jace is just so brilliantly badass. Sure, he can be a bit of a cocky prick a lot of the time, but he has such a dry sense of humour that just makes you love him. And of course, Jace is a damn good Shadow hunter, therefore, he has every right to be cocky in my opinion.

Clary handles herself fairly well when she's thrusting the crazy world she finds herself in. She kind of takes it into her stride and doesn't freak out too majorly, which I liked. True, there are bits where she completely freezes up, but would anyone else do any better? And she can handle Jack brilliantly and always has a great comeback for him. However, I did find her a bit "me" focused. It was all about her and she had a horrible habit of forgetting about others.

Simon is he typical dorky best friend, but he is still adorable in his own way. Isabelle is such a Bitch to everyone and is just generally brilliant. She tells it like it is. Alec... I wish there was more of Alec. He was just the sidekick really but I know there has got to be so much more to him.

City of Bones is told from the third-person perspective of Clary. This means that the story isn't too predictable at all. However, I, unfortunately, knew one of the major spoilers before I started reading, but I tried not to think about it.

I thought City of Bones was a bit of a slow burner to start with, but once the story got going, the pace really picked up massively. And the whole story leads to quite the dramatic ending. Not all plot points were tied up, but the ending was still neat enough and its part of a series so it doesn't really matter.

I did find that I really had to concentrate on what was happening a lot. So much happens in a short time that it was sometimes hard to keep up. And the descriptions were just so detailed hat I felt that I sometimes had to pick out the important details myself.

City of Bones is a wonderful read that I wish I had picked it up years ago. I would definitely recommend it to fans of paranormal and fantasy, but I'm probably the last person on earth to read it... I'm definitely taking a trip to Waterstones tomorrow to pick up a copy of City of Ashes, though.

Goodreads / Amazon / Book Depository

Cassandra Clare / Goodreads / Twitter

Follow me via Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Bloglovin and Pinterest.

Feel free to leave a comment.