Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enthralling, despite flaws, April 16, 2009
The fantasy genre is well known for taking rich, varied, and well known mythology and twisting it up in new ways. Or at least, attempting to twist it up in new ways. Because let's face it, the vampire has already been invented. Now it's all about what you do with him.
So first, the really good- Cassandra Clare does a mighty fine job of taking rich and varied and well known mythologies and giving them a brand new spark of life that has not been written into the ground already. I enjoy that she picks bits of mythology from all over and uses it to create a world full of truths and half-truths and the people who have to deal with it all. This isn't just another fantasy novel. It reminds me of The Dresden Files for young adults.
The other really good thing about this book, is that the characters are a lot less cliched and stereotypical than most books in this genre. The main male character, Jace, might be pretty and the love interest (more on that in a moment) but he is also haughty, cocky, unlikeable and reactionary. She writes him so well that I sometimes find myself irritated with him- a beautiful and well drafted flaw. Who says our heroes need to be perfect anyway? This is also somewhat of a problem for her though too, because she tries so hard not to write predictable characters that they tend to fall out the other side of the extreme.
I'm also delighted by her fight scenes, which are clear and well written but not long and drawn out. Fight scenes have a tendency to be repetitive. She knows when to get on with it.
The bad- some of the prose is a little watered down. Contrite but clearly written with pleasure. Clare has never met a metaphor she didn't like. Still, the book was a page turner- I ferreted away in an empty cubicle at work to devour it during my breaks, flowery language or not.
The weird (and ugly)- The romance is bizarre. It's not even thinly veiled incestuous desire...it's right in your face and deals with it in a way that is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. I was at first horrified by her choice. Why would an author do this? But I am a little impressed with her ballsy choices for romances- a very homosexual blooming romance and a heartbreaking passion between two people who only recently found out their brother and sister. That's gutsy, and I can't say I haven't been craving some gutsy romances lately. But like I said, the incestuous romance is so weird it's not good. It reminds me a lot of the incestuous romance in The Royal Tennenbaums. I'm pretty sure we'll find out they aren't brother and sister, but honestly, the damage has been done.
Finally- I like Clary. She's weak and flawed and easily scared and up until the end of the second book, she's sort of a liability in every dangerous situation she's been in. And that makes sense, up until a very short while ago, she was a normal girl getting dressed up to dance at a goth club. It does surprise me though that no one offers to help her become less of a liability, until her powers manifest over night to make her super uber awesome. This is tragic. I'd rather have a main character who is just ok but brave and smart than one who can bring the world to its knees with no apparent explanation and no hard work.
But in the end, I was still captivated and still enthralled and I devoured it in a couple of days, to the neglect of everything else. In the end, that's what matters most to me.
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28 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Less derivative, although the fanfic roots still show, May 3, 2008
Less derivative than CITY OF BONES, this sequel suffers from the same purple prose problems, characterisation is sometimes patchy and the internal logic creaks.
Clare works harder to make the material here her own. Valentine is less cliched as a villain, with Clare doing a decent job at showing someone so utterly convinced that he is right that he can't even begin to think that he might be wrong and I could just buy into his being willing to use demons to further those ends. Unfortunately the Inquisitor feels like a rehash of `old' Valentine, a single-minded Shadowhunter who holds Jace responsible for the sins of his father and refuses to listen to any views different to her own.
Jace will appeal to teenagers - moody, handsome and with hints at special powers. His dialogue sometimes doesn't fit his age, but his scenes are confidently handled. I wish I could say the same for Clary. She remains passive and reactive and her own special powers take her too close to Mary-Sue territory. The incestuous feelings between Clary and Jace are the main theme in the book but the subject's handled in a shallow manner as neither character seems interested in the consequences or emotional implications of their feelings and Clare drops anvils as to its resolution, which robs the love triangle between Clary, Jace and Simon of tension.
Simon suffers a great deal in this book and it's a shame that Clare does not set out the scene where he's forced into a terrifying transformation. There have been hints of this since the first book but the main catalyst here happens off page and without any real build-up, which is frustrating as it robs the book of some real drama and shock-value. The dilemma that this transformation causes for Simon is resolved by the end of the book in a way that's too pat and I think it's a missed opportunity.
The prose is purple and repetitive at times and sometimes stunts the action. There are some inner-story logic problems, notably where Jace visits Valentine, finding him easily even though he's managed to evade all of the other Shadowhunters. Best scenes in the book are a dream sequence between Clary and her mother and Valentine's attack on the Silent Brothers. The cliffhanger ending is a cheap device but will leave fans panting for the concluding volume.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
At This Point, It's Just Pointless, August 27, 2009
My problem with the first book rested with Clare's world-building, but this one allowed me to move on to actually not liking the characters. Not because of their over-described beauty, but because they cease to act like responsible, logical people. I don't mean logical adults or even logical teenagers, I mean that no one in their right mind would do some of the things the characters in this book do. I read this series for a friend of mine, a young sort infatuated by the series. That was kind of the only reason I did, and rest assured that she and I will be discussing what works and what doesn't and why. There will be a lot of the latter.
In my review of the first book, I went into detail about the Shadowhunters rather racist treatment of mundanes. That the so-called guardians of mankind could look upon their protectorate with contempt didn't endear me to them as heroes, because, after all, I the reader would be one. And I wouldn't want to meet a damn Shadowhunter if they were going to sneer at me every five seconds. From a strictly literary standpoint, Valentine's hatred of Downworlders is somehow supposed to be this terrible, awful thing, but how are we supposed to get that when we see how the Shadowhunters behave? Especially when they refer to helpless civilians in the same tone one would talk about a drooling idiot. (Because, I'm certain, none of the Shadowhunters ever benefited from mundane inventions, like, say, swords, jackets, zippers, motorcycles, elastic, nylon, boots, etc.) Fantasy benefits from dichotomy, Ms. Clare. And you gave me black and grey morality by mistake.
I hated that Simon became a vampire. Call it my despair event horizon. Vampires don't do much for me (I might have been a little happier if he'd become a werewolf, but not by much), but it just seemed to drive the point home that Simon sucked and would always suck as long as he was a mundane. (Until he became a vampire, which does literally suck, and that just seemed a hilariously sad metaphorical satire; purely unintentional on the part of the author, I'm sure.) Heroes must be morally correct, more morally correct than the reader, and Clary's decision to let Simon become a vampire was ethically incorrect in my opinion. As wrong as allowing an injured animal to suffer out of a human inability to let go. The downside to being a vampire is rarely discussed in ideal worlds like Clare's and Meyers's, but the fact that Simon's religious beliefs were directly compromised by his change was terrible to me. Clary allowed her friend, who had no choice in the matter, to become a monster, cursed with a half-life and banished from a world he actually liked living in. Somehow, that was better than letting him simply die (and as far as religious beliefs/philosophy were concerned, letting him meet his God untainted). Simon got dragged into the supernatural world by Clary; she had a responsibility to him, and seeing Clary deal with the actual repercussions of that would have been far more interesting than "You're a vampire, so that means everything's okay. By the way, I let you live, you owe me." Easily the biggest disappointment of the series for me, because it just made the utter lack of responsibility on the part of the heroes resonate that much further. They owed nothing to the mundanes, nothing to the Downworlders, and nothing to each other by their actions. Trying to claim the opposite is nothing more than informed ability on the part of the author. "They're really good and nice and heroic!" The rule is show, don't tell.
And further, the Clave is useless. The higher ups, who should and would be concerned about youngsters mucking things up, can't do anything right. And conveniently, it's everyone, not just the Inquisitor. The Council's not paying attention, the Inquisitors are going crazy with power, and all these families who ought to care are all sitting in jury duty? Not even the Army fails to post active troops like this; there's always a Lieutenant or a Colonel to inform when the General is busy. It's clumsy world-building, and we see it clunking along on every page. This is why the story can't be serious, because the author can't be bothered to make it so. The characters are playing in this world, not living in it and suffering in it, because none of the ethical, moral, and emotional ramifications of most of the stuff that happens is explored at all. Instead we get "I want to sleep with my sister!'" "No! I mean ... yes ... no wait! Yes. Aw, crap!" (And while it might have squicked some people that the author wouldn't leave it alone, I figured out halfway through book 2 that they weren't brother and sister at all. Simon breaking up with Clary just drove it home.) I seriously wonder what Holly Black and Libba Bray were thinking to endorse this. Maybe someone twisted their arms?
Two stars because she's not as bad as Meyer or Paolini, but man, does her fanfiction background ever show. When you write fanfiction, you can't suck even when you do, and that's a bad environment to be fostered in.
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