I am so late to
getting around to Cassandra Clare’s The
Mortal Instruments series, even though my sister has been trying to get me
to read them for over a year. I started reading City of Bones yesterday morning, and now I’m halfway through the
third book, City of Glass (there are
five written so far, with the sixth and final book due out in early 2014). Now
that I’ve started to read Clare’s books, I sort of can’t stop, and catching up
on them now is in perfect timing for the movie release in August.
Fifteen-year-old Clarissa “Clary” Fray lives in New York
City with her mother, and she has plenty of freedom to explore the city with
her best friend Simon when they’re not at school. On the night that they venture
to the club Pandemonium, Clary witnesses an attempted murder that only she can
see, as three individuals carrying otherworldly weapons go after a blue-haired
boy. Clary leaves the club completely unsettled, especially since Simon didn’t
see anything out of the ordinary.
From there, Clary begins to see a world she didn’t know
existed, one populated by demons and vampires, werewolves and faeries, and the
Shadowhunters who keep the order between them all. Clary is herself a
Shadowhunter, however, she has been raised without knowledge of her abilities,
or of her own mother’s participation in the Shadowhunter society that she
eventually left behind.
When her mother disappears, Clary is brought into the fold
by three unlikely individuals: teenage Jace and his foster siblings, Alec and
Isabelle. And Simon, her hilarious best friend, is dragged into this world
right along with her.
Like all great YA fantasy series, the world expands as the
series progresses, slowly introducing new characters and new places, while also
expanding on those characters and places that have been integral to the story
since the beginning. I love how two relationships in particular grow and
develop – that between Clary and Simon and then between Clary and Jace – and go
to some pretty unexpected places. But Clary’s relationships work so well (and
seem so believable) because she is herself an incredibly strong character who
knows herself, even when she is uncertain about the new world she’s been thrown
into. In the same way that Katniss is so sure of her decisions in The Hunger Games (even if they don’t
always seem like the best decisions),
Clary knows her own mind and who she is in a changing environment.
I can’t believe I’m just getting to this series now, but I’m
definitely making up for lost time!
No comments:
Post a Comment