City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Title: City of Bones
Author: Cassandra Clare
Series: The Mortal Instruments
Publisher: Margaret K. EcElderry Books
Date Published: March 17th, 2007
Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder -- much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing -- not even a smear of blood -- to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know. . . . 

Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.

Cassandra Clare builds a world of Shadowhunters where they protect humans from demons. Not only the demons but also vampires, faeries, warlocks, witches, werewolves and everything paranormal you could ever imagine. Clary is a normal teenager until she starts to see things that aren’t meant to be there. So the book description and the world sounded so promising that I was expecting a lot. Maybe too much.

The book- a little bit confusing and I could not get into it at the very start. It just didn’t grip my interest. I wasn’t fussed about what happened at all. I enjoyed the world that Clarke created it’s new and exciting and very different from other books I’ve read. However, it still wasn’t enough. I couldn’t really imagine being in Clary’s shoes and living her life. 

Although I absolutely love Clary! She’s a great female character. She doesn’t take crap from anyone that a lot of characters tend to do nowadays. When Alec was being a bit of a poop to her she stood her ground and gave him a piece of her mind.

When I was getting to the part where Clary had to stand her ground I was dreading it. I could already picture Clary running away and crying about the fact that someone was a little tiny bit mean to her. But woop that didn’t happen. You guys have no idea how happy this made me. I’m sick of seeing characters that are just wusses! Jace is a hotty and I love his sarcastic and witty responses. The only problem is I don’t like the actor playing Jace in the movie… He doesn’t look like the Jace I pictured in my mind at all.

The whole shadowhunters business reminded me a lot of Charmed TV series, even the whole demon thing. But I love charmed so I don’t mind.

I don’t get the runes… They can cure you but only sometimes and only certain things, they have enhancing powers or something but it’s not mentioned during the fights and I still can’t wrap my head around them I just don’t understand what they do and how they work! Cassandra did not go into detail while explaining this at all!

More about the fights- love the action, hate the description of them. I only got half of what happened and what was involved. I would think someone is across the room and then I find out that they are actually part of the fight and then some of the fight moves didn’t make much sense to me. Thankfully, the description of the fights improved as the book went on. Honestly, I was lost quite a bit and that put me off.

I really liked the different twists going on although they were quite easy to guess or see coming around the corner; I still really enjoyed them. It made the whole book seem more exciting even at times when it was just someone telling a story or Clary finding out more about the new world that she was thrown into without any notice.

There were a few errors during the book that I didn’t really mind but I was a little annoyed that they were still there. The book was mostly spoken in 3^rd person but sometimes there were hints of paragraphs that were in 1^st person. It was hard to ignore that.

I enjoyed this book a lot and I was surprised as I genuinely thought I was reading this book just because. But no halfway through I realised what this book is quite awesome! I wouldn’t say I loved this book as it left me quite confused and muddled at times not mentioning some of the errors made and the things that were left unexplained. I will deffo continue with the series as I cannot wait to see what happens later with Clary and Jace… Although I hated the ending. The big twist about them being brother and sister… Okay I did see it when Luke said something about Jocelyn’s little boy who had blonde hair. Bells were ringing then. But I didn’t want to believe it.

I couldn’t believe it. They clearly fell in love with each other and fair enough they didn’t know in the beginning but I looked at the second book and I’m disturbed by what I found in the summary… Like double gross!!! So now if anything happens between them I’m going to be super disturbed and grossed out. Brilliant.