Review: City of Bones

City of Bones

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

(I’m going to murder Goodreads for just deleting the huge, detailed review I just wrote. Let’s see if I have the patience to do this again)

City of Bones, the first Mortal Instruments novel, is about as unremarkable as anything I’ve read in the past five years. The characters are flat, the plots are lifted from well known tropes (and implemented ungracefully), the descriptions are hammy and ill-timed, and the narrative voice will convince you that your author would rather be nerding-out watching anime than really writing a book.

The main character, Clary, is prototypically insecure as a regular mortal thrust into a magical world that’s all new and shiny. The concept makes you roll your eyes, and it only gets worse from there. What surprises lay in store for our young heroine? Will there be a love triangle? Perhaps someone will betray her, or maybe someone will reveal that they aren’t who they claimed to be? Yeah, you’ll see it all coming a mile away, and you won’t really care.

The main supporting male lead, Jace, is a fantastic example of an author falling in love with her character. If I read one more paragraph about how amazing and infinitely talented he was, despite being a tormented bad-boy who must be forgiven his caustic personality, I think I might have hurled.

All-in-all, City of Bones is formulaic, mediocre, and boring. It reads at a young-adult level, so perhaps that audience will be more taken in by it. For myself, I will not be continuing the series.

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