The series was made up of three book, City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass. And they were brilliant. I had finished them all in roughly two months and wanted more. The author published the first book, The Clockwork Angel, of another series, The Infernal Devices, which was set in the same world and I read it with great enjoyment. Then I learned that a fourth book was being written for the Mortal Instruments series.
To be honest I was a little worried about that. The last book had ended the series in a good way, tying up all loose threads and leaving you with a feeling of satisfaction. I wanted to know what happened next but I was afraid that the author wouldn't be able to continue it properly.
But of course I bought it. All the other books had been so good. I bought it and read it.
And it crushed my soul.
From what I can see there were three main reasons why the first few books were so good. There was a fair amount of good fight scenes, there was the dialogue and there was the romance. The person who first recommended the books to me points out that they all basically mean one of the main characters, Jace, but it doesn't sound right if I put it like that so I'll leave it as it is.
Let's start with the romance bit. In the preceding books the two main characters couldn't be together for complicated reasons but these were all removed at the end of the last book. So with that you'd expect them to be closer and having more romance scenes than previously. This isn't the case. There's yet another reason why Clary and Jace have to stay apart. He has dreams in which he kills her. I can understand the author wanting to keep the same sort of separation between them as she did in the other books and if it had been to the same degree as the other books that would have been fine. However it gets worse.
Then there's the dynamic between the two. The best way to think of Jace is probably as a bad-ass Edward Cullen. An Edward Cullen who would have kicked down the Volturi's door and pounded them all into the ground while telling them how much better he was than them. And Clary is no Bella. She's got tonnes of spirit when confronting her boyfriend and has pushed him around on a number of occasions.
So it's very disappointing that, when he eventually does tell her about the dreams, she isn't at all concerned and just meekly accepts it. This sort of thing winds on through the novel and peaks just about when she blames herself for everything that happened. Because, wait for it, she saved his life in the previous book. So everything that happened after is automatically her fault, in her eyes.
The fight scenes next. Some nice combat that should be at the heart of every story involving demon hunters. Only the first one occurs on page 217, almost half way through the novel, and it ain't that great. Until then we're treated to the life and times of Clary and all her friends. Honestly it was like some sort of supernatural tv soap. Which, come to think about it, I would probably watch, but it wasn't what I wanted here. While it was sort of nice to see their lives it just dragged on with two-timing, exs appearing from nowhere, a wedding looming. If they'd thrown in some demon slaying at the same time, or some real threat, then that would have been ok. If it had had plot, in fact. There was a few nice moments involving the Wrath of God when one of the characters was attacked but that was over quickly and the attacks themselves were so random and out of the blue they didn't really seem to have meaning. There were also other sinister things going on but they seemed somewhat distant from the characters and not really worth worrying about.
We got the dialogue, at least. There wasn't anything that wrong with how people were talking to each other. It's just that they didn't really have anything interesting to say.
It eventually wound up to the big confrontation. Again, the author must have faced problems. She killed off her big baddie in the last book. And laws of narrative mean that the new threat must be even worse.
Got to say, I think she over did it. Part of the plot was good and gave me what I wanted and expected, with the re-emergence of a past presence. But her main threat was too obscure to really be threatening. Too obscure and too powerful.
What this book did do was provide some fairly epic foreshadowing for her next book, the Clockwork Prince, which will be released in December. All through there are references to some of the characters and what might happen to them. It sounds good and I will definitely be buying it.
I'll probably get the next Mortal Instruments book as well. There's bound to be another one; they way The City of Fallen Angels was ended heavily implies it. I can only hope that it's a lot better than this one.
I'd, regretfully, give this book a four out of ten.
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