Main Characters: Clary, Jace, Simon, Alex, Isabelle, Valentine

City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1)

When Clary and her best friend, Simon, go out to the teen club Pandemonium, Clary sees something suspicious, something she shouldn’t be able to see if she was a normal teenage girl. Turns out, Clary is anything but normal, and the people she saw were Shadowhunters, a special race of humans who track down and kill demons. Not only is Clary not normal, but neither is her family. Shortly after witnessing the Shadowhunters killing another teen, Clary’s mother Jocelyn is found missing, and their apartment is completely ransacked. From there, Clary is on a race against time to find The Mortal Cup – something only her mother knows the location of – before an evil group of Shadowhunters get their hands on it.

The descriptions of the other two books are under a ‘spoiler protection’ just in case you want to read them, wouldn’t want to ruin it for you :) Just select the text if you’d like to view the text!

City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments #2)

Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what’s normal when you’re a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? Clary would love to spend more time with her best friend, Simon. But the Shadowhunters won’t let her go – especially her handsome, infuriating new-found brother, Jace. And Clary’s only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil – and also her father. When the second of the Mortal Instruments is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor suspects Jace. Could Jace really be willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?

City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments #3)

To save her mother’s life, Clary must travel to the City of Glass, the ancestral home of the Shadowhunters – never mind that entering the city without permission is against the Law, and breaking the Law could mean death. To make things worse, she leaves that Jace does not want her there, and Simon has been thrown in prison by the Shadowhunters, who are deeply suspicious of a vampire who can withstand sunlight.

As Clary uncovers more about her family’s past, she finds an ally in mysterious Shadowhunter Sebastian. With Valentine mustering the full force of his power to destray all Shadowhunters forever, their only chance to fedeat him is to fight alongside their eternal enemies. But can Downworlders and Shadowhunters put aside their hatred to work together? While Jace realizes exactly how much he’s willing to risk for Clary, can she harness her new-found powers to help save the Glass City – whatever the cost?

Anna’s Thoughts

There is not enough praise I could give to these books that could do them justice. Cassandra Clare has managed to create an absolutely unique world that really jumps off the page at you from the very first page, until the very last. I was actually incredibly sad when I read the last line of The Mortal Instruments, even though it’s supposed to be a happy ending, I didn’t want it to end. Which is saying a lot because I’m the type of person who prefers a quick story over one that has 500 or more pages (that being smaller books, doesn’t include longer series). But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

My absolute favourite thing about these books are the characters. Every single character that we learn about in the series is very well developed, each and everyone of them have a completely unique voice, which isn’t hard to distinguish from the other characters. Often times in books I find myself tracing back over a paragraph I just read to find out who said a certain something. I didn’t do that at all with The Mortal Instruments. Each character is clearly defined, and most of all, real. Again, with a lot of other books, you find characters who are supposed to be in their teens who act much older, or characters who are older and act much younger. Each character in The Mortal Instruments though, acts their age, and that is so important for a book like this, where not only are the characters going through some of the (normally) tougher years of their life, but there is so much extra thrown in on top of that. There is so much happening and going on that we, as readers, don’t need to look at a passage, or an action someone takes and go “Wow, a 16 year old would never actually do/say that.”

The plot itself wasn’t the most unique thing ever. There have been plenty of books where there is an item and the good guys need to get it before the bad guys. However, Cassandra still puts her own spin on it, as not only is there one item, but there is three, and she teaches us the very hard lesson that the good guys don’t always win. Also, I’m not sure about you guys, but I’ve never quite heard of something like Cassandra’s Shadowhunters. Sure, there are a lot of characters who hunt, and a lot of books who have people who hunt ‘supernatural’ things, but none quite yet that I’ve seen who hunt demons. And again – Cassandra puts her own spin on it, because not only do they hunt demons – they don’t hunt supernaturals, but they help keep them in check. They don’t go around slaying random supernaturals just because that’s what they are. They only intervene when needed by the Clave (their version of Government), and that’s usually only when the supernatural they’re after has committed some type of crime.

This bit here might be spoilerish, but it upsets me, so it’s worth mentioning in my opinion
The only thing that I really don’t like about these books, are a certain part of the fanbase. I realize that everyone has their own views on how things should and shouldn’t be either based on their own personal beliefs or the beliefs of whatever religion they’re associated with. However, the main thing, for me, and I think for a lot of other people, with writing, is that you get to create something. You get to go outside of that comfort zone, and you get to address things that aren’t easy for people to swallow. Which is why it upsets me at some of the responses to the relationship between Clary and Jace. First of all, there had to have been some suspicion that they weren’t actually related? Some guy shows up out of the blue, and claims to be your father – one that you don’t remember – and the only person who could actually confirm this, is in a coma? Not to mention that these are teenagers we’re talking about, teenagers that had deep feelings for each other. Love is love, and I’m not saying, you know, having children with your brother/sister etc is a.. healthy thing, BUT if you don’t know you’re related and that connection is established, it’s not going to be as easy as just ‘turning it off’. Not to mention a lot of the book, when either Jace or Clary spoke about their relationship or how they felt about it in terms of also being brother and sister, they constantly said it didn’t ‘feel right’ – NOT that they felt what THEY were doing was wrong – but that the feeling that they were RELATED felt wrong to them. To me it was a lot about faith in the non-religion type of way. I had faith in Clary and Jace, and the story that Cassandra was telling.

I also have faith that when the first of The Infernal Devices series, The Clockwork Angel, makes it debut to the world in 2010, we will not be disappointed.