City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare - Book review #4

 

City of Ashes

By Cassandra Clare

Welcome back to the exotic world beyond the shadows...

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? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who's becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go — especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound 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.

To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings — and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace.How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?


This is the second book from the Mortal instruments series. I generally liked the book, though it was slow at the beginning. It was interesting, but every time I had to put the book down, I didn’t have any desire to pick it up again. After initial fifty or so pages of straggling, story started to pick up and with such a momentum that nothing could drag me away from the book.

In the second book we are finding out more about main characters, about their story; and we finally can see a somewhat clear motives under their behavior and actions. We are witnessing a relationships development, but unfortunately, at the end of the book we are back from where we started.

City of Ashes is packed with action. The”final battle” is amazing. It was moving so fast, pulling me with the story that sometimes I was realizing that I didn’t quite get something and had to come back. Despite that, I loved the crescendo and I kept flipping through the pages.

Plot turns were fun and entertaining, though outcome was quite predictable. I appreciated Cassandra Clare’s try to add some suspense to the story. The ending gives you a pick of what the third book will start with and I found it to be a good cliffhanger.

Mortal Instruments is probably one of the best YA series so far that I read and I can’t wait to start the third and the final book – City of Glass, luckily for me, it is out already.