Book Review - City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Article by Kendrik D'mer

Book Title: City of Bones

Series: The Mortal Instruments

Author: Cassandra Clare

Genre: YA, Alternate Reality/Paranormal

Synopsis:

With City of Bones being the first of five books in the Mortal Instruments series, Clare introduces us to many characters and ideas.  Clarissa “Clary” Fray and her best friend Simon are initially portrayed as smart but otherwise average teenagers, not the most popular kids, but content in being that way.

When they decide to go to an underage club, they are accidently introduced to a portion of the world they had never dreamed existed.  Through a happenstance meeting with Jace, Isabelle and Alec, the are let in on a secret: “all the stories are true.”

As it turns out, all of the creatures they had thought were mythical were real. Faeries (referred to as the Fae), demons, vampires, and werewolves are everyday parts of a Shadowhunter’s life.  She learns that Shadowhunters are the descendants of one Jonathan Shadowhunter, who prayed for help defending the world from what are now called Downworlders, and who received the blood of the angel Raziel in response.  This allowed Jonathan and his followers to wear angelic runes that pure humans could not survive, which each grant certain heightened abilities, such as perfect balance, glamours that are effectively invisibility, the ability to move silently, and, perhaps most important, the rune that heals any injury short of a mortal wound.

After the run-in at the club, Clary’s mother Jocelyn decides that the two of them, plus her own best friend, Luke, are going to spend the summer at Luke’s farmhouse in upstate New York, far from the city where they live. Clary can sense something is wrong, different, but doesn’t get a chance to figure it out.  Very quickly, her mother is kidnapped, Luke goes missing, and she is taken in by the kids she met at the club, Jace, Isabelle and Alec, at the Institute, which is run by Isabelle and Alec’s parents.  Here, she learns Shadowhunter history, and is told they all assume she is some kind of Downworlder, as she could see through their glamour runes, but aren’t sure what kind.

Together, trying to control the Downworlders in New York City, train Clary to fight and figure out what exactly she is, the intrepid teenagers cross paths with names we are likely to hear again: Camille de Bellecourt, the French vampire and Magnus Bane, the cat-eyed warlock.  And Valentine, a rogue Shadowhunter, long thought to be dead.

This is all only the beginning of Clary’s adventures in the Shadowhunter world, where a sacred oath is absolutely binding and finding out who your relatives are and who is your family isn’t necessarily the same thing.

Review:  I think that Cassandra Clare did an excellent job of taking several fantasy and paranormal stereotypes and modifying them to fit together in a brand new worldview.  We have your average well-rounded group of teenagers, from shy Alec and awkward Simon, to over-confident Jace and no longer a girl but not yet a woman Isabelle.  But gradually we are allowed to see behind the tropes into the real personalities we are introduced to.

In standard fiction, faeries are just faeries, warlocks are humans who use magic, werewolves were bit and infected by another werewolf and vampires are turned by sadistic sires.  In Clare’s Shadowhunter world, while some of these remain possible, the Fae are half angel, half demon.  Warlocks are the result of the union between a human and a demon, usually unwillingly on the human’s part.  Shadowhunters are half human, half angel, thanks to the deal Jonathan Shadowhunter struck with the angel Raziel.

In short, Clare balances the well-known and widely accepted and her own new take on mythic beings very carefully, making it easy for readers to both understand and accept as a possibility.  Our protagonist, Clary, is portrayed as extremely human, and is therefore easy to sympathize with as she panics over her mother’s kidnapping, is comforted by the alluring Jace Morgenstern, find out Simon has a crush on her, and wades into this new world of creatures both exciting and terrifying, all while trying to figure out her own niche in life.