The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Review

 

Whether you believe in angels and demons or not, you cannot deny they make for an amazing story. The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare is no different. Clary is just your normal girl, until she sees what she thinks is a murder. But, how can it be a murder when the body disappears into thin air? That was her first run in with the shadow hunters. From there her whole world changes, her mother is kidnapped, there is a Ravener Demon in her apartment, and now she can see demons. With her best friend Simon by her side, she is thrust into the shadow hunter’s world and into self-discovery when she finally finds out the truth about her family.

I loved watching the characters grow throughout this series. Cassandra did a wonderful job building the relationships of the shadow hunters: Jace, Alec, and Isabelle. While each character is very different, they work together to achieve amazing results. The addition of Clary and Simon into this mix proves important in reminding the shadow hunters who they are and who they should be, especially for Jace, who finally finds out he is capable of love when he meets Clary.

Throughout this book we meet all of the other down worlders: The children of the moon, the children of Lilith, the nightwalkers and the fey. We learn with Clary about their place on earth and how everyone can help each other.

In the first book, City of Bones, we meet Valentine. He is the leader of the Circle, who was thought to have died during the last Accords, and Clary’s father. He is obsessed with power and killing all demons and down worlders to create a perfect world filled with shadow hunters. He has his wife, Clary’s mother, in the hopes of waking her from a sleeping spell in order to find the location of the Mortal Cup. This cup will give him the power to turn any human into a shadow hunter, if the transformation doesn’t kill them first.

With Clary thrust head first into this new world she never knew existed she is forced to make some hard decisions. When Simon gets turned into a rat, kidnapped and taken to the Vampire lair at Hotel Dumort, she has to decide if a “mundane” is worth saving. When she finds out the truth about her Uncle Luke, she has to decide if he can be trusted and when she finds out the truth about who she is, she has to decide if it is worth letting the Silent Brothers into her mind to unlock secrets she was never meant to know.

In the end she finds out a secret she could have lived forever not knowing, not only does she have a father she thought was dead but someone very close to her is actually her brother.