Review | City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

“The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he’d learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”

GoodReads rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Spoilers ahead.

First published in 2007, City of Bones is the first novel in The Mortal Instruments series and the debut novel of American author Cassandra Clare. Introducing the world to the Shadowhunters, the novel follows fifteen-year-old Clary Fray as she discovers the life she’s been living in New York has been a complete lie and that her family is entwined in the world of Shadowhunters more deeply than she could have ever imagined.

The Shadowhunters series has become a behemoth in the 13 years since it was first published. I had always seen them on the shelves, and even owned physical copies of a good deal of the books. Unfortunately, it started to feel as though books were being released every other month and I got overwhelmed to the point where I got rid of all the books and decided to leave it for a bit. After asking for help from some lovelies on Instagram, I have a comprehensive list of the order I need to read these books in.

Now that I’ve finally managed to get through the first book, I have to say I do understand the hype surrounding these books. It’s not as good as I was expecting it to be, but still pretty damn good.

As I listened to the audiobook version, I want to start off by talking about the quality of the production. I know some people rely on audiobooks to get through stories, so it would feel disingenuous not to include anything about that side of things.

On the production alone, the audiobook was very good quality. The audio was clear; it didn’t sound muffled like some of the audiobooks I’ve gone through before have been. Ari Graynor, the narrator, never at any point felt boring to me. Her voice sold the characters, even the older male characters, and she managed to keep a tone to her voice that kept the story compelling from start to end. That’s a hard thing to do and she did it very well.

When it came to the writing, I appreciated the third-person narrative style. All too often, YA books will opt for a first-person narrative. You have your Chosen One and follow the introduction into this new world through their eyes and their eyes only. Having the story told in the third-person opens up the world to a wider perspective. I’m assuming that’s been achieved due to the scale of the series at this point, but from where I’m at with book one you can see the potential for the world to become more. I’ve always been a sucker for fantasy stories, especially ones that are set in a contemporary or urban setting. It’s that mystical feeling of following the protagonist from a normal version of the world to the hidden underbelly, the world within the world hidden ever so slightly from sight. That type of story lends itself so well to the third-person narrative style, and why this book has been so well-received, because you can start off with the protagonist but third-person gives you the opportunity to drift away to other characters. It’s given me hope that there’s some bigger picture I’m going to get to see eventually when I get around to all the other books.

That being said, there wasn’t anything particularly outstanding about the writing itself. Maybe because of it being the first book in a series, on top of being a debut novel, but it sometimes fell into the relm of clunky, where either too much information or not enough information was being given at any given time. Those moments were very few and far between, but I have feeling I’m going to see some major improvements when I get further through the series. The writing was good, but nothing mind-blowing.

This book was fun, is the simple version.

I can see the appeal of the series and why it’s stayed so popular for so many years. But there are definitely elements of the story that are a product of its time.

One of the things that irked me a little was the annoying way Clary thought about Isabelle. Like, can we please just have a good female friendship? Why does it have to start out as “I’m not as good looking as this girl and lack self-confidence therefore I’m going to be snarky to her and about her and not take her seriously because she’s pretty”? I’m very glad that this is a trend that is starting to die out – girls are put under enough pressure as it is, we don’t need to be influencing them to hate one another on sight. The pure and simple reason that Clary behaved in the way that she did was self-pity and lack of confidence. There’s nothing wrong with thinking that another person is prettier than you – that’s just the way the world is, some people are more conventionally attractive than others – but judging a person not to be intelligent or brave or caring just because they’re wearing a skirt that might show off a little too much skin gives off some really bad vibes for me. Let the girls have a moment where they talk about their lives, where Isabelle talks to Clary and explains the world she’s in now, gives her an insight into her personality. Don’t make your protagonist hate someone for no reason.

No one is perfect, but when you’re going to be following a character for 400 pages you kind of need them to be some kind of sympathetic.

I’m looking forward to continuing on with the series. There were some elements that kind of disturbed me towards the end of the book, and from my basic understanding from years of spoilers, those elements are only going to get weirder and more confusing but there has to be some reason that these books have remained so popular for the past 13 years so I’ll hopefully find out more soon.