I recently finished the City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare (book one of the Mortal Instruments series). The cover, mostly flaunting some dude’s bare chest, nearly scared me away. Thank goodness Jeff Bezos invented the Kindle so that I could read this novel without flaunting nipples in public. Here are my thoughts in response. I base this post on the first book in the series, so I’m going to sound like an idiot if the themes and tone change later on.

No major plot spoilers, for those concerned.

Something like a plot

The plot goes something like this. A teenage girl named Clary discovers that all kinds of mythical creatures (like hipster vampires and werewolves, duh) populate our world. But normal people can’t see them. Oh yeah, and there’s these cops called shadowhunters who kill anyone who steps out of line. But the shadowhunters spend most of their time dismembering demons, creatures from other dimensions who suck the life out of our world. Clary quickly ends up involved with some goth teenage shadowhunters with rippling muscles.

I’ll start by saying that Cassandra Clare writes great (more…)