Review: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder -- much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing -- not even a smear of blood -- to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know. . . . Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.

Right from the get-go, this book was an instant winner. Why it took me so long to read, I dunno, but I'm glad I did.

It's fast paced and exciting, with some witty humour and just the tiniest bit of romance, a whole ton of action and lots of fantasy. It had the kind of plot that I really like, the kind when the author includes something- a name, an object, a person, something odd, etc- early on that later is a key in the plot but completely unexpected. I don't know if you would call it foreshadowing, exactly, but it might be. Harry Potter is a really good example of this. At the end, everything just slides right into place, no loose ends left- except those left to be solved in the next book, of course.

All of the main characters in this book first seemed mostly one-dimensional and flat, but slowly the reader finds out that there is much, much more to all of them. No one is as they seem to start, whether they know it or not.

This is one of those books that you just gotta read yourself. There's not much that I can say that won't give something away, really, all I can do is just continue on raving about it.

I have the rest of that stack of books that I got to read, but I'm tempted to just ignore those and just buy the next book in this series instead. It had such a good ending, I want to find out what happens next!

The City of Bones is in the pre-production stages of becoming a movie, and they are mostly through casting, I think. You can find most of the cast on imdb.com. For the most part, I think that they have cast the characters well. I can't wait to see this as a movie!

Just a warning, though. After I wrote this review, I went to Goodreads to grab the book blurb and I skimmed other people's reviews quickly at the same time. It seems as if people either love it or hate it. I got caught up so quickly that I read the book really fast, and nothing bothered me enough for me to notice. So there are many different opinions on this book. 

The Good: Everything, but mostly the plot and the world.

The Bad: I actually can't think of anything I didn't like about this book.

The Verdict: 4.5/5

I would recommend this book to: Anybody who likes YA books. 

-Rachel