28.141 ratings and an average of 4.16. I can only ask one question: what am I missing? As Jane Austen said, one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. But now seriously, it can only be explained by age. When I was 16 I was reading Tolstoy and Zola and didn’t even know there was such as genre as fantasy or a whole range of books just targeting young adults. Now, almost the same period of time later, I’m reading the likes of City of Bones and wondering if all the 13.146 people who gave it 5 stars read the same book I did. It wasn’t exactly the worst book of the year since I didn’t give it up, it was just extremely weak and unsatisfying.
I’ve been reading a lot of children’s and YA lately and I think I need to give it a rest for a while. After the RIP Challenge I’ll also take a break from anything supernatural.
Shortly, City of Bones is the first book of the widely popular Mortal Instruments series. It’s about Clary, an apparently normal 15-year-old who started seeing invisible people. Right about that time her mother disappears, seemingly captured by horrific demons. That event triggers Clary’s search for clues about the disappearance, backed-up by a team of Shadowhunters (demon police).
The whole thing felt like a mix and match of all the supernatural and fantastic books and movies you can think of. You got glimpses of Harry Potter, Star Wars (“Luke, I am your father!”), Buffy, Twilight… Sometimes, the similarities are almost to close for comfort: mortal instruments = deathly hallows, mundanes = muggles, girl & boy best friends sleeping together without sleeping together = Dawson’s Creek 😛
And the similes! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many per sentence. Bad ones too (“His voice was as oily as steel greased with butter.”, “She deflated like a balloon pricked with a pin”.) Look at this example:
In the half-light of the big empty rooms they passed through on their way to the roof looked as deserted as stage sets, the white-draped furniture looming up out of the dimness like icebergs through fog.
When Jace opened the greenhouse door, the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat’s paw: the rich dark smell of earth and the stronger, soapy scent of night-blooming flowers–moonflowers, white angel’s trumpet, four-o’clocks–and some she didn’t recognize, like a plant bearing a star-shaped yellow blossom whose petals were medallioned with golden pollen. Through the glass walls of the enclosure she could see the lights of Manhattan burning like cold jewels.
Now a disclaimer: the problem might have been less about the book and more about the audiobook. It was like being trapped inside Clueless. All sentences felt as if they would end with a “As if!” or “Hellouuuu?!”. Maybe Cassandra Clare wanted to go for teen-speak and just pushed it too hard. Or maybe, her vocabulary was just as bad as, like, whatever.
7 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 9, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Teresa C
You are missing the fanfic experience probably. But seriously, do not judge books by their popularity or average ratings (on sites like good reads or amazon). There are no fangirls like teengirls so review sites will always be populated with their loves and likes, and fangirl-ism. Avoid also Maggie Stiefvater´s werewolf books ( though I quite liked her faerie books).
The author was a really popular, and I think notorious as well, fanfic writing. I did not read this but read Clockwork Angel ( to which much of your review applies precisely) and I think well, her writing flaws are things which would not be obvious or important in fanfic. But important stuff, about plotting and character development, are not too strong. The other book structure is like a house of cards, and lots of characters acting like brats ( including, of course, obviously one vaguely Lymondesque misunderstood character, though I suppose that came through Spike).
And I will compete with you reading Tolstoy and Zola at 16, I was reading those at 11/12. Though admittedly I got the adult acess at 11, and started to read the adult fiction from z slowly slowly to a ( z was the closest part to my old territory of the young adult and children´s fiction). Finding Tolkien at 11 beat all those other guys. And fantasy/sf is not a subgenre of YA nor particularly meant to be less “challenging” than Tolstoy or Zola or whatever. And come on, with 16 you had never seen those Verbo adventure books, or the Verbo series for YA; or the Europa-America or Argonauta sf books?
September 12, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Alex
I my not so humble opinion, if Clare wants to play with the boys and gorw out of fanfic she (and her editor) also has to step up. Just because she thought it was romantic of Edward Cullen to play the piano, she cannot just put Jace doing the same without any connection to the person he is.
I don’t see YA as a genre at all, but I’ve been reading a lot of YA (of several genres) and a lot of supernatural lately and my mind is craving something without teen-angst or anything magical. I also feel I have to be more selective in the YA I chose. I’m sure I would have love e.g. The Giver at 14, but it didn’t do much for me now.
I cannot put The Famous Five type of books in the same bag as Twilight, not because of supernatural vs. non-supernatural… I don’t know, I guess it’s a matter of… sophistication?
September 14, 2010 at 11:25 am
Virgulina
I think you should try paranormal adult books, skip the YA ones like Twilight and Marked (carbon copy of HP with a female heroine and vampires), although you should try the Morganville Vampires series by Rachel Caine. Paranormal is an extensive genre, I’ve read excellent and terrible books, stay away from Amber Benson. I don’t think you can go wrong with Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews and Elizabeth Vaughan, her Chronicles of the Warlands is one of my favourite trilogy’s to date.
September 15, 2010 at 11:51 am
Teresa C
Enid Blyton is not YA. YA is not a blanket name for all books meant for children or teens!
September 15, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Alex
Believe it or not, I am aware of that 🙂 That’s why I’m careful never to say “the YA genre”. I mentioned Blyton because you mentioned the Verbo adventure books, which I do put in the same bag as The Famous Five.
September 15, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Teresa C
Maybe we are talking of different Verbo adventure books, the ones I am thinking about are not quite the same style as Enid Blyton. There were all these historical and sf directed books – a sqaw in the stars, the sun is dying, the mysterious bracelet, etc!. We were probably looking at books in very different places ( me: Gulbenkian library, Feira do Livro and every place I could) if you did not know about sf/fantasy and books targeting young adults even on our small pitiful publishing market. My sympathies – I much enjoyed reading the adult classics and it was good for me, but it was also a joy to read those simpler adventures, very mixed up together.
I think this book was bad because it was bad and the author did not have the vision or means to do better. Not because it YA or has supernatural themes.
August 21, 2013 at 10:00 pm
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare | Ardent Reader
[…] The Sleepless Reader […]