Book Review: City of Ashes, by Cassandra Clare

Book Review: City of Ashes, The Mortal Instruments series book 2, by Cassandra Clare

Short reviews come first:

The Maze Runner by James Dashner
The setting of teenage boys being trapped in a deadly maze with scary monsters in it is nice and refreshing, if the author claimed he was inspired by Greek Myth, I'd have no problem believing his claim. and I'm glad that no one in the book is busy engaging himself or herself in pointless romance or love triangle when everyone is busy struggling for survival.

The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry
The Lace Reader has refreshing ideas and setup, fine description on details, the pace of the story is also a good one. The story introduces us to a family with female members who possess the talent of Lace Reading--a gift to foresee the future and read-minds; also a troubled young woman's struggle against insanity and past trauma, but the only complaint I have for that book is that the mystery about the heroine's twin sister is a bit predictable.

*major plot spoiler warning* In the end, that so-called twin sister doesn't even exist--she only exists in the heroine's diary and her memory. In other words, the heroine is the one who got sexually abused by her father, but in order to escape this painful memory, she created a new identity and personal history for herself as her aunt's daughter and put her own traumatic past upon an partly imaginary 'sister'. *end of plot spoiler* Well, I can so see it coming.

Beastly, by Alex Finn
It's an enjoyable retelling of Beauty and the Beast, takes place in the present-day New York City. Finn's other fairy tale-retelling novel: Cloaked, is an equally funny and enjoyable book to read.

Review: City of Ashes, The Mortal Instruments series book 2, by Cassandra Clare

**Warning: strong language and negative opinions!**

Here is City of Ashes, sequel to City of Bones, in this book we continue to follow heroine Clary's adventure through the supernatural Shadow World. The reading of this book is an easy, fast paced one, which wouldn't charge you too much effort, thought and time. The action scenes are good, some of the plot twists, like the crisis related to Simon, are also nice. It is enjoyable in the same way a mainstream Japanese action-and-adventure-themed manga is enjoyable. If you can handle parts of the story read too much like a fanfic, the lack of meaning and moral lesson, the shallow relationship between main characters, mediocre world-building and overused, unoriginal setup for vampires, werewolves and fairies; I'm sure you would be okay with the book.

Unlike City of Bones, the writing in City of Ashes is a little less flowery and showy, which is an improvement, luckily the main characters also become less frequent to throw smartass remarks at each other, which helps me to find them to be more tolerable.

Recently I became aware of the accusation of plagiarism against Miss Clare. Although I don't find it a serious flaw to plagiarize/copy your own works, but plagiarizing someone else's works is another story. There's a long list of fanfics, novels, TV series and movies which Clare is accused of ripping in Fandom-wiki. I'm not an expert for this plagiarism matter, but my opinion is: If Cassandra Clare really did rip-off other people's works and stuffed the plots and detail into her own best selling YA novels, then she owe all the victims a great big apology!

It's just a pointless thought, but I also wonder how and why would humans end up making baby warlocks with demons, and how angels ever end up making baby fairies with demons as well. I would love to know more, but it's hardly explained in the book.

Because slashing characters up as couples is a lot of fun. Here is my slash/pair-up list for The Mortal Instrument series:

1.)Magnus/Alec: well, they are official.

2.)Valentine/Maryse : from their interactions and Valentine's constantly referring Maryse as 'my Maryse', it's obvious that they had a past together, once upon a time; or......it's just my imagination running wild again. XD

3.)Jace/Simon: Okay, basically they are Draco/Harry all over again, since a lot of people had already commented about how Jace really is Draco in Miss Clare's own fanfic and Simon is actually Clare's version of Harry in her fanfic. Still I like that bad boy/nice boy pairing anyway......XD

4.) Valentine/Jace: Okay...since Valentine isn't really Jace's dad, so let's slash! I'm sure I'm not the only one who smells slash in the air.*smirks* Although I enjoyed the love-hate relationship between Jace and Valentine, even without the slash factor.

5.) Valentine/Luke: love-hate relationship between ex-best-friends rules!!!

6.) Luke/Jocelyn: in all the 'official' pairings, I found Luke's one-sided love to Jocelyn just as unconvincing as the Jace/Clary's romance. And I intend to explain at length why I feel this way in the paragraphs far below. Plus  I found it absolutely dumb for Clary to ask whether Luke is in love with her mother in the epilogue because isn't it just obvious!?

7.) Clary....sorry no pairing for her. For the life in me I just can't do it. She is so unlikeable, plain and dull a character to be paired up with any other characters.

Seriously in book 2, I saw no improvement of Clary as a character, she doesn't have a chance to grow out of her old Mary Sue shell. Look, see. Clary, an untrained Shadowhunter, turns out possessing awesome supernatural power that NO ONE BUT HER CAN WIELD, and her power never once misfires!? If it doesn't scream Mary Sue then I don't know what else does. (Alright, in the end Clary's awesome power is explained in book 3, but still......) Plus when Valentine mocks Clary's love toward Jace, she doesn't even have the decency to admit her true feeling nor defend herself, instead she just lies and denies the whole thing. Oh.......lying, spineless little 'heroine' annoys me so much.

In book 1, Alec is deeply in love with Jace and is strongly jealous of Clary, but in book 2.......this one-sided love seems to just magically slip away without a trace, and Alec is all brotherly and caring toward Jace all over again. Although I'm glad that Alec is moving on and is forming a new relationship with Magnus, still the 'how' and 'why' of his change of heart is never made clear, which I found a bit unsatisfying.

The relationship between Luke and Clary's mom, Jocelyn is also a puzzling one. In this case Luke claims Jocelyn never knows his feeling toward her. If Luke's claim is to be taken seriously, then I suspect Jocelyn must be one hell of clueless and dull woman not to realize Luke has always been in love with her all these years. I mean, what 'friend' would stay by your side for 16 long years, always be there for you, taking care of your daughter, plus never once takes a girlfriend? No friend would have hanged on for this long if he didn't want anything more than friendship, damn it! Use your common sense! And if Jocelyn had known Luke's feeling for her all along, then she must be one hell of selfish woman for never coming clear with Luke and keeping him waiting!

Now I'll move on to the villains section: the traitor from book 1, Hodge....is nowhere to be found in City of Ashes. I consider Hodge's absence a flaw in planning, a good author wouldn't build a character up as a traitor for an entire book then drop him off in the next. Valentine is cool but as a man who plans to overtake The Clave, his fanbase is shockingly...small and insignificant. In book 2, Valentine only gets a bunch of demons to do his bidding and I didn't see any loyal *human* supporters of his showing up or coming to his aid, and it seriously contradicts the claim of Valentine being a charming, bewitching, powerful evil mastermind whose supporters are ready to follow his lead. I mean, if his supporters are all so spineless, then I can't see how Valentine can rely on them taking over The Clave in the second Uprising.

*plot spoiler*

The foreshadowing of Jace NOT being Valentine's son is too heavy in this book, which makes the attempt to make Jace and Clary's love a forbidden one looks......halfhearted.

*end of plot spoiler*

Supposedly the author of the Mortal Instruments series, Miss Clare and Holly Black, the author of A Modern Faerie Tale trilogy, are friends. So Black allowed Clare to use her fairy characters in City of Ashes, but I'm not sure what to make of it. The rules in the two stories are different from each other so I can barely understand how these two alternative universes can be intertwined. For example, the fairies in Holly Black's  A Modern Faerie Tale have been kidnapping human children as Changlings for years, and I can't see how can such practice be overlooked or tolerated by the Shadowhunters!

To sum up, it's a highly entertaining book, but don't look too deep into it or else you would start to notice plot holes and the other failure in logic and common sense.