I am definitely starting to get my YA paranormal and dystopian fiction confused. Hunger Games I’m pretty clear on, but things start getting fuzzy with Divergent and now City of Bones. This one came up on my radar because the teen girls of my acquaintance are currently all about the new film version. While I was reading, it all seemed incredibly familiar, though I’d definitely never read it before. It’s just got so many of those familiar characters and themes that there really wasn’t anything new.
Clarissa “Clary” Fray is our heroine. She’s a slim, quiet, occasionally clumsy 15-year-old girl (shades of Twilight here) who suddenly gets drawn into the world of the Shadowhunters, a secret society of demon-fighting warriors. Oh yes, one of the main hunters is a dishy young thing named Jace. But she does have a faithful best friend, Simon. Uh-oh…. After her mother goes missing, Clary joins up with the Shadowhunters as clearly she’s a part of their world, rather than a “mundie”, the rather annoying version of “mundane”, the term for regular folk (should have just gone with “muggle”). There’s lot of similar themes here to Harry Potter (the deposed dark leader and his inner circle waiting for his return) as well as Star Wars (doesn’t take a lot of insight to figure out whose Clary’s real father is). But anyway, I’m aware that I’m not the target audience here, and it’s solid enough though not exactly original.
‘The Mortal Instruments’ series goes another 5 books, plus a prequel series and subsequent series set in the same world with different characters. Don’t know if I’ll bother with any more of the books, though I may stretch to watching the movie.
Cannonball Read V 