City of Bones Review

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book as I heard that there would be a movie coming out, and it seemed to be pretty popular. It felt like a mashup between Percy Jackson and Twilight, with some Star Wars family drama thrown in. It is an easy read, targeted towards teenagers, especially girls, I presumed just from the cover. The protagonist, Clary (notice how the author's last name is Clare, although that itself is actually just a pen name), is not particulary strong in this book, at least. She pretty much just reacts to everything, and sometimes convinces Jace, her hunky shadowhunter demonslayer guy, to do stuff for her. The problem I always have with a supernatural urban setting is this: it starts out normally, then the main character starts seeing strange things, and then finds out there is a whole world of magical creatures like vampires and werewolves living among humans, but no one is smart enough to figure it out except this teenager. Even if magic is involved, you'd think that all the stuff getting destroyed by their fights would rouse people to attention. Then there is the infodump, where some wise character explains detail by detail how they hid themselves for thousands of years, and is about to explain some vital secret when they get interrupted by demons or something and once things calm down, the character conveniently forgets to continue explaining until later. Again, like in Percy Jackson, I never felt like the characters were in much danger. There's such a limited cast that I doubt anyone's going to die. There's a fight with a greater demon and they kill him with some sunlight. Still, plenty of revelations, although many were obvious. Not the most sophisticated read, but if you don't have high expectations, it's fine, goes quickly.

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