City of Fallen Angels

Goodreads Synopsis:

 The Mortal War is over, and Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She's training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most important of all—Clary can finally call Jace her boyfriend.

But nothing comes without a price.

Someone is murdering the Shadowhunters who used to be in Valentine’s Circle, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her. His mother just found out he’s a vampire and now he’s homeless. Everywhere he turns, someone wants him on their side—along with the power of the curse wrecking his life. And they’re willing to do anything to get what they want. At the same time he’s dating two beautiful, dangerous girls—neither of whom knows about the other.

When Jace begins to pull away from Clary without explaining why, she is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: She herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace.


City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have been waiting to get my hands on this book for a while. I read the other three books fairly quickly and was excited to see how the story ends. A fifth book recently came out and revealed to me that this is apparently an ongoing series. The jury is still out on how I feel about that.

Back to this book! Cassandra Clare has developed these characters in a way that I really like. With the exception of Alec, Magnus, Jace and Clary, everyone has more depth and more character. Simon has turned into an alluring ladies-man. Isabelle is finally considering surrendering her heart to someone. She is possessing more human emotions this time around and I like this new vulnerability she now has. Maia's story unfolds and she has potential love re-introduced to her, Luke and Jocelyn and finding bumps in the road to their happy ending, and lots of interesting new characters are introduced. There's Jordan (Maia's ex), Camille (Magnus' ex and mega old vampire), and Lilith (the mother of all demons and Adam's first wife...yup...THAT Adam). Hijinks ensue.

The most unfortunate part of the story is how angst ridden Clary, Jace, and Alec are. Alec isn't around for the majority of the book, but when he shows up he is bitter because he has just realized that Magnus is crazy old and (shocker!) has had other lovers...male and female. Alec can't handle the constant reminder that he isn't going to live forever and is taking it out on Magnus. It is incredibly immature and I get tired of reading about it almost immediately after it begins. Jace is being cryptic and distant because he feels bad about being Valentine's son. He's having dreams that he's going to kill Clary and his answer to that is to kiss her senseless one moment and ignore her existence the next. I personally find this method far superior to just telling her what is up and using their logic to figure out an answer. They do that eventually, but we suffer through a couple hundred pages of him brooding and her being heart-broken and confused. I suppose we should be glad that he is a glutton for self-loathing because it is the reason that Sebastian comes back to life and creates a cliff hanger for the next book. If Jace would have taken the time to be with the people who care about him, we wouldn't have this seemingly endless series of books ahead of us. Maybe I'll end up being thankful...we'll find out.

Clare knows how to write a nice suspenseful climax in a story. She knows how to draw out the action and make it interesting. If she would apply that tone of writing to her main characters, I think the series could have a lot more staying power. As it is, I am so sick of the main characters that I look forward to sections that are about secondary characters. That's not good! If Clary and Jace could stop being the typical pair in all the YA books that people are tired of, these books would improve drastically.

I liked the book, I like the author, the pacing is nice, the action is interesting, and the book is rather hard to put down. Injecting some emotional maturity into the main couple will make all the difference. I will definitely keep reading the series to see how things turn out.

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