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| City of Bones (Mortal Instruments) | 
 enlarge | Author: Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $10.98
You Save: $7.01 (39%)
New (26) Used (14) Collectible (2) from $6.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  112 reviews
Sales Rank: 59404
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.8
ISBN: 1416914285
EAN: 9781416914280
ASIN: 1416914285
Publication Date: March 27, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The parachute pants are still the best part. April 21, 2007
66 out of 90 found this review helpful
I was familiar with Cassandra Clare during her BNF days in the Harry Potter community. But I never read any of the fanfiction that she was so famed and maligned for -- frankly, the subject matter just didn't interest me. I understand there were leather pants.
But I did get a chance to see the first chapters of this book at the end of last year, and I've since flipped through a copy in the bookstore. And you know, it made me really glad that I didn't waste any time and eyestrain on her fanfic.
The book is a clumsy attempt at being witty and literary, full of the purplest prose and dubious metaphors. The characters are two-dimensional and unoriginal, and the POV is incosistent and jerky, and the plot is derivative and cliched -- recycled from a half-dozen mainstream sci-fi and fantasy TV shows, films, and books, and cobbled together rather shamelessly.
The jokes are flat at best, and the author's grasp of the age group about which (and for whom) she is writing seems tenuous. The main characters are utterly unconvincing as adolescents, and their forced dialogue is predictable at best, painful at worst.
Overall, it's a ridiculous and uncompelling train wreck of a YA fantasy novel. And while I don't recall if leather pants were involved, there were parachute pants.
They were the best part, really.
Agonizing April 10, 2007
64 out of 103 found this review helpful
So I borrowed a copy of this book from my friend, who hadn't bothered to finish it. Beyond its convoluted, almost-unreadable prose and flat, predictable dialog, City of Bones is a book begging for an editor. Any editor. Worse than the misused words within the novel, there are misspelled words that weren't corrected before publication. Everything's been written before, but everything in City of Bones has been done better elsewhere. The glaring parallels to Star Wars, in particular, can't be ignored. If you're jonesing for poorly edited fiction full of recycled ideas and featuring a lead character who serves as a wish fulfillment proxy for the author (Clary? Clare?), [...]
 Light, Fun, but not a Keeper March 28, 2007
63 out of 81 found this review helpful
While I won't go so far as to nitpick Clare's creative (sometimes too creative) use of adjectives, I do have some critiques of this book. If you've read the fanfiction, you'll be well-prepared for this novel, and in fact you'll have fun recognizing some of your favorite characters back, thinly veiled. This is actually Clare at her best, lots of improbable but fun dialogue, good pacing for once, no long dragged out subplots that make the reader forget what the main plot is, with bits that make the reader laugh aloud (at least me). I read the story straight through, and I enjoyed it. I even bought it after telling myself I wasn't going to. It is the kind of book that you binge on, read in one go and enjoy.
However, there were things that really bugged me.
1. Self-referencing. Two things that jerked me out of the narrative were the use of the word 'asshat' which is widely used now, but not so widely used that I think it's a coincidence it's in this book, and giving Luke a 'Still Not King' bumper sticker, also fairly common, but still in-jokey. I suppose if the reader hasn't read anything else of Clare's, they wouldn't notice, but I don't look at that and feel superior for knowing the joke, I feel irritated with the author for waving at her friends instead of writing the story.
2. It's a soap opera. Admittedly, an enjoyable one, but the story is all drama and passion and twists, and not all that much character development, or even consistent characterization. I sincerely doubt a girl who refers to herself as 'shy' would slap a guy she barely knows who saved her life, and then make out with a near stranger. Not really shy actions. Jace, too, is uneven. Isabelle's fanfic alter ego was one of the most fun parts of Cassie's fanfic, so I enjoyed her, and I think she has fairly good characterization, but I didn't feel like there was a lot of real character development. Sure, they learned things, and supposedly changed, but Alec is the only one who appears to grow.
3. It's derivative. This story is like the happy offspring of Harry Potter, Uglies, Inksheart, Star Wars, with Lord of the Rings as a distant cousin and Buffy as the down the street neighbor. It does combine some of the better elements--friends, a knowledge of occult mythology, sectarian groups and violence, fun villains who may or may not be related to you, etc--but that doesn't mean it's original. You take lots of strikingly beautiful things and blend them together to come up with something generically pretty.
Valentine reminded me of Capricorn the entire book, and he only made an appearance at the end. For readers of Clare's fanfic series, you'll enjoy picking out how she changed some of her scenes and characters to fit this story, but it's also like "ooh! this is like the scene where Draco and Hermione get locked in the wardrobe! Only instead of Hermione it's Ginny--er Clary!"
People who enjoy this genre will enjoy the book. People who enjoy Clare's writing will enjoy this book. I'm glad it got published. But it's not exactly the kind of story that you imagine lasting through generations.
Waste of time and money. April 14, 2007
58 out of 90 found this review helpful
I normally love fantasy, and I couldn't force myself to read past the halfway mark.
There was stilted dialogue, and flat main characters. Let's not forget the cringeworthy visual metaphors! Or the plot that seems like a bizarre lovechild of Rowling and Joss Whedon.
I don't know; the rest of the novel could be the best thing ever. Somehow, though, I doubt it, especially when supposed fans claim the characters are dull through the end of the novel.
putting it on paper doesn't make it yours July 25, 2007
57 out of 68 found this review helpful
Before I begin my review, I want to go into a brief back-story. I did not pick up this book of my own volition. The only reason I bought it was because I was told that the author, who has some kind of fame in the HP fandom, had gotten this book published and I wanted to be able to discuss it with my friends. That being said, I give this book one star because I cannot be objective about it. And also because [...] does not allow no-star reviews.
City of Bones was not a bad book. If I overlooked the character inconsistencies, the purple prose, the unoriginality of some of the plot twists, and the leftover editing mistakes, it was an engaging book that had me reading from start to finish. Since I was not a fan of Star Wars, nor have I ever watched Buffy, the characters seemed very original to me, although they all had their problems (and, no, I don't mean the necessary character flaws).
The main character, Clary Fray, was the biggest problem for me. She is a Mary Sue, which means, essentially, an unbearably perfect character who easily overcomes all obstacles, discovers that she has some amazing powers that she can wield better or equal to people who have been trained in it for years, and ends up with the love and respect of most if not all of the other characters no matter what she does.
At the beginning of the book, she is a 'shy' girl in a nightclub with her best friend, Simon. By the end of the book, she knows how to use a variety of runes, she's discovered that she's daughter to the Big, Bad Villain, and, despite the fact that she broke Simon's heart and almost indirectly caused Alec's death, both characters have forgiven her by the end of the novel with little or no effort on her part. I won't discuss the Mary Sueish ties between Clarissa Fray and the author because this review is about the work, not the author, but I will mention that they are there.
The other problem for me was Jace, not because he wasn't a perfectly nice character, but because of the lack-of-objectivity I previously mentioned. Coming from the HP fandom, I can recognize fanon!Draco when I see him. For those who don't know, the Draco of fanon is sophisticated, exasperatingly arrogant, and always has a sarcastic quip on hand so that he can make himself look better and wittier compared to whomever he's speaking to. This description fits Jace to a tee and I don't think it's a coincidence that Jace's physical appearance is identical to that of fanon!Draco. I think this might have been intentional, to give fanon!Draco a life outside of fanfiction, but it's in no way original and, for someone like me who is familiar with fanon!Draco and doesn't wish to see him renamed and reproduced in what is supposed to be an ORIGINAL NOVEL, it's also irritating.
Clary's appearance is like that of Ginny Weasley and Simon's is like that of Harry Potter, if one wants to go so far in drawing parallels, but I found their personalities different enough from Ginny and Harry's for me to ignore that.
A third, more personal problem I had with the book, was the two instances in which Clary mentioned things obviously not original to Clare. The first instance was her suggestion that Simon go out with a "Jaida Jones" who apparently goes to their school. Once again, if you are familiar with the HP fandom, you will recognize Jaida Jones as being a real person, another famous member of the fandom. The other instance was when Clary and Jace were riding through the city, and Clary notices two homeless kids whose descriptions match those of Val and Luis from Holly Black's VALIANT. Someone before me said it best: I found myself wishing that Clare would just write the novel instead of taking the time to wave to her friends.
It wasn't until after I'd finished City of Bones that I was notified that the great plot twist - that Jace and Clary are related, both children of the villain, Valentine - has been done before, in Star Wars. Exactly the same way, too.
My final nitpick with the book was that it was unnecessarily full. I know that Clare painted a picture of an entire Downworld in which existed fairies and vampires and werewolves and other things that only exist in stories ("all the stories are real" seems to be an accurate tagline for this book), but was it really necessary to put so many of them in one book? Clary and company go from eating in a cafe filled with fairies and such to attending a party thrown by a warlock and containing phooka and other creatures to infiltrating a vampire lair to being chased by werewolves.
I just felt that half the creatures that made an appearance in this book, no matter how brief, were unnecessary and could have been saved for a future book in the series or not been mentioned at all. The vampires, I thought, could have been written out entirely as their only purpose seemed to be to introduce the flying motorcycles that were ripped from Harry Potter (though, now that the series is over, what WON'T be ripped from Harry Potter?)
I give Clare a lot of credit. She brought this story alive for me and set it in Manhattan, my favorite city. She gave me three loveable characters, Alec, the introverted protector with unrequited feelings for Jace, Magnus Bane, the flamboyant, glittery warlock with a thing for Alec, and Simon, the painfully ordinary geek who, like me, finds this whole magical world "awesome." Without any outside influence, the story can be enjoyable.
However, since, like I said, I came into this without an objective viewpoint, my one-star review still stands. I hope others, outside of fandom, get more enjoyment out of this book than I did.
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