This review will contain spoilers for the first three books in The
Mortal Instruments series. Though I'm not sure why you'd be reading this
review if you hadn't already read those I figured I should be nice and
let you know. Actually I think the whole review will be more spoilery
than I usually post because of reasons.
City of Fallen Angels
picked up just days after the ending of City of Glass. I was expecting
at least a little bit of this book to be have everyone happy since at
the end of the last book the following things happened:
- The bad
guys were defeated! (Kind of, but we'll touch upon this again later).
(P.S.- Never trust that someone is dead if you don't find the body).
- Clary and Jace finally found out that they were not related!
- Magnus and Alec made some headway on their relationship in a very public display.
- Isabelle and Simon had a little heart to heart and things were looking on the up and up.
- Clary's mom woke up from her magically induced coma and was made to realize that she'd been in love with Luke all along. (Well, duh...get it together Clary's mom).
So
with all those loose ends neatly tied up I figured the Shadowhunters
and their friends would have a little bit of a a reprieve in this book.
And while there's quite a few pages of happy Jocelyn and Luke planning a
marriage (yay!) everything else falls apart very quickly.
Like
seriously, within the first few pages all of the teenage relationships
are showing cracks. Not just tiny cracks but huge fissures. I know high
schools were like that, on and off again couples and so on and so forth,
but every single relationship that was established in the other books
got messed up. Which leads to my main problem...
From reading The
Infernal Devices series I know that Clare likes to tie up her books
with happy endings which can be great. (Even if it's not realistic for
everyone to survive it's kind of nice when all your favorite characters
make it out alive and get happy endings). But if the entirety of Jace
and Clary's relationship is so screwed up (first thinking they're
brother/sister, then they have a week to enjoy it before demony
possessions start happening) then how in the world will your readers
believe it in the likely event that you write a happy ever after for
them?
I'm writing this review after already having read 30% of
book five and I gotta say one thing: the love Jace and Clary supposedly
feel for each other is so obsessive that it's borderline ridiculous.
They haven't had enough of a "normal" relationship for them to feel so
strongly which is why I think City of Fallen Angels should have given
them at least a half a book of normal to build on it.
The same goes for Alec and Magnus. I liked them together and I had high
hopes for their relationship but jeeze...so far it's been nothing but
toxic.
But even with all that I did like the books and will
continue the series because no matter how much Clare butchers the
characters and their relationships I still want to know how their
stories end up.
So I have hopes that the rest of City of Lost
Souls will either fix said relationships or will just end them before
everyone gets too annoying.
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