Tuesday, June 3, 2014

City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

Spoilers ahead! All kinds of spoilers, for this book and for the entire Mortal Instruments series what with this being the final book and all.

I had placed City of Heavenly Fire on hold at the library months ago hoping that we'd get it in and processed right away but when the week before Memorial Day hit and there was still no evidence that the book was on its way I knew drastic times called for drastic measures. So I pre-ordered the book from Amazon to have it sent to my Kindle the day it was published. (Not that I don't think buying books is a good thing because it is, I just owe too much on student loans to go all crazy purchasing all the books instead of getting them through the library). But I'm glad I did because I'd still be waiting for it if I hadn't!

City of Heavenly Fire was full of twists and turns, some good things, some bad and some unexpected. And since it's the last book in a, supposedly finished now, series I am going to get all spoilery with it.

All in all I did enjoy this series. I liked most of the characters, all for different ways and in ways that I only like fictional characters (i.e. like I've said before, I have a serious crush on Jace but in real life I'd look at him in awe but never be willing to date him because he's kind of a douche through most of the story) things like that. I think they were all decently well written and had their own distinct personalities and if some of them were super annoying sometimes its only logical because everyone has flaws and can be annoying sometimes.

 And the ending of this kind of surprised me/didn't surprise me. After reading the Infernal Devices series I could tell that Clare was the kind of writer who would go "out there" and kill everyone off like George R.R. Martin does in The Song of Ice and Fire series. So when all the main characters made it out alive and when there was a mostly happy ending for Alec and Magnus I wasn't surprised. I was surprised that: 1. Simon lost all of his memories and didn't get them all back by the end of the book. 2. The ending wasn't as perfect as the one in Infernal Devices. (After that series I was expecting there to be an epilogue that was ten years down the road with Jace and Clary marrying and welcoming a baby into the world while Jocelyn and Luke stood by with their own child, and Magnus and Alec would be wed and have a whole bunch of cats, and Simon and Izzy would be married too and he'd be all humanized).

So there's both a good thing and a bad thing to the type of ending she did do. The good thing is that it wasn't too cookie cutter happy. The bad thing/good thing, maybe? is that she left their fats open ended so that the characters might be touched upon in a later series like Tessa and Zacariah/Jem were in this one. That might be okay but I could also see Clare deciding, years down the road, that she wants to continue the story which at this point probably wouldn't be a good idea. (There are so many series that are ruined because they just keep going and going...I'm looking at you Pretty Little Liars and Stephanie Plum).

All in all I'd say I'm pretty content with the ending but will probably indulge in the guilty little pleasure known as reading fanfiction.

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