Review : City of Glass

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
Pages : 541
Genre : YA, Urban Fantasy
Series : The Mortal Instruments, Book 3
My Rating :

From the Back of the Book :

To save her mother’s life, Clary must travel to the City of Glass, the ancestral home of the Shadowhunters — never mind that entering the city without permission is against the Law, and breaking the Law could mean death. To make things worse, she learns that Jace does not want her there, and Simon has been thrown in prison by the Shadowhunters, who are deeply suspicious of a vampire who can withstand sunlight.

As Clary uncovers more about her family’s past, she finds an ally in mysterious Shadow-hunter Sebastian. With Valentine mustering the full force of his power to destroy all Shadow-hunters forever, their only chance to defeat him is to fight alongside their eternal enemies. But can Downworlders and Shadowhunters put aside their hatred to work together? While Jace realizes exactly how much he’s willing to risk for Clary, can she harness her new found powers to help save the Glass City — whatever the cost?

Third in The Mortal Instruments series, City of Glass is an action-packed novel that offers a very well rounded conclusion to previous storylines. At 541 pages, the book isn’t light, but there’s so much going on that the reader won’t be bored.

City of Glass has a lot of good points, however it was my least favorite of the three books. Unlike the two previous ones, where twists and new plots were surprising us every couple of pages, I found this book to be quite predictable. Very soon in the beginning I had a good idea of how things would turn out and yes, they did just as I thought. At some points in the book, I felt Clare was a little too obvious in her writing : she would write that one of her characters felt that this or that “felt wrong” and, sure enough, 200 pages later, a huge twist happened revealing that things were, indeed, very very wrong. Huh.

One of the things I enjoyed as the books progressed was Clary’s part into the story. At first, she was a lot more of an observer than a real participant. It made sense in a way : she knew nothing of her abilities or of this new world. In City of Glass, she allies knowledge and action, initiating more events rather than living through them. I still found her annoying at time, but that didn’t keep me from liking her most of the time!

We also learned a lot more on the dynamics of the Shadowhunters world, and the more we learned, the less I found resemblances to the Buffy Universe. That’s not a bad thing, more of an observation! In fact, it’s a good thing that Clare has her own original universe.

In the end, I thought this was a lot of fun, but I’m not a fan as I am of, let’s say, Collins’ The Hunger Games. I would still recommend it to those of you who enjoy YA and urban fantasy with a lot of action, twists, and romance!

Series Reading Order :

1. City of Bones
2. City of Ashes
3. City of Glass
4. City of Fallen Angels (published 2011)