There's more to life than reading, but it's a good place to start

 So City of Bones? Everyone seems to love this series. There also seems to be a fair amount of controversy surrounding author Cassandra Clare .....

I don't feel qualified to comment on accusations of plagiarism. I haven't read any of her Harry Potter fan fiction, I'm unaware of any comparisons between her third Draco Trilogy instalment and The Mortal Instruments series. However .... I can understand why readers would feel ripped off if it's true that City of Bones is a rehash of Draco Veritas. It also calls into question Clare's credibility as a writer and paints her as a "one-trick-pony" unable to craft anything new and original and instead churning out the same characters simply under guise of new names and placed in a new setting. Hmmm. Disappointing.

But ..... As I have not been involved in this speculation and rumour, I have to take City of Bones on face value and review it as I see it. And I see it as decidedly blah .....

I'll start at the top and say I did not care for the cover on my edition. It's messy and ugly. The colours are just yuck.

Opening the cover we stumble into the writing style ..... *sigh* Some glimmers of it were good, most of it was meh. I will hand it to Clare, she knows how to set a scene. Some of the description of the environment was so vivid I could almost taste it. I was there, in technicolor, watching from the sidelines as Clary and Jace spouted cheesy wit and stared at each other. It really was something. However, I was not so impressed with certain portions of the book which felt tremendously over written and contained too many inaccurate details to be taken seriously. And some of the similes were just ridiculous. For example: "with a sound like a thousand fragile, shattering things" and "his voice was as oily as steel greased with butter" ..... I mean what even is that? Nonsensical, that's what!

So ..... from the get go, I had a problem with Clary. She's just not my kind of a girl. She's not very smart, she's snippy and judgemental, she's downright rude, even vicious at times. Some of her dialog was simply painful due to her almost constant need to state the obvious and say the dumbest thing that popped into her head. I was at times embarrassed for her. There were moments of crucial importance, for example when Clary met with Magnus Bane, where intelligent conversation was required but instead Clary made herself appear a complete fool. Magnus produces a copy of The Gray Book. Jace asks for confirmation that it is indeed the book of runes. Then Clary pipes up: "It's not grey, it's green" she chimes. Oh my god, Clary who cares?! This is an extremely important moment, Magnus is recounting the tale of how her memories were taken from her and if it's a possibility to unlock all this hidden knowledge that would give Clary incredible insights into her past and her mother's true identity and all Clary can chip in with in some smart-ass comment about the colour of the damn book cover?

This is not an isolated incident. There were many moments when I wanted to give Clary a good shake and yell at her to stop chatting, your concentration at this moment is important! For example, she and Jace were fighting for their lives amongst a horde of bloodthirsty vampires and Clary felt it was appropriate to make a silly little joke about how this would go down in a movie: ""Shouldn't we stand back to back or something?" "What? Why?" "I don't know. In movies that's what they do in this kind of ... Situation." How was that ever going to be appropriate?! Their lives are in imminent danger and she thinks it's cute or funny or something to trivialise it?! All I know is that is not the kind of girl I would like to have standing next to me when anything of consequence is happening.

What I simply cannot wrap my head around is Clary's (and in fact, now I think of it, the rest of the gang's) complete lack of urgency. If my mother was missing, apparently carried away by demons in the dead of night, I would tear the earth apart until I found her. I wouldn't make time to sleep, eat or flirt with hot guys until I knew for certain she was safe. And yet Clary's attention wanders, she eats coconut pancakes without a care in the world, all the while her mother is a tortured prisoner of Valentine. What's with that? She also frequently lets the reader know she has completely forgotten about Simon, apparently one of only three people in her life she truly loves. The girl is 16 years old and yet she's as selfish as a child. I can't relate to her or develop any kind of fondness for her as she is cruel and has no thought for anyone besides herself. She's constantly dreaming of slapping people for the most mundane reasons. She wishes she could dump a pan of boiling hot soup over Isabelle's head simply because she caught the eye of Simon. What the hell?! Where does she get off acting so violent?! 

And while we're on the subject of Simon ...... Oh, Simon. Simon, Simon, Simon ...... I shook my head so often at his antics my ears were ringing. Simon is ridiculous. I found myself thinking frequently why is he there? What's the point of him? He traipses in where he's clearly not wanted, where he has no business to be. He's awkward, he has the common sense of a broom handle and his lack of self preservation is alarming to say the least. I will admit his character develops towards the end of the book and he becomes much more tolerable, even likeable but for the majority of the story he seems to blunder around blindly bumping into things and hoping that he will ricochet into a situation he is able to scrape himself out of without losing his life. I couldn't fathom why the others didn't tell him to go home. On that's right, they were all too busy posing, flipping their hair around and perfecting their looks of brooding mystery ....

Jace was an artist as this. He had his witty one liners all prepared for any situation that arose, even if it was a completely inappropriate time and place to be trying to impress his adoring fans. Vomit! He really is a pathetic excuse for a hero. He is rude, arrogant, opinionated and selfish, so that automatically makes him hot and desirable to everyone around him, right? Oh-kay .....

When will YA authors stop writing their lead male heroes as jerks? It's not cool to be vile to those around you who care about you. It's not cool to lie and play on a girls emotions and string her along only to reject her at a later date because there's some bump in the road, or because it becomes necessary to actually talk to her. Some of Jace's behaviour was inexplicable. For example when he was kissing Clary outside her bedroom door and Simon appears from inside. Why would he then want to hurt her? Does he think it makes him more of a man in front of Simon? Is he embarrassed to have feelings for Clary? Did he think Clary came to seek him out, fresh from a little " fun" with Simon? What?! It's bizarre that he would be angry with her. Simon is her oldest friend. She only met Jace a few days previously. Jace can't propose to understand their relationship and he has no right to be angry with Clary simply because Simon was in her room, with no explanation of why and without listening to what she's got to say. It almost as if Clare has never met a person before. Because this is not how normal people act and respond. Yes, it's fiction. Yes, Clare has the right to have her characters behave in any way she chooses. But she also has a responsibility, especially when writing fiction for young adults to reflect a real life situation realistically and not to educate young girls to expect to be treated like crap by guys. There's no excuse. And this is not an isolated incident! Clary is time and again talked down to, brushed aside and disrespected, particularly by her beloved Jace. Maybe this goes some way to explaining why she's so sour .....

The general plot was ..... Alright. It had it's ups and downs. I very much enjoyed some of the plot points, they felt fresh and clicked the story neatly together. Other aspects ...... Meh. Some were simply too obvious for words. The whole point of a twist, Ms Clare is that it is surprising, exciting, and adds a new and unexpected dimension to the story. Several of the "twists" in City of Bones were so obvious that even my dog would have seen them coming, and she barely knows how to read. There's no need to leave such blatantly obvious clues, we're not stupid!

(I have said I know nothing about the plagiarism allegations. And I don't. However ..... Before I even realised the link Cassandra Clare has to the Harry Potter fandom, as I was reading through City of Bones I got a distinctly Harry-Pottery feel to the plot. I adore the Harry Potter series, mostly because each book contains a clever story woven together skilfully in a way that it all falls into place at the end in a brilliantly satisfying and suspenseful conclusion, with great links to clues throughout the book, like a mystery to be solved. But what JK Rowling does so well is keeps her readers guessing. It's not so easy to figure out that the end is guessed before the reveal, but it's not so complex and obscure as to become irritating, nonsensical or overly detail focused. The balance is just right. I feel Cassandra Clare was aiming for this throughout City of Bones, and I'm sorry to say she failed miserably because unlike Rowling, Clare's storytelling had an awkward, clunky feel to it. It didn't flow, did not maintain the pace which the Harry Potter series does, and quite frankly I was bored as for me, the mystery was unravelled after the first 100 or so pages. I feel she missed the mark. There was not enough intrigue, it wasn't dark enough. The cheesy one liners and the lack of genuine threat from the villains trivialised the story, in my opinion, to the point where any tension Clare was attempting to build fell completely flat.)

The ending ..... Oh the ending. Big shock! Eek! Wow, what a brilliant twist! ..... Uh, or not. The ending could have been awesome. IF the character development was there to back it up. I disliked Jace's character so much, that I was in fact relieved that the revelation of him being Clary's brother saved her from his womanising clutches. If Jace and Clary's relationship had been written as a sweet teen romance, a discovery of similar tastes and interests and a genuine warmth and fondness for each other I would have been heartbroken to discover that they could never be together. Instead, they spent the entire book lusting after each others totes amaze-balls glinting hair, and doing that dumb-ass I-pushed-you-down-in-the-playground-cos-I-fancy-you thing that school kids do .....

Please! Their revelation was hardly a drama, they barely knew each other after all. Lets not forget they only met the previous week. It's not like they have a long, complex years-long relationship which they then go on to discover has been built on a foundation of lies, turning their entire world upside down and making them question everything they once believed to be true ..... No. They buddied up the week before after Jace yanked Clary out of danger having stalked her for a couple of days. They spent some time tossing sorta flirtatious insults back and worth and kicking about together in a half hearted attempt to discover the whereabouts of Clary's mother, they shared one brief kiss. That's it. That's the extent of their lurve. So, yeah big whoop when they discover they're brother and sister. God, who cares!

Is there any point in mentioning any of the supporting characters? Probably not. They were all so blah I've mostly forgotten them by now. Alex was a nod to "teen issues" cardboard cutout, wafting gently in the breeze. Hodge was a convenient plot point. Isabelle was there simply to enrage Clary. Although why Clary disliked her to quite the extent that she did is beyond me. Was it jealously? I don't know. Clary seemed to hate the chick the moment she laid eyes on her. And then for some inexplicable reason Isabelle felt the need to apologise to Clary near the end of the book! Apologise for what? I cannot fathom what it was that Isabelle did wrong. She was just being herself. And no-one should ever apologise for being themselves. There's nothing wrong with self expression and self confidence, and these appeared to be the only "crimes" which Isabelle was guilty of committing ..... She offended Clary with her mere presence, only because she was beautiful and graceful and sassy. These are not qualities one should be sorry to possess! The only explanation is that Clary was hideously jealous.

Jealousy is a rotten thing, it eats away at the soul. It consumes a person one bite at a time, until all that is visible in the world is what one wants but can never reach and it becomes all too easy to miss what wonders lie right under our own noses. We must, as intelligent people learn to be satisfied with what we have, be grateful for all we have achieved and own rather than be harboured with this constant obsession with having more - more possessions, more beauty, more power. All that comes from jealousy is bitter feelings and deep regrets. It prevents us from enjoying life here in the moment, it pushes others away, as happiness and contentment can never be attained if we cannot appreciate and learn to live with ourselves as we are. Clary, unfortunately portrays the opposite sentiment - according to her, jealously and bitter, unfounded rivalry leads to satisfaction of ones goals. In this case, Isabelle apologising for who she is and falling at Clary's feet. Yuck! What a shitty conclusion to that relationship, particularly in a YA novel where the targeted readers are still learning how to behave and how to fit in with others and the world generally. I truly hope they do not look for guidance within these pages as the majority of the relationships portrayed are a bunch of twisted, fuck-uppery (Hey look! I invented a word!)

Urgh ..... City of Bones was generally such a disappointment. There were glimmers of hope in there, but it was terribly diluted by the sheer amount of crap bulking it out. I won't be continuing with this series, mostly because Jace was unfortunately not killed off in this first instalment and I truly don't think I can stomach reading any more of his violently corny, insufferable shenanigans. And I don't care much to discover Clary's fate either .....

Blerk.

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