Reviews with content warning for Violence - Clockwork Angel

It feels like the plot is going nowhere fast, it feels like there’s a love triangle approaching (that I already know the end of due to reading all of TMI books) and I just don’t want to read any more. Will be removing the rest of TID trilogy as well as TDA and TLH from my TBR.

Content Warnings

dododenise's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Reading this was an odd experience. I couldn’t decide whether I liked it, whether the tropes were bothering me, whether the plot was exciting, whether I liked the characters.

Never has a reading experience of mine been so subjective. Maybe that is why I’m not sure whether I really liked this book or not. I’ve first visited the shadowhunter world with 12, 7 years ago. I fell in love with it. I don’t think I’ve ever read more than when I read the mortal instruments series. For this book, I wanted to get that experience back. I’m not a child anymore, but as I still like YA as much as I did then, so I thought it possible. For that I went back and listened to the exact same music I also listened to when I read the mortal instrument. In the past few years, that music had always been able to pull me back into that world and fill me with nostalgia. Therefore, it happened even more while reading a shadowhunter book. It gave me the same feeling. But through gaining back that same feeling, I didn’t know what to make of this book specifically.
I wasn’t really drawn into this book. I wish it did but I could’ve just left it be in the middle of it and I would’ve been fine with it. But I still enjoyed reading it.

Will and Jem feel like versions of Jace and Alec. Maybe I just misremember how they really were, but their personalities seemed almost interchangeable. Idk whether that is something to like, considering I like Jace and Alec, or just really lazy.
And then there’s the love triangle of course. I honestly think they would work brilliantly in a polyamorous relationship. They’d bounce of each other so well. They already do now as friends (are they friends? Idk how to describe their current relationship). I’m probably setting myself up for disappointment hoping for it.

The highlight of this book, without a doubt, was Magnus. He was so much better than I remember him being and I really hope he’ll get a bigger role in the next two books.

This review ended up being so long it seems I had a lot more thoughts about it than I thought I did. But even from writing this I’m still not sure how much I actually liked the book.

Content Warnings