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375 reviews for:
The Mortal Instruments Boxed Set: City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass
Cassandra Clare
4.07 AVERAGE
375 reviews for:
The Mortal Instruments Boxed Set: City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass
Cassandra Clare
4.07 AVERAGE
This was a fun and thrilling series filled with romance adventure and an undertone of mystery. I could not put these books down they were such a great read.
I decided to start being a harsher reviewer, and I guess this is my first victim. The world is vivid, but the writing is not great and the characters bugged me, especially the "forbidden" love story. Ugh.
adventurous
funny
inspiring
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I LOVE THIS SERIES. WOW Cassandra, you astound me. We have a gay icon, vampire sexy man, friends to lover to siblings back to lovers tropes, vampire bite addiction, kinky pals and great adventures. Clary Fray is the best ranga to ever exist and i just love this book series so much like its too good. Nothing bad about this series except i cant re read it with fresh eyes! #girlboss #accidentalincest
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The premise of the book is interesting - demon hunters that are visible to certain members of the population. However, the style of writing did not appeal to me, so gave up after three chapters.
okay, so I am embarrassed that I liked these books because they have that “love at first sight, we’re meant to be together” disgusting romance nonsense that I abhor. I find Jace and Clary to be pretty obnoxious. HOWEVER – I really enjoyed these books anyway! It’s a sign of how much fun they are that I enjoyed them in spite of this obvious flaw. The action is exciting. It’s the kind of book you can’t put down and want to read really fast. Also, I like the characters – I’m attached to them and want to see what happens to them, especially some of the side characters like Isabelle and Magnus. Actually, most of my favorite characters are everyone but the two main love interests. Believable bad stuff happens and people have to make tough choices. It’s often laugh out loud funny.
The first time I read these books I read them so fast that I glazed over a lot of the language. The second time I read more slowly and I couldn't get over the writing. BE WARNED: Clare's writing is excessively flowery. There were several times that I cracked up because what I just read was so cheesy. I continued to read them anyway, because my girlfriends and I enjoy making fun of the descriptions of arm hair like downy pollen and her obsession with eyelashes. Seriously, you could make a drinking game involving the number of times someone looks up through eyelashes or someone's hair is curling in the humidity. But if you don't appreciate the humor in that, you'll probably just gag.
The first time I read these books I read them so fast that I glazed over a lot of the language. The second time I read more slowly and I couldn't get over the writing. BE WARNED: Clare's writing is excessively flowery. There were several times that I cracked up because what I just read was so cheesy. I continued to read them anyway, because my girlfriends and I enjoy making fun of the descriptions of arm hair like downy pollen and her obsession with eyelashes. Seriously, you could make a drinking game involving the number of times someone looks up through eyelashes or someone's hair is curling in the humidity. But if you don't appreciate the humor in that, you'll probably just gag.
3.5 ⭐️s
I didn’t really review any of the books as I read them so I’m going to go ahead and just review the whole series in general:
Plot:
City of Bones: as the first book, I’d say it did a great job because it made want to continue reading. Cassandra did a great job introducing her characters and made a generally nice plot.
City of Ashes - City of Fallen Angels: literally every character was starting to get so annoying, by the angel, I wanted to punch everyone. I really really feel like there was no need to make TMI 6 books long. Books 2-4 could have just as well been just one book.
City of Lost Souls: In another review, I already wrote how much Sebastian’s incest issues creep me out, so moving on. Are you seriously going to tell me that All Hail the Queen Camille Belcourt was murdered by a 14-year old child who has been a vampire for 15 minutes?
Alec was pissing me off this whole book, and while I love Malec, I applaud Magnus for breaking up with him. Wait. Rewind. Alec had already been pissing me off for a while now. Is he seriously mad that Magnus (being like 437264278 years old) had relationships before him? Did he think Magnus was single his whole life waiting for Alec to be born? Come on Alec! I thought you were the smart and rational one!
City of Heavenly Fire: I love the general plot, of making the dark Shadowhunters and also having the fairies on Sebastian’s side. But Clary is so annoying, I don’t know why no one had tied her up and left in a dungeon until all the problems were solved.
But I’m not gonna lie, I did end up crying in the end. I’m extremely glad that Simon sacrificed himself instead of having Magnus doing it, but it still made me kind of sad….until they ended up just telling Simon everything. I mean, WHY? Why take his memories away just to tell him again.
I get that in wars there are a lot of casualties but I just feel like Cassandra kills people off just because. And literally all the time. Camille, Raphael, Jordan….they were kind of unnecessary in my opinion. I mean WHAT WAS THE REASON?
Also this book had no business being 700 pages long. So many things were said over and over and over and over again. Like when my man Jordan died. Yes, it made me sad. I actually kind of liked him. But his death story was explained in detail at least 3 times! Just….why? Once was enough.
Another thing that gets repeated too often is Clary’s love for Jace. Like, we get it. You love him. But she worships him and his looks like every 3 paragraphs.
Characters:
To make things easier, I’ll write a list of people that I like:
I didn’t really review any of the books as I read them so I’m going to go ahead and just review the whole series in general:
Plot:
City of Bones: as the first book, I’d say it did a great job because it made want to continue reading. Cassandra did a great job introducing her characters and made a generally nice plot.
City of Ashes - City of Fallen Angels: literally every character was starting to get so annoying, by the angel, I wanted to punch everyone. I really really feel like there was no need to make TMI 6 books long. Books 2-4 could have just as well been just one book.
City of Lost Souls: In another review, I already wrote how much Sebastian’s incest issues creep me out, so moving on. Are you seriously going to tell me that All Hail the Queen Camille Belcourt was murdered by a 14-year old child who has been a vampire for 15 minutes?
Alec was pissing me off this whole book, and while I love Malec, I applaud Magnus for breaking up with him. Wait. Rewind. Alec had already been pissing me off for a while now. Is he seriously mad that Magnus (being like 437264278 years old) had relationships before him? Did he think Magnus was single his whole life waiting for Alec to be born? Come on Alec! I thought you were the smart and rational one!
City of Heavenly Fire: I love the general plot, of making the dark Shadowhunters and also having the fairies on Sebastian’s side. But Clary is so annoying, I don’t know why no one had tied her up and left in a dungeon until all the problems were solved.
But I’m not gonna lie, I did end up crying in the end. I’m extremely glad that Simon sacrificed himself instead of having Magnus doing it, but it still made me kind of sad….until they ended up just telling Simon everything. I mean, WHY? Why take his memories away just to tell him again.
I get that in wars there are a lot of casualties but I just feel like Cassandra kills people off just because. And literally all the time. Camille, Raphael, Jordan….they were kind of unnecessary in my opinion. I mean WHAT WAS THE REASON?
Also this book had no business being 700 pages long. So many things were said over and over and over and over again. Like when my man Jordan died. Yes, it made me sad. I actually kind of liked him. But his death story was explained in detail at least 3 times! Just….why? Once was enough.
Another thing that gets repeated too often is Clary’s love for Jace. Like, we get it. You love him. But she worships him and his looks like every 3 paragraphs.
Characters:
To make things easier, I’ll write a list of people that I like:
I loved this series! I have maintained for a long time that I am not a fan of fantasy but I think I might be wrong. It was a bit more gory than I had expected and alot of parts of it were teen-love story cliche but I still loved the whole thing (I'm a sucker for a love story) and I can't wait for the next one to come out!
I read this series like a long time ago, but I remember the books being really good and the time invested in them will be worth it, if you are into ya.
The character development throughout the series was phenomenal and each book got better and better. The twists in each book was crazy, and you definitely never saw them coming. I personally really liked the ship of Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood (MALEC), because they are so polar opposites, it makes it so funny, and heart-warming at the same time. I would definitely recommend this to someone who likes magic and action, and possibly likes things like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, just because of the magical themes and elements.