morwen1031 's review for:

City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare
3.0

Some thoughts on this:

1. It started off really slow and boring and I found myself wondering what the point of it all was.

2. Clary is a total Mary Sue.

3. Books like this are the reason young girls have completely unrealistic concepts of love and become women who don't know a good thing when they see it, i.e. love isn't real when it becomes this all-consuming thing where you lose all sense of yourself apart from this other person you "love."

3. I don't think Clare knows much about writing about realistic romantic relationships. Simon and Isabelle felt forced the entire time.

4. I think it's great that she tries to portray gay relationships right alongside hetero ones, but I don't think she knows much about them. Magnus and Alec had zero chemistry and I am no closer to finding out what a 400 year old warlock sees in this kid in book 5 than I was in book 1. If you want a viable literary portrayal of a homosexual/homoerotic relationship that is sexy to both gay people and straight people go talk to Louis and Lestat.

5. What happened with Simon at the end was trite and selfish. I did kind of crack a wee smile over his band name though, even if I saw it coming a mile off.

6. I feel like we were supposed to care more about the dead people than we did.

7. So many of the big narrative plot devices and conflicts had all-too-easy resolutions.

8. Despite all of this it was super readable and fun. Not everything can be readable, mature, fun, well-written, and intelligent like Harry Potter, so just plain fun is fine by me.