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kateaaron 's review for:
City of Heavenly Fire
by Cassandra Clare
Maybe 2.5*
Dear god, that was hard work. And I loved this series, so it really shouldn't have been.
Firstly, it's waaaay too long. 725 pages and the story didn't even get going until the halfway point. Someone should have pruned this for its own good and omitted the blatant precursors for the next spin off series, which didn't interest me and weren't relevant. In places it felt like two stories being told in one book, and as one of those stories was about a set of characters I neither knew nor care about, it didn't interest me. I also thought opening the book with them was a mistake.
In the final installment of a six-book series, I want to read about the characters I've been reading about for the previous five books, not a whole other group. So we open on an overly-long (and dull) first chapter which is 80% info dump and 20% carnage as we're fast-tracked through a group of people, all of whom seem to have at least two different names (name/nickname), none of whom have a simple relationship with each other (there's siblings but some are half-siblings from an affair, for instance) and it was frankly bewildering and I came away from it still not understanding why I should care about these people. It was a clumsy device, poorly executed, and sadly it set the tone for weak storytelling throughout.
The book is littered with passive voice, autonomous body parts, unnecessary exposition, and plain odd imagery. I have never before heard of a mobile phone being referred to as 'an oblong metal object'. If I read 'said Simon's voice' or similar once, I read it a dozen times. We need to be told that when people duck underwater they surface wet (but are miraculously dry again two minutes later), at one point Simon must develop telepathic abilities because he 'thinks at' the others, rather than just thinking, and when direct thoughts are shown in italics they're still written in third person. I list these things as some examples taken at random to illustrate how prevalent the bad writing is. One can't help but feel the series has become so successful nobody bothered to edit this book.
However, while Clare has never been known as a technically-perfect wordsmith she could always tell a rollicking good story, and that's the bit that really matters. Sadly, in this final installment, the story wasn't up to snuff. As I said, it's bloated, but my complaints go further than that.
Firstly, I get that they're all hormonal teenagers who think their feelings are more important than everything else, but this book ramped it up to the Nth degree. The world is literally burning around them and they're too busy angsting about how they feel to do much about it. The same ground was crossed ad infinitum (or is that ad nauseum?) and then got lost in itself. One minute Simon's trying to declare his feelings for and she tells him it isn't the right time, the next she's sobbing because he's never told her. WTF? And don't even get me started on the absurdity of . Maybe that was the fault of the publisher, but whoever it was, they want shooting. AU takes precedence over YA.
The denouement itself fell flat to me. I'd guessed the twist about four hours earlier and what came after was just so... convenient it hurt. There was a gorgeous moment but it wasn't enough to make up for the rest. I'll just say Deus ex machina and leave it there.
The ending of the story came at 87%. After that all that was left was summing up the ending, tying the bow on the big fat HEA, and closing the series. Simple, right? Not for Ms. Clare. 12% of a 725-page book spent on tying up loose ends is way, waaaaaay too much. I have read entire books shorter than the conclusion of this one. I found myself skipping most of the conclusion (which was followed by a bloody epilogue -- like we needed one at that point!) and praying for it to be over.
There was also some weirdness with the formatting of the ebook: breaks between scenes following different characters were sometimes just blank lines, sometimes asterisks. Again, it struck me as laziness on the part of the publisher.
I wish I'd liked this book more. I was desperate to like it. Now I've finished the whole series, I think it would have been better remaining as a trilogy.
Dear god, that was hard work. And I loved this series, so it really shouldn't have been.
Firstly, it's waaaay too long. 725 pages and the story didn't even get going until the halfway point. Someone should have pruned this for its own good and omitted the blatant precursors for the next spin off series, which didn't interest me and weren't relevant. In places it felt like two stories being told in one book, and as one of those stories was about a set of characters I neither knew nor care about, it didn't interest me. I also thought opening the book with them was a mistake.
In the final installment of a six-book series, I want to read about the characters I've been reading about for the previous five books, not a whole other group. So we open on an overly-long (and dull) first chapter which is 80% info dump and 20% carnage as we're fast-tracked through a group of people, all of whom seem to have at least two different names (name/nickname), none of whom have a simple relationship with each other (there's siblings but some are half-siblings from an affair, for instance) and it was frankly bewildering and I came away from it still not understanding why I should care about these people. It was a clumsy device, poorly executed, and sadly it set the tone for weak storytelling throughout.
The book is littered with passive voice, autonomous body parts, unnecessary exposition, and plain odd imagery. I have never before heard of a mobile phone being referred to as 'an oblong metal object'. If I read 'said Simon's voice' or similar once, I read it a dozen times. We need to be told that when people duck underwater they surface wet (but are miraculously dry again two minutes later), at one point Simon must develop telepathic abilities because he 'thinks at' the others, rather than just thinking, and when direct thoughts are shown in italics they're still written in third person. I list these things as some examples taken at random to illustrate how prevalent the bad writing is. One can't help but feel the series has become so successful nobody bothered to edit this book.
However, while Clare has never been known as a technically-perfect wordsmith she could always tell a rollicking good story, and that's the bit that really matters. Sadly, in this final installment, the story wasn't up to snuff. As I said, it's bloated, but my complaints go further than that.
Firstly, I get that they're all hormonal teenagers who think their feelings are more important than everything else, but this book ramped it up to the Nth degree. The world is literally burning around them and they're too busy angsting about how they feel to do much about it. The same ground was crossed ad infinitum (or is that ad nauseum?) and then got lost in itself. One minute Simon's trying to declare his feelings for
Spoiler
IsabelleSpoiler
travelling to Hell, but packing a condomThe denouement itself fell flat to me. I'd guessed the twist about four hours earlier and what came after was just so... convenient it hurt. There was a gorgeous moment
Spoiler
when Sebastian died and Clary spoke to JonathanThe ending of the story came at 87%. After that all that was left was summing up the ending, tying the bow on the big fat HEA, and closing the series. Simple, right? Not for Ms. Clare. 12% of a 725-page book spent on tying up loose ends is way, waaaaaay too much. I have read entire books shorter than the conclusion of this one. I found myself skipping most of the conclusion (which was followed by a bloody epilogue -- like we needed one at that point!) and praying for it to be over.
There was also some weirdness with the formatting of the ebook: breaks between scenes following different characters were sometimes just blank lines, sometimes asterisks. Again, it struck me as laziness on the part of the publisher.
I wish I'd liked this book more. I was desperate to like it. Now I've finished the whole series, I think it would have been better remaining as a trilogy.