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alienne 's review for:
City of Lost Souls
by Cassandra Clare
I suppose it's never a good sign when the two main characters in a series are the ones you care about the least. This, among other things, has dragged the Mortal Instruments series down for me.
Like Maximum Ride, the Mortal Instruments is a series that would have been better off left as a trilogy. The first three books were by no means the height of literary genius (way too much repetition in terms of adjectives, deus ex machinas everywhere, Clary herself--I'll get to her shortly), but the entertainment value and the (often shamelessly obvious) pandering to the fandom geeks of the world more or less outweighed the crappy aspects. No longer! Book four was terrible, and somehow book five has managed to be even worse.
Clary. I never really liked her, but I tried to sympathize with her character. Now I give up. I can't stand her. She's a classic Mary Sue (and probably a self-insert, if the similarities between her name and the authors' are any indication), overflowing with special powers and making all the boys swoon despite not thinking she's anything special. (Gee, sound familiar? If I point out every single Twilight similarity we'll be here all day, so.) She is forgiven for everything, even the stupidest of decisions, which she makes at least once a book--this time, bolting off to join Sebastian and Jace without telling anyone besides Simon. She doesn't really seem to have much of a personality to me. She likes manga, or so the first chapter of City of Bones would lead us to believe, but what are her other interests? What floats her boat? Other than Jace, the oh-so-perfect boyfriend?
Speaking of Jace, my god, I'm possibly even more tired of him than I am of Clary. Allow me to liken her personality (read: lack thereof) to gluten-free bread: Flavorless, but you can still choke it down. Jace's personality is like chocolate syrup on pancakes--good at first, but sickening after a while. Jace used to be amusing. But his witty one-liner responses to everything were getting kinda old by the end of the first book. Four books later, I'm about ready to choke him. He's an arrogant little schmuck and I cannot for the life of me understand his attraction to Clary/vice versa. Oh look, another YA fantasy-ish series where the normal girl finds out she's a Special Snowflake and falls into reciprocal obsession (because this sacrificial bullshit is not love, no matter what writers like Clare and Meyers try to tell us) with the Perfect Misunderstood Boy and shit happens, I don't even know anymore. Every book is telling the exact same story.
I could almost stomach all of the above if there was an interesting plotline to follow. Clare, however, has done something amazing with this book. She has managed to cram approximately 50 different story threads into one novel and still make it boring. Yes, as with book four, I was actually bored through the majority of this doorstopper.
Maybe it's because she can't seem to pick a story and develop it properly. Instead we're given snippets of half-baked plotlines that never go anywhere good--Jace's disappearance, Sebastian's grand plan (hello, anticlimax!), Alec's relationship with Magnus and the resulting horrible decisions (hello horrible derailment of the only damn characters I liked in this series!), Isabelle's bizarre will they/won't they with Simon, Simon's own family drama, Raphael and Camille's power struggle, Maureen the vampire kid running wild, Maia and Jordan's will they/won't they (hey, Clare, you used that one already)...did I leave anything out?
I need to focus on Alec and Magnus here for a second, because really, this whole thing just pisses me off. After being almost entirely absent from book four (and mostly snapping at each other when they did get screentime), Alec and Magnus pretty much pick up where they left off--Alec worries constantly about being forgotten in the face of Magnus's immortality and lets his jealousy over every one of Magnus's former relationships eat away at him. This could have been interesting, dammit. It's a dilemma with all kinds of emotional potential. But Clare once again pulls a Stephanie Meyer.
Let me explain. Remember how after New Moon, the Twilight readership collectively went "Huh, maybe Jacob really is a better love interest for Bella than Edward"? Remember how in the following books his characterization was drastically and horribly altered? I think Clare also realized that her secondary characters were becoming more popular than her main characters and acted accordingly. Thus Alec, formerly portrayed as the most logical and level-headed of the gang, has been reduced to a petty and childish person who actually considers taking away his boyfriend's immortality without talking to him about it. Why. Why.
There are other bits that show off what I'm beginning to believe is a desperate effort by the author to appeal to absolutely everyone, such as a token lesbian couple that shows up for exactly fifteen seconds, and the incesty angle with Sebastian that serves no purpose other than to cement his insanity/villainy (but it was just fine when you were macking on Jace-who-was-supposedly-your-brother, hmm, Clary?).
And then the book ends with a huge anticlimax--which would be horribly disappointing if I cared anymore--and Jace gaining more bizarro powers. True Love supposedly prevails and nothing is accomplished. Nothing changes.
So, to sum up: Too many attempted plotlines that never go anywhere, some actual steps backward in terms of character growth, and the usual repetitive word choice and deus ex machinas. I hate these books and I hate that I'm probably going to read the next one, just to see how much lower they can sink.
Edit: Oh, and if I had to read through one more almost-sex scene, I was going to shoot myself in the foot.
Edit2: It frightened me at first that almost all of the ratings for this book were five stars. Then it occurred to me: People far smarter than myself have jumped off this crazy train before it wrecks for good. WHY CAN'T I DO THE SAME.
Edit3: Clarissa Adele? Gawd, Clare, tell me you're just trolling us at this point!
Like Maximum Ride, the Mortal Instruments is a series that would have been better off left as a trilogy. The first three books were by no means the height of literary genius (way too much repetition in terms of adjectives, deus ex machinas everywhere, Clary herself--I'll get to her shortly), but the entertainment value and the (often shamelessly obvious) pandering to the fandom geeks of the world more or less outweighed the crappy aspects. No longer! Book four was terrible, and somehow book five has managed to be even worse.
Clary. I never really liked her, but I tried to sympathize with her character. Now I give up. I can't stand her. She's a classic Mary Sue (and probably a self-insert, if the similarities between her name and the authors' are any indication), overflowing with special powers and making all the boys swoon despite not thinking she's anything special. (Gee, sound familiar? If I point out every single Twilight similarity we'll be here all day, so.) She is forgiven for everything, even the stupidest of decisions, which she makes at least once a book--this time, bolting off to join Sebastian and Jace without telling anyone besides Simon. She doesn't really seem to have much of a personality to me. She likes manga, or so the first chapter of City of Bones would lead us to believe, but what are her other interests? What floats her boat? Other than Jace, the oh-so-perfect boyfriend?
Speaking of Jace, my god, I'm possibly even more tired of him than I am of Clary. Allow me to liken her personality (read: lack thereof) to gluten-free bread: Flavorless, but you can still choke it down. Jace's personality is like chocolate syrup on pancakes--good at first, but sickening after a while. Jace used to be amusing. But his witty one-liner responses to everything were getting kinda old by the end of the first book. Four books later, I'm about ready to choke him. He's an arrogant little schmuck and I cannot for the life of me understand his attraction to Clary/vice versa. Oh look, another YA fantasy-ish series where the normal girl finds out she's a Special Snowflake and falls into reciprocal obsession (because this sacrificial bullshit is not love, no matter what writers like Clare and Meyers try to tell us) with the Perfect Misunderstood Boy and shit happens, I don't even know anymore. Every book is telling the exact same story.
I could almost stomach all of the above if there was an interesting plotline to follow. Clare, however, has done something amazing with this book. She has managed to cram approximately 50 different story threads into one novel and still make it boring. Yes, as with book four, I was actually bored through the majority of this doorstopper.
Maybe it's because she can't seem to pick a story and develop it properly. Instead we're given snippets of half-baked plotlines that never go anywhere good--Jace's disappearance, Sebastian's grand plan (hello, anticlimax!), Alec's relationship with Magnus and the resulting horrible decisions (hello horrible derailment of the only damn characters I liked in this series!), Isabelle's bizarre will they/won't they with Simon, Simon's own family drama, Raphael and Camille's power struggle, Maureen the vampire kid running wild, Maia and Jordan's will they/won't they (hey, Clare, you used that one already)...did I leave anything out?
I need to focus on Alec and Magnus here for a second, because really, this whole thing just pisses me off. After being almost entirely absent from book four (and mostly snapping at each other when they did get screentime), Alec and Magnus pretty much pick up where they left off--Alec worries constantly about being forgotten in the face of Magnus's immortality and lets his jealousy over every one of Magnus's former relationships eat away at him. This could have been interesting, dammit. It's a dilemma with all kinds of emotional potential. But Clare once again pulls a Stephanie Meyer.
Let me explain. Remember how after New Moon, the Twilight readership collectively went "Huh, maybe Jacob really is a better love interest for Bella than Edward"? Remember how in the following books his characterization was drastically and horribly altered? I think Clare also realized that her secondary characters were becoming more popular than her main characters and acted accordingly. Thus Alec, formerly portrayed as the most logical and level-headed of the gang, has been reduced to a petty and childish person who actually considers taking away his boyfriend's immortality without talking to him about it. Why. Why.
There are other bits that show off what I'm beginning to believe is a desperate effort by the author to appeal to absolutely everyone, such as a token lesbian couple that shows up for exactly fifteen seconds, and the incesty angle with Sebastian that serves no purpose other than to cement his insanity/villainy (but it was just fine when you were macking on Jace-who-was-supposedly-your-brother, hmm, Clary?).
And then the book ends with a huge anticlimax--which would be horribly disappointing if I cared anymore--and Jace gaining more bizarro powers. True Love supposedly prevails and nothing is accomplished. Nothing changes.
So, to sum up: Too many attempted plotlines that never go anywhere, some actual steps backward in terms of character growth, and the usual repetitive word choice and deus ex machinas. I hate these books and I hate that I'm probably going to read the next one, just to see how much lower they can sink.
Edit: Oh, and if I had to read through one more almost-sex scene, I was going to shoot myself in the foot.
Edit2: It frightened me at first that almost all of the ratings for this book were five stars. Then it occurred to me: People far smarter than myself have jumped off this crazy train before it wrecks for good. WHY CAN'T I DO THE SAME.
Edit3: Clarissa Adele? Gawd, Clare, tell me you're just trolling us at this point!