Let's Review Books: City of Ashes
Note: As this is the second book in a series, the review will most likely discuss things that could be considered spoilers for the first book in the series. Be warned, if you have not yet read the earlier books in this series.
Remember how the first book in The Mortal Instruments series was just good enough to keep reading? Well for the most part, the same thing could be said about the second book, City of Ashes. It's not great, but it does hold your interest just enough to keep going. That is until the end when everything ramps up to a pretty thrilling climax. But we can't just talk about the very end of the book can we. That's hardly a book reveiw.
The second book in the series picks up pretty much right where the first one left off, which is a plus for the series. There are instant ramifications for the events at the end of the book. We get to see the characters treat Jace differently now that his father is the main villain of the series. We get to see Clary struggle with the whole Jace being her brother thing as well. I can pretty much tell you that one of the strongest points in the series is that it doesn't treat itself like a series. Other than the fact that they're clearly going to focus on one Mortal Instrument per book, the series acts like it's one long story that had to be chopped up into multiple pieces to be able to be published.
The Instrument that people are going after this time is the Sword. This is supposed to be able to force the truth out of others. In the book it's used for trials and other things where the truth might be important. But apparently you dip it in the right type of blood, and it can give you the power to summon and control demons. Which is obviously what the sword is being used for in by Valentine.
Like the first book, it's easy to notice how much of the book could be cut away for a cleaner, tighter version of the story. There are plenty of side quests that the characters go on. They help a vampire finalize his transformation. They go to the faerie wold (yes, there are faeries now. This series has everything in it) And they return to the Silent City from the first book as well. It's not that these parts of the book are particularly uninteresting, or pointless, it's just that there's a lot of them, and while the first book was all about Clary (and through her, the reader) learning about the wonderful new things in this hidden world, now that we know about these things, its a lot more a feel of just seeing some cool things that you can do in this new secret world. We started talking about this series because of an announcement that the movie adaptations were going to cease and there would instead be a television adaptation of the books. Reading this book that seems like a great idea because it's easy to see how this book can translate into six episodes of a show more gracefully than into one installment of a movie franchise.
But again we need to quickly mention the end. Like before, the book had just enough of a spark to hold interest, but then with just a handful of pages to go, we get the action and the pace of the story cranked up to eleven. Is it worth reading the whole book to get to that point. Your mileage may vary on that, but it easy to see that one of the author's strengths is knowing how to write a climax. And a side effect of that is while I spent the whole bulk of the book debating if I would continue the series past the second book, I now am very much anticipating reading the third one. You end a book well, then I'm going to want to continue.
Remember how the first book in The Mortal Instruments series was just good enough to keep reading? Well for the most part, the same thing could be said about the second book, City of Ashes. It's not great, but it does hold your interest just enough to keep going. That is until the end when everything ramps up to a pretty thrilling climax. But we can't just talk about the very end of the book can we. That's hardly a book reveiw.
The second book in the series picks up pretty much right where the first one left off, which is a plus for the series. There are instant ramifications for the events at the end of the book. We get to see the characters treat Jace differently now that his father is the main villain of the series. We get to see Clary struggle with the whole Jace being her brother thing as well. I can pretty much tell you that one of the strongest points in the series is that it doesn't treat itself like a series. Other than the fact that they're clearly going to focus on one Mortal Instrument per book, the series acts like it's one long story that had to be chopped up into multiple pieces to be able to be published.
The Instrument that people are going after this time is the Sword. This is supposed to be able to force the truth out of others. In the book it's used for trials and other things where the truth might be important. But apparently you dip it in the right type of blood, and it can give you the power to summon and control demons. Which is obviously what the sword is being used for in by Valentine.
Like the first book, it's easy to notice how much of the book could be cut away for a cleaner, tighter version of the story. There are plenty of side quests that the characters go on. They help a vampire finalize his transformation. They go to the faerie wold (yes, there are faeries now. This series has everything in it) And they return to the Silent City from the first book as well. It's not that these parts of the book are particularly uninteresting, or pointless, it's just that there's a lot of them, and while the first book was all about Clary (and through her, the reader) learning about the wonderful new things in this hidden world, now that we know about these things, its a lot more a feel of just seeing some cool things that you can do in this new secret world. We started talking about this series because of an announcement that the movie adaptations were going to cease and there would instead be a television adaptation of the books. Reading this book that seems like a great idea because it's easy to see how this book can translate into six episodes of a show more gracefully than into one installment of a movie franchise.
But again we need to quickly mention the end. Like before, the book had just enough of a spark to hold interest, but then with just a handful of pages to go, we get the action and the pace of the story cranked up to eleven. Is it worth reading the whole book to get to that point. Your mileage may vary on that, but it easy to see that one of the author's strengths is knowing how to write a climax. And a side effect of that is while I spent the whole bulk of the book debating if I would continue the series past the second book, I now am very much anticipating reading the third one. You end a book well, then I'm going to want to continue.
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