The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London’s dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters—including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them...
-- Goodreads.com description --
I finally read Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare and before I continue with this review, I have to explain that I didn't like The Mortal Instruments series at all. Mostly I disliked the main characters intensely (mostly Clary and Jace but others as well) and I didn't care much for the plot either. I mean, was the recurring theme of incest really necessary to write a story?
With that out of the way, I have to admit I wasn't going into this book with high expectations, although a lot of people continue to recommend this trilogy to me. The first half of the book was incredibly boring! After the first 250 pages I almost did not finish it at all. However, the action starts to pick up after that.
One good thing, I have to say about the series is that the mystery (and the action with it) kept me going when otherwise I would have put the book down. The mystery in my opinion was quite okay with some plot twists that were not too obvious.
The characters, however, reminded me so much of the characters in City of Bones! Which is absolutely NOT a good thing! Is it so hard to create new characters? Will is almost an exact copy of Jace, so it is needless to say I hate them both! And just like Clary fell in love with Jace, Tessa falls for Will with almost nothing but the fact that he's beautiful as a reason. Will is a jerk! I can't believe she wants him, ugh!!
Jem on the other hand is a more interesting and likeable character. I'm rooting for him. He's been through hell, and is still kind of going through it, but he at least is a kind and decent character. No excuse can be good enough for Will to have treated Tessa so horribly!
Furthermore, there is sadly almost no character development at all. I really need to like the characters in books like these but I didn't feel attached to any of them. We barely get to know any of them, even Tessa, the protagonist, remains a mystery to me.
The writing style of this book annoyed me quite a bit. Almost every page has at least one sentence which contains a stressed word in italics. I'm not kidding. What kind of author does that? Readers are smart enough to know where the stresses are! Ugh! Cassandra Clare's writing and I will probably never get along.
The inclusion of citations of works of actual literature felt out of place in this book. It seemed they were only included for decoration, and I would prefer it if they had been left out.
All in all, I gave the book 3 out of 5 stars because the final half of the book did keep me entertained enough, once I got over my issues mentioned above. I'm not sure if this is the rating it deserves, though.
Also I'm pretty sure this book contains a major spoiler for A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I haven't read A Tale of Two Cities yet, but I requested it in my local library and they said they were going to do their best to get it for me, however, it's been months, so I probably won't get it at all. But now I've been spoiled because of Clockwork Angel, I'm really not pleased about this at all, if you can't tell!
Have you read Clockwork Angel or are you planning to? Should I continue to read Cassandra Clare's books? Leave your thoughts down below!
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