The Mortal Instruments series is very addicting, it’s almost like crack. Well, not really, or maybe, I don’t know, since I have no idea what crack is like!
I hadn’t really heard of the series or been interested until I saw a trailer for the movie. To be honest, even then I wasn’t that interested. It wasn’t until I did some research and read the descriptions of the books that I was intrigued.
At first, I was planning on reading only City of Bones so I could watch the movie. And that’s where my addiction started. I think I stayed up past 3am reading one night, even though I had to be up early (7:30am) for a conference call in the morning.
After the first book, I decided that I should take a break and space out the remaining books over a few months. However, after about 10 days, I caved and read City of Ashes, the second in the series. City of Ashes, City of Glass, and City of Fallen Angels, collectively lasted 5 days. I held out for another 5 days before reading City of Lost Souls, and I seriously frightened my husband (and my dogs) when I shrieked in horror when I discovered that City of Heavenly Fire (the sixth and final book) isn’t published yet and won’t be published until MAY of 2014. These are not the best books. They are not super thought-provoking or enlightening. What they are is easy to read, fun, and just all around entertaining. If you like paranormal, young adult, teenage romance, angels and demons, vampires and werewolves, faeries, any or all, you will probably like these. I haven’t read the Twilight books (and I currently don’t have any intention of doing so), but I imagine those are similar.Clary, our protagonist, is a soon to be 16-year-old girl. While out with her best bud Simon one night, Clary witnesses a murder. Or at least, what she thinks is a murder. But the body vanishes into thin air and how exactly can you explain THAT to the cops?
Soon Clary discovers that the “murdered” boy wasn’t human, but a demon, and the murders were Shadowhunters, super-humans with super human powers bestowed upon them by the angels in order to protect humankind and rid the earth of demons and evil forces. Along with Shadowhunters, Clary learns that “all the stories are true”, meaning that all legends, myths, etc. are actually the truth. Werewolves, vampires, faeries, warlocks, all true. Angels and demons, all true. Other dimensions, also true. Home to the demons. There are some people who believe it would have been best if the series had ended with book three. And it seems like it was originally written as a trilogy, and expanded to six books after the success of the first few. I’m not sure if I agree, but I did enjoy the first three the most. I rated City of Bones, City of Ashes, and City of Glass as 4-star books and City of Fallen Angels and City of Lost Souls as 3-star books.
It seems that Clary gets dumber and dumber as the series progresses. There’s a saying that love blinds, but this takes that to the extremes. As she goes through her own training to become a Shadowhunter, I was really hoping she would grow and become even stronger and independent. Instead, the opposite happens. She starts doing the stupidest “why on earth is that girl doing THAT” things. I suppose, that because, in the end, it all works out, it’s ok?? On the plus side, the other characters do develop a lot more as the series goes on. In between reading City of Fallen Angels and City of Lost Souls, I rented the movie, which covers only the first book, City of Bones. I have to say this is one of the worst movie adaptations that I have seen in a long time. I think if I had seen the movie first, I would not have had any desire to read the novels. The characters are very one-dimensional in the movie. Now, they are not the most well developed fictional characters ever, even in the novel, but the movie just does a terrible job with the character development. Basically, there is none. Then, significant plot elements are changed or skipped, or revealed at different times or by different characters. I think as someone who hadn’t read the novels, it might not have been that bad, but it was sort of confusing. My husband admitted that in places the plot didn’t make much sense or was hard to follow. It seems like the movie studio wanted more action, so there’s a great big battle scene at the end that was completely not in the book. The entire ending, actually, is different. That’s really annoying, and it makes me wonder how they will correct that to follow the plot for City of Ashes. The movie is filming in and should be released in 2014.
(for the books, the movie gets 1.5 star)
Oh man… now I want to read them. I hate when you’re reading a series and find out the last one isn’t out yet! That happened to me with the Beautiful Creatures series. I was pissed. Ok – I’m going to have to check these books out!
I think you will like them. Don’t watch the movie, at least until you read the first one. But it sucks so you really could skip it. Hopefully the next movie will be better.