Hello!
I have been wanting to read this book for a long time. I remember when it first came out because I would visit the book section at Wal-Mart all the time and I was curious but not enough to consider reading it in the beginning, possibly for the fact that it is a massive book! It wasn’t until the film came out in 2013 that I found myself wanting to see what all the fuss was about, because there wasn’t a lot of happy people when it came out in theaters. I ended up loving it more than I thought, but I don’t usually watch the film version and then read the book afterwards, so I would watch it all the time until we had to get our DVRs updated and it was deleted in the aftermath.
I had hoped that it would appear on our movie channels in the last seven years but it hasn’t but I feel in my own bones that it might in the future now that I’ve finally read the book.
When I started doing my reading challenge, I had hoped that the book would be apart of Prime Reading because they usually have a wide range of fantasy books in their catalog but it wasn’t until we got KU that I found it and took full advantage of the opportunity.
When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder – much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air.
It’s hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing – not even a smear of blood – to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?
This is Clary’s first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It’s also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk.
Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace’s world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know…
taken from Goodreads.
For someone who hasn’t watched the film in seven years and only seen a few episode trailers of the Shadowhunters show on Freeform, I had a very vivid images of all of the characters floating around in my mind as I read the book. It was a tad bit difficult to stop comparing them all together but I think it happened me lots on building everything else that was talked about in the story.
Once I began my journey I quickly realized why the book itself looked so large on BookTube, because the author made sure to describe everything for her readers to both see the amount of detail she created for her readers and understand how important it is to basically look beyond the lines, whether that meant a story itself, a person or building. I, myself, have never been good at creating lots of things within various scenes. This has always been my downfall, even in school, we had a standardized test every year and the section where it allows you to write long answers, I wouldn’t give anything to describe what is going on and I would fail that part every year. I had never seen so many words to help visualize the surroundings of what was going on with the characters.
As I was seeing the various structures in my mind, I was also enjoying the banter and bickering among the characters too. I really loved Clary and Simon’s friendship and the scene where they go to Magnus Bane’s house and the poor guy is turned into a rat, cracked me up! I feel like that was perfect because only a mundane would grab a random cup to drink at a warlock’s party! I think the perfect way to sum up how much Clary cared for Simon is shown when she discovers him missing from her backpack and they get ambushed at the vampire lair. Again, it was perfect and I ended up enjoying that whole scene the most I think.
Another character I loved more in the book than anywhere else was Hodge. He gave me serious mentor vibes, and every scene he was talking to Clary about the past or general information about a Shadowhunter’s life was so interesting. I felt as though I was Clary in those scenes and just absorbing as much information as possible, but I wasn’t planning on feeling betrayed when he stabs them in the back. I was genuine upset by it! And the entry of Valentine scared me as much as it had Clary. It probably didn’t help that I was seeing Jonathan Rhys Meyers in my head as I think he has the intimidating factor well-generated into himself. So, anytime he was in the same room with Clary, I was feeling nervous for her.
I really hope I am able to start on “City Of Ashes” soon because I want to know what happens next between Clary and Jace, especially after that big reveal at the end. I’m still fairly confused by that but I’m choosing to keep it to myself as I feel like anyone who reads this will think I just ruined the ending for them, so I’m stopping here.
Have you read “City Of Bones” by Cassandra Clare yet? If you have watched the film and show first and then starting reading the series, what were your initial thoughts about this story?
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