review: clockwork angel by cassandra clare

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So far, every bit as beautiful and absorbing as her other books! I just wish I had the time to sink right in and not come up until it's done!




12-22-10:


SPOILER WARNING!


In the end, it was very much a first novel (in a series if not her's), and there was a sense that Cassie was trying to find her voice in a Voctorian world, which led to making parts of the book sort of stilted and strange. I think the love story suffered a little from not getting inside Wil's head nearly enough (it was much more organic with Jem). The plot couldn't quite decide if it was about Tessa's brother or about Mortmain, and how they fit together. Sometimes it seems like the story wants to go somewhere that the established history can't manage to allow, and has to be forced back-- and that always leads to awkwardness.




But you know what? For all that, I loved it. As soon as I had time, I devoured it, and it made me want to live in the ugly, deadly, dirty London of Victorian times, made me froth at the mouth a little bit at the thought of having to wait for the next one.




I expected it to be a little tighter because the Mortal Instruments series was so fantastic right off the bat, but there is nothing here that can't be explained away. The next book will likely be stronger for all the problems in this one being worked through, and now that the world is established, it's ready to go-- hopefully completely off the rails. And I love the idea that Valentine isn't the first one to start manipulating things he shouldn't have had control over. Maybe there were more before him, too, a whole line of wack-jobs he could draw on for his own purposes, and maybe all of them have stories like this to be told.




The book is beautiful, often charming, has all that wit and cleverness that we all have come to love from Cassie Clare, and really, I think, the problems all stem from figuring out how to put that wit and charm and *nowness* into something as alien as the Victorian era.




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book 14: city of ashes, cassandra clare

Wow. I read this one so fast I didn't even take time to do any In-Reading Notes-- so fast that I started yesterday from chapter, like, three and finished it about three this morning.

It's another great one, and this is quickly becoming one of my favorite series. It makes me sad that there's only the one after it; I don't know if she's planning more, but it has the feel of a trilogy. Even so, this one mostly manages to hold up as it's own story, and manages to mitigate Middle Book Syndrome, where there's not beginning and no end-- this one starts a little after book one and ends with them prepping for book three, but everything in between is it's own storyline-- there are parts where you can see the foreshadowing leaking through (the silver-haired lady and Maia mostly), but they foreshadow while fitting into the overall arc, and that makes it okay.

My only complaint is that the book seems to think it's still Clary's story when it's really Jace's and Simon's; alot of the time, they're fighting or plotting or dealing with their issues, and Clary's just sort of standing there, gaping. There isn't alot for her to do in certain parts of the book, but she tags along anyway like a little sister (which I guess is fine, since she's Jace's little sister), and then, again, doesn't have much to do. But that doesn't mean she's ignored: she's dealing with her conflicting and conflicted feelings for both boys, and the surfacing of some unusual abilities that shouldn't be possible and are probably the result of tampering, and even though it isn't given time to sink in, she's starting to act more like a Shadowhunter, and hopefully that will go somewhere. Clary's too cool to constantly be needing boys to protect her.

The ending was... a little convenient. It's the middle of the story, about to go into the big showdown that will be the last book, so it's understandable, but the answer to her mom's problem is sort of just handed to her, which annoys me (and means it isn't what I thought, which both entertains me and annoys me, because the way I thought it would go, it could have been a really great little moment of fairytale perfection in this amazingly complicated and flawed world).

If you don't want spoilers, stop here, because I'm extrapolating.

Here's what I think will happen:

- Simon and Maia will try to be the Romeo and Juliet that stop the vampire-werewolf war; it'll be more interesting if they don't work as a couple, but do work as a diplomatic team, because there's really no solid reason why they can't get along except that weres are like dogs and vamps are like cats, and it's tradition that you don't share your hunting grounds with another predator. Issues of choice and free will keep coming up, and it would be nice to see both sides choose to be sentient beings.

- It looks like Jace is going to be shown to not actually be her brother, but that that's yet another of Valentine's mindgames. The romantic in me thinks this is great, but the plot-diva in me thinks it's needlessly complicated unless there's a really great payoff for it in the end. Also, I like Simon better, even though he's already fallen into Duckie Pergatory, and it seems he'll never win Clary's heart the way he wants. I'd be willing to bet that Jace actually is a Wayland, switched out for his actual kid who was "a monster". I'd also be willing to bet that there's something faerie about Clary.

- Clary needs to start kicking ass. Seriously. She needs to get some training, and she already seems to be tapping into her natural instincts, and that's a good thing.

- Valentine will manage to detstroy the Clave, but not the cause. They'll beat him at the last minute in some horrible battle where Clary and Jace's awesomeness combine, and probably the fractured Downworlder alliances come together, and they'll stop him and get back the Instruments-- and then they'll have to rebuild, with most of the older generation gone, and they'll bring the Clave back better and stronger.

- Hopefully hodge will come back in some way that redeems him. Adults in these books are as complex as the kids, and the kids are only just learning that fact, and everyone is so hurt over his betrayal-- and he didn't die; he just disappeared into the crowds, and who knows what he's been doing.

- Alec needs to come out. And he needs to accept Magnus. They're sweet and pretty together.

And if any of these guesses are wrong, then I can just write fanfic.

book 7: city of bones by cassandra claire

I read alot. Even before I decided to read 100 books in a year, I read all the time, and as such, it's gotten a little hard to surprise me with a book, especially with YA, which seems to generally revel in the limitations of it's age-group. Or maybe I just put up less with bad writing, since I know how it can be better now?

City of Bones surpised me. All the time, at every turn. When I wrote the notes yesterday, I was half way through; I read most of the rest before work yesterday, a little more at bedtime, and the rest these past three hours-- even for me, that's a fast read. It was because it was easy to read. It never lulled in pacing, it always took the unexpected path in plot, and it always came out differently then I thought it would, even if I'd taken the time to worry about which way it was going, which I generally didn't because it was moving so quickly and brilliantly that I wanted to keep reading, each chapter pulling me into the next one perfectly. I'm not surprpised that Cassie Claire can write well, having read alot of her fanfic, but I'm surpised that stories that feel so real and so fresh still exist in the world. It gives me faith that there's still space for me in the genre-- and this one, though classed as YA, stands well with the rest of the supernatural genre. It deals with the adult themes that kids of fifteen and seventeen have to face in a clean and honest way, it handles the weirdness of a parallel world view with grace and balance, it navigates the horror of finding out things aren't as you thought and that parents often mess things up in unexpected ways with a clarity that's refreshing, and it even manages to tacke the ideas of heaven and hell a little bit, and recast them in a postmodern framework that will make sense to kids as well as it makes sense to me. There's a little geekiness, and an in-joke or two, there's reality in the world and it's characters, and there's that juxtaposition of beauty and horror that these sorts of books need to master to really work, and that Claire has down pat. It's as bloody as a vampire novel, sweet as a coming of age book, and it's solid. It's something you could go to New York and trace the pathways of, even if the places named don't even exist-- it feels like they do. It never pulls punches; in fact, it revels in the fact that things are hard, confusing, unexpected and often unwanted and unfair, and people have to push through them, and it comes out the other side changed forever, but reassuringly intact, at least for now. It's a damned good read.

I'm starving for the next one, and I only just finished this one half an hour ago.

in-reading notes: city of bones

I've been meaning to read this book for years, since I was an LJ fan of Cassie Claire after discovering the Very Secret Diaries and her wonderful potter-fic (there's a reference in one of the chapters that made me happy that I was a fan beforehand-- see if you can catch it). I don't know why I didn't pick it up before; I think it's just because I never saw it before-- until I was at some backwater WalMart with my brother, and they happened to have a really good (and cheap) specfic YA section, featuring all three of the books. I wish I could have afforded all of them, and I was reasonably sure I'd like them, having read some of her other stuff, but I couldn't get them all and I wanted to save what little money I had just in case I didn't like it inexplicably.

Now I wish I'd been able to get them all, because now I'll have to hunt them all down (probably on Amazon, where they'll cost more, since our walmart has nothing and our B&N leaves much to be desired), because I'm really loving this book.

The characters are all interesting, teenagers in a way that feels honest and real-- and best of all, makes sense. When you're actually a teen, all your reactions seem normal and honest, and when you're older you're all, like, what the crap was I thinking?? But these kids make sense, being kids and a weird world that shouldn't make sense to people so young, and they make do with what they have. I love Clary. I want to name a daughter after her in hopes that she'd be as strong and compassionate and understanding and persistent. All their interractions are interesting to me, and I'm not sure who I want to root for as my shippy little brain looks for an OTP to ship-- which is good, because it means the book isn't predictable. I'm sad I have to go to work later; it means I'll have to stop reading.