I recently finished reading Cassandra Clare’s second book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Ashes. I thought it was great. You may recall that I read City of Bones a few months ago and I said that it was just good, but I expected better from books after that, since that was an early book of hers.
As this review is the second book in a series, it may contain spoilers for City of Bones.
I was correct in thinking that, because I thought that this was a great book. My problems with City of Bones was that there were a few occasions of infodumping, and I found the reaction of the characters to some of the situations they were facing to be unrealistic. I didn’t see those problems here. I did see one paragraph that seemed like a little infodump, but it didn’t affect my thoughts of the book at all.
As City of Ashes begins, the character’s lives have been upended. Clary and Jace seem to have feelings for each other but are evidently siblings, their mom is in a coma in the hospital, and their father, Valentine, is causing trouble.
Jace’s adoptive mother is having trouble believing all that happened in the first book, and calls upon the Inquisitor to find out the truth. The Clave can use the Mortal Sword to force him to tell the truth. But… dun dun dun! Valentine seems to have stolen it. Will he cause even more problems?
The Inquisitor seems to have a thing against Jace from the moment she sees him, and tries to make things difficult for him. Unfortunately, Jace and his friends are also the only people that see what’s going on, and they have to overcome both Valentine’s forces and the Clave’s representative in order to put things right, or at least as right as they can be.
Meanwhile, Jace and Clary still obviously have non-brotherly/sisterly feelings for each other. Clary reacts to this by forming a love relationship with Simon. I personally didn’t like them together. They didn’t seem to have more than friends chemistry.
I love the characters and the world in this book, and although I can’t keep all the different types of demons and blades straight, I doubt that there will be a quiz on it later. I definitely think that City of Ashes was a great second installment to the Mortal Instruments series, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book.