City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)

Real Rating: .5

I blame my nephew for forcing me to read these books with him. I honestly cannot stand this series whatsoever and there have been times I found myself wishing more than anything to reach into the book and bitchslap Clary. She is one of the worst characters (next to Anatasia Steel and Bella Swan) and has joined their club in the "Super Special Snowflake Mary Sue Club." This girl has led her best friend on believing that she had feelings for him when she had feelings for her own brother.

Please don't get me wrong I have nothing against incest because of tons of anime have it in there. So it doesn't squish me any.

However, there is something about this one that rubs me the wrong way.

Maybe it is because I have never been a fan of Ginny Weasley. I am not sure why but she was never my favorite Harry Potter character. However, I doubt she would be anything like Clary, whom does the most stupidest and annoying things that make me want to throttle her. I love how everything she does tends to backfire on her and how she still hates Isabelle, whom tried to help out with Jace. Of course, Isabelle is going to work with the rules (somewhat. I mean she is suppose to be Hermione in disguise!) but she does things because she has her heart in the right area.

I really wish I could enjoy these books but my biggest peeve is that the transition into one character from another character seemed to confuse me. I mean you start reading whatever Jace is doing and suddenly you find yourself with Clary without wondering how the fuck that happened! It was confusing and I had to go back briefly to see exactly where the transition happened and why one point of view ended and another began.

Seriously my nephew is going to owe me his soul when I am done with this series because I have come close to throwing these books into the nearest trashcan and reading something much better.

Real Rating: .5

Fifteen-year-old Ginny Weasley Clary Fray witnesses a murder but not just any other murder but one committed by three teenagers. Even worse, the guy Draco Malfoy she meets is much more than he seems. Caught up in their world, Ginny Clary's mother goes missing and she has the Sight. Now joining up with Dumbledore's Army Shadowhunters, she must find her mother and the wherebouts of the Mortal Cup before Voldemort Valentine does.

Honestly I had no desire to ever touch these books and have never bothered to crack open the cover of one but my nephew has these books listed in his AR and they were worth megapoints if he read them. So I decided that not only would I order him a copy of the book from the library but I would borrow the ebook edition from there.

Now I remember why I did not ever want to touch these books.

This entire story comes from her Harry Potter fanfiction called The Draco Trilogy. I may or may not have read the series a long, long time ago. There seemed to be some vague remembrance to some of the storyline but not all of it.

Or maybe I just simply pushed it out of my head like I do whenever I read horrible fiction such as Twilight and Fifty Shades series.

If Cassandra Clare was trying to make this book apart from the Harry Potter series, then she failed.

Miserably.

You could tell which character was which and whom each character was modeled after in the Harry Potter universe. Even the whole Mortal Cup screamed horcrux. The only big thing missing was quidditch and the four houses.

I wish I could say I was done with this series but my nephew has his eyes on the rest of the series sadly. I hope I can survive the rest of this before I go insane.

I'd heard a lot of positive things about this series in general, and yet reading it was so, so weird. Baron Hotschaft Von Hugenstein, the falcon, Clare's obsessive descriptors of eyebrows and how people smell - all these things are intimately familiar to me without having read a shred of her published work before.

This is, of course, because of the copious amount of Harry Potter fanfiction I consumed as a teen, where her Draco trilogy figured prominently. I wasn't new to the author and sadly because of that the work was, to me, drab and a little too predictable for comfort, even factoring in the intended audience. Jace is so Draco that it's painful: not Rowling's Draco, of course - but the Draco Clare molded and made such a memorable and bright character all her own, and it was very hard to see around that when I knew that the jokes and the sarcasm had been honed, polished and already made me laugh half a decade ago in a different work.

Still, yes, I liked the book. The story, as a young adult adventure, was exciting enough to keep me reading, if not overly new. The end was a huge letdown insofar as finishing up the actual plot of the novel was concerned, though add a few points for character development.

If I hadn't read any Clare at all before I might think about picking up book 2 right now. As it is, I think another few hundred reads are in order before I return to the Shadowhunters and I hope the Dracoism decreases later in the series.