City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
May. 26th, 2007 02:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
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 ...
Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wilde ride that they will never want to end.
The overriding problem that I had with this book is that at every plot development scene and every piece of backstory revelation, I felt like I'd seen it before. The obvious influences are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars and Harry Potter, but I also picked up influences from Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising Series (mainly the references to the Gramarye), Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman's Death Gate Cycle (which features tattooed runes), Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series (particularly its focus on control within werewolf clans) and Holly Black's take on New York in Valiant. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with having obvious influences (see Eragon), but Clare doesn't seem to do anything to try and twist the influences into something original that becomes her own, and that makes much of it seem somewhat hackneyed.
Whilst it's fairly competently written, there are some significant plot problems with the story. This ranges from comparatively small things (e.g. a scene where Clare suddenly refers to Clary being glad of the dark hiding her blushes when just a paragraph earlier she talks about blue skies visible through the trees), through to minor discrepancies there to move the plot (e.g. there's a scene where Isabelle handily has a flyer for Magnus Bane's party, which she claims to have got from Pandemonium - I went back through those chapters v. carefully and simply couldn't find a reference to anyone handing out such flyers), through to big plot holes (e.g. the twist on Jace's reunion with his father should be a huge shock but it turns on Jace never having seen a picture of either his father or Valentine since his supposed death - something that's highly unlikely given that Hodge had photos of all the Circle, one of which he shows to Clary).
Some of the plot problems also seem to be things where Clare ties herself into knots trying to make the story more complex than it really is - e.g. at the end Valentine tries to convince Jace that it was Hodge who sent a Ravener demon after Clary's mother, but if you turn back to the scene, Clary hears the demon talk about having had its orders from Valentine - the obvious thing for her to do would be to tell Jace about that but she doesn't even remember it. In fact the whole twist with Hodge makes very little sense - if he's been in touch with Valentine since the start because he's desperate to have the curse prohibiting from going outside the Institute lifted from him, then why is he not more active in having Clary try to find the Cup from the start? Valentine's attempt to shift blame onto Hodge seems like an attempt to make Hodge more of an ambivalent, complex character, but it never really convinces because of what we've seen of him earlier.
The inconsistencies aren't just limited to plot. Character-wise, I felt that Clare's writing was uneven and didn't serve to create distinct characters you could believe in. The central character of Clary for example is supposedly shy and reserved - yet three chapters in, she becomes wise-cracking and confident enough to shout at and defy her mother, chase after demon hunters and ditch her best friend, Simon, without so much as a phone call. Far from shy, she seems at times hysterical and quite willfully thick - this is a girl whose best male friend is clearly trying to give a confession of love, who is told by a stranger that it is a declaration of love and yet who doesn't quite believe it when Simon tells her that he loves her at the end of the book. Jace is clearly meant to be cool, aloof and wisecracking but personally, I found him to be an irritating little twerp. Like Clary, he's willfully gullable and for all his foolhardy bravery and skill at killing demons, he never feels like a teenage boy and some of the gaps in his knowledge are contrived (e.g. he knows about motorbikes and muu shuu chicken but doesn't know what the internet is). The 'sidekick' characters of Alec (secretly gay), Isabelle (hot and confident) and Simon (ordinary boy caught in events beyond his control) are poorly realised and pretty interchangeable. It's difficult to care about any of them and they feel more like box-ticking exercises than characters with their own story. For a big villain, Valentine is incredibly bland. I never bought into him as being particularly clever or charasmatic because Clare never shows you it - all his development comes from exposition and his arguments are something that even a two-year-old would see through.
Style-wise, the narrative is exposition heavy. Backstory comes in huge chunks and is heavily signalled, which serves to slow the plot. One chapter in particular is an attempt to bring the entire backstory together in handy summary form, but it's poorly executed and given that we're supposed to believe it's being recounted by a character, somewhat ridiculous. Clare further lets herself down with her dialogue - I constantly felt that she let dialogue dictate characterisation rather than characterisation the dialogue. As a result, as the book goes on it becomes more and more difficult to work out which character is speaking as she seems desperate to give them all cool, ironic things to say, without reference to that character's age. Whilst I could believe some of the lines coming from a twenty-something, they weren't credible coming from teenagers. Clare is on stronger ground with her action scenes, which are well paced and vividly executed, albeit she does let her desire for the 'cool' factor to rob them of the brutality that would give them life. She clearly has a good feel for visuals, which is why she takes so much time setting up rooms and how different characters look. Some of this has a lot of potential - e.g. a scene in a vampire hotel with its broken staircases was well executed and I liked the description of Clary's appartment when she comes home to discover her mother is missing. Unfortunately, she tends to overegg the pudding with too many similes, some of which are painfully constructed - again, a good second draft should have stripped out many of these.
The denouement to the story is a huge letdown. One of the problems with trilogies is that you have to keep momentum going through all three books whilst at the same time making each book stand on its own merits. This book ends in a downbeat way that's an obvious set up for Book 2 and yet still feels like it's missing a chapter because Clare actually doesn't resolve anything - the characters are literally left mid-journey without any sense of resolution. Such a cheap device is a classic sign of poor-storytelling and far from making me anxious to read the follow-up, I felt a little like Tony Hancock searching for his missing page.
There is a nugget of a good story in this book, but it's not what's on the page.
The Verdict:
It's not as horrible as some would suggest, but neither is it as great as others would have you believe. The simple truth is that it's a book that needed more time to develop to make the story and characters more cohesive and for Cassandra Clare to try and work out her own style and story. Teenagers will probably buy it for the action and pretty boys, but they'll end up thinking that they've seen it all before.
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 ...
Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wilde ride that they will never want to end.
The overriding problem that I had with this book is that at every plot development scene and every piece of backstory revelation, I felt like I'd seen it before. The obvious influences are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars and Harry Potter, but I also picked up influences from Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising Series (mainly the references to the Gramarye), Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman's Death Gate Cycle (which features tattooed runes), Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series (particularly its focus on control within werewolf clans) and Holly Black's take on New York in Valiant. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with having obvious influences (see Eragon), but Clare doesn't seem to do anything to try and twist the influences into something original that becomes her own, and that makes much of it seem somewhat hackneyed.
Whilst it's fairly competently written, there are some significant plot problems with the story. This ranges from comparatively small things (e.g. a scene where Clare suddenly refers to Clary being glad of the dark hiding her blushes when just a paragraph earlier she talks about blue skies visible through the trees), through to minor discrepancies there to move the plot (e.g. there's a scene where Isabelle handily has a flyer for Magnus Bane's party, which she claims to have got from Pandemonium - I went back through those chapters v. carefully and simply couldn't find a reference to anyone handing out such flyers), through to big plot holes (e.g. the twist on Jace's reunion with his father should be a huge shock but it turns on Jace never having seen a picture of either his father or Valentine since his supposed death - something that's highly unlikely given that Hodge had photos of all the Circle, one of which he shows to Clary).
Some of the plot problems also seem to be things where Clare ties herself into knots trying to make the story more complex than it really is - e.g. at the end Valentine tries to convince Jace that it was Hodge who sent a Ravener demon after Clary's mother, but if you turn back to the scene, Clary hears the demon talk about having had its orders from Valentine - the obvious thing for her to do would be to tell Jace about that but she doesn't even remember it. In fact the whole twist with Hodge makes very little sense - if he's been in touch with Valentine since the start because he's desperate to have the curse prohibiting from going outside the Institute lifted from him, then why is he not more active in having Clary try to find the Cup from the start? Valentine's attempt to shift blame onto Hodge seems like an attempt to make Hodge more of an ambivalent, complex character, but it never really convinces because of what we've seen of him earlier.
The inconsistencies aren't just limited to plot. Character-wise, I felt that Clare's writing was uneven and didn't serve to create distinct characters you could believe in. The central character of Clary for example is supposedly shy and reserved - yet three chapters in, she becomes wise-cracking and confident enough to shout at and defy her mother, chase after demon hunters and ditch her best friend, Simon, without so much as a phone call. Far from shy, she seems at times hysterical and quite willfully thick - this is a girl whose best male friend is clearly trying to give a confession of love, who is told by a stranger that it is a declaration of love and yet who doesn't quite believe it when Simon tells her that he loves her at the end of the book. Jace is clearly meant to be cool, aloof and wisecracking but personally, I found him to be an irritating little twerp. Like Clary, he's willfully gullable and for all his foolhardy bravery and skill at killing demons, he never feels like a teenage boy and some of the gaps in his knowledge are contrived (e.g. he knows about motorbikes and muu shuu chicken but doesn't know what the internet is). The 'sidekick' characters of Alec (secretly gay), Isabelle (hot and confident) and Simon (ordinary boy caught in events beyond his control) are poorly realised and pretty interchangeable. It's difficult to care about any of them and they feel more like box-ticking exercises than characters with their own story. For a big villain, Valentine is incredibly bland. I never bought into him as being particularly clever or charasmatic because Clare never shows you it - all his development comes from exposition and his arguments are something that even a two-year-old would see through.
Style-wise, the narrative is exposition heavy. Backstory comes in huge chunks and is heavily signalled, which serves to slow the plot. One chapter in particular is an attempt to bring the entire backstory together in handy summary form, but it's poorly executed and given that we're supposed to believe it's being recounted by a character, somewhat ridiculous. Clare further lets herself down with her dialogue - I constantly felt that she let dialogue dictate characterisation rather than characterisation the dialogue. As a result, as the book goes on it becomes more and more difficult to work out which character is speaking as she seems desperate to give them all cool, ironic things to say, without reference to that character's age. Whilst I could believe some of the lines coming from a twenty-something, they weren't credible coming from teenagers. Clare is on stronger ground with her action scenes, which are well paced and vividly executed, albeit she does let her desire for the 'cool' factor to rob them of the brutality that would give them life. She clearly has a good feel for visuals, which is why she takes so much time setting up rooms and how different characters look. Some of this has a lot of potential - e.g. a scene in a vampire hotel with its broken staircases was well executed and I liked the description of Clary's appartment when she comes home to discover her mother is missing. Unfortunately, she tends to overegg the pudding with too many similes, some of which are painfully constructed - again, a good second draft should have stripped out many of these.
The denouement to the story is a huge letdown. One of the problems with trilogies is that you have to keep momentum going through all three books whilst at the same time making each book stand on its own merits. This book ends in a downbeat way that's an obvious set up for Book 2 and yet still feels like it's missing a chapter because Clare actually doesn't resolve anything - the characters are literally left mid-journey without any sense of resolution. Such a cheap device is a classic sign of poor-storytelling and far from making me anxious to read the follow-up, I felt a little like Tony Hancock searching for his missing page.
There is a nugget of a good story in this book, but it's not what's on the page.
The Verdict:
It's not as horrible as some would suggest, but neither is it as great as others would have you believe. The simple truth is that it's a book that needed more time to develop to make the story and characters more cohesive and for Cassandra Clare to try and work out her own style and story. Teenagers will probably buy it for the action and pretty boys, but they'll end up thinking that they've seen it all before.
