I am not a good judge of novelist’s skills (I’m just a reader, not a critic) but I can say this early that Cassandra Clare is one good novelist to watch out for. I just finished reading the first of her Mortal Instruments trilogy series, the City of Bones. The other two books I have yet to read are The City Of Ashes and the City of Glass.
Having read and seen the Twilight series, I’ve known about vampires and werewolves. Then, with Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, I got introduced to shadowhunters. Looks like we humans are not that helpless against demons, vampires, werewolves and other faerie folks after all. We’ve got the Shadowhunters (nephilims) who are secretly watching our backs and protecting us all along. These breed are like humans (just as vampires are like humans) and they live among us, unseen or camouflaged. That old abandoned church in your street may just turn out to be one of their abodes – actually castle-like and magnificient. The ‘old abandoned church’ you saw was just ‘glamour’ cover.
Clarissa Fray is the teenage star of this movie, err, story. Why not? I’m sure some producer will soon see that the Mortal Instruments trilogy is one feasible movie project that can fetch him loads of money, too. After all, all those Twilight viewers are also surely going to fall for this. Why? Because it’s got all the ingredients that they like: a love story, good-looking teenagers, villains, vampires, werewolves, and a world in the fringes of reality.
Clarry is a shadowhunter who was raised as a human – a mundane (or mundie). After a fast-paced series of events, she was rudely awakened into the realization of her true self – that she’s a shadowhunter, with a shadowhunter mother, (and revealed later in the story) a shadowhunter father, and a shadowhunter brother. Unlike regular shadowhunters who are trained warriors, Clarry lived through the whole story, untrained, and seemingly very weak and vulnerable. She’s like Bella in Twilight (before she became a vamp). She had to be accompanied and protected by Jace, another cool shadowhunter teenager, in all her adventures. The two of them seems headed towards a Bella-Edward like relationship. But…
While readers of the Twilight series had to hold their breaths until the last book to see large-scale violent conflicts and flesh-shredding fights, the City of Bones (being only the first book of the trilogy), offers it up to you right there. I can’t wait to see the next two books. (Now, why do most novels nowadays are trilogies? This year, among the multi-volume books I’ve read are the Twilight series and the books of Kristin Cashore).
What books have you read this year? If you haven’t read Cassandra Clare’s books, you should check her out.
UPDATE: August 20, 2013
The City of Bones Movie’s Finally Out!
Finally was able to watch the movie. All in all, I consider it a satisfactory rendering of the novel. I think I agree with most of the casting. I guess though that they could do better than Jamie Campbell Bower to play Jace. Or, if not, at least he could have sported hair that’s a little bit longer. I also imagined Valentine to be a little bit more mature and older than Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
It’s been quite a while since I read the City of Bones, but bits and pieces of the story started to come back as I watched the movie. And since I’ve already read City of Ashes and City of Glass, it was sort of disappointing to know that I have to wait for part 2 and 3 of Mortal Instrument to see the juiciest parts of the whole story. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching the movie. My 14-year-old son, who watched the movie along with me and my wife, also expressed an interest in reading the other Mortal Instruments books. Guess I’ll be purchasing the Kindle version of the books from Amazon soon.