City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

Can I just say that I love this series?!  It’s everything I was hoping Twilight would be, but wasn’t.  I know I always bash Twilight, but I have to say that I liked the story.  I just hated the writing and the characters were so one-dimensional and sometimes everything was just a little over the top, ya know?  It definitely had potential and I actually liked the movie a whole lot more than the book!

Anyway, back to the review at hand!  Also, a warning, if you haven’t read the first book yet, there’s no way I can summarize this one without spoilers from the first one.

So, anyway, Clary has rescued her mother, but she’s still in a coma in the hospital.  So Clary is living with Luke and is avoiding Jace because he’s her brother (but he’s not really, I can so see this coming, I was so sure it would be in this book, but so far so proof) and she’s in love with him.  (So not “ew” as it sounds, somehow.)  Anyway, Valentine (the bad guy) is slowly gaining more power and working toward his final evil plan and the governing body of this other world is totally blind to the whole plot because they are more worried about getting Jace to confess that he was in on the whole “your father is really the evil bad guy” thing, even though he wasn’t.  So this crazy “inquisitor” (who BTW is uncannily Umbrage-like) comes to take Jace into custody and ends up wrecking all kinds of havoc on Jace, Clary and everyone else’s efforts to try and stop Valentine.  Of course there are lots of demons to fight and Jace and Clary both discover that they have special abilities to help them as Shadowhunters.

This book was equally as well written as the first and just as action-packed too.  There isn’t a whole lot of boring/cheesy dialogue (like Twilight - another complaint).  Every page in this book counts.  As I mentioned in my review of the first book, City of Bones, I know this genre isn’t for everyone.  But, if you like this genre, this book is definitely a must read.  I can’t wait to get the third one (there are 56 people ahead of me on the hold list) and read it too.  And I just read online that Clare is planning a fourth to go with these three and she’s also planning a prequel series with an entirely new cast of characters.  I would rate this book a 9/10.