City of Glass

So this month I've been continuing on with my goal to finish The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare and I'm proud to say that having read City of Glass I am now half way there being now 3 books into this 6 book series and I would say that at this stage for me it felt like the books were themselves reaching a turning point in the series.

From the outset of this book, we are aware that things are going to be different, for a start the action moves away from New York and into the Shadowhunter homeland of Idris and it's capital city Alicante. This marks a change in the pace of the books as we are made aware quite early on that there is limited technology in Idris and that it is the home of the Clave, the Shadowhunter council who govern over the laws and codes that our characters live by. The Lightwoods are headed to Idris to inform the Clave of the events of the previous book and to prepare them for the potential upcoming attacks that can be expected from Valentine and they take their family and Jace with them. Clary also is headed to Idris in search of warlock Ragnor Fell who holds the secrets of how to wake Jocelyn, Clary's mother, from her self-imposed sleep like state.

As the action moves, we are allowed the scope to begin to introduce even more new characters to our narrative. We are introduced to the Penhallow family who the Lightwoods stay with whilst in Idris and we also meet the sister of werewolf Luke, a Shadowhunter who has seen little of her brother since his transformation to Werewolf but who's past marriage would seem to be significant.

As well as introducing new characters I felt this book really began to finalise some of the stories we've been working through in the first few books and to really give more depth to some of the people we've come to know and love. We get to meet Clary's mother Jocelyn properly for the first time, Simon is growing more accustomed to his life as a vampire and with this we see his strength and confidence beginning to grow and the growing relationship between Alec Lightwood and Magnus Bane is a highlight and they brighten up any pages they are on together.

I liked that this book seems to conclude one major plot we have been following since Book 1, I feel it is the right time to say goodbye to certain characters and to draw a line under some of those niggling plot twists that have been stopping the story from moving forward. I also feel that it may be time to move a little of the action away from Jace and Clary and to allow some of the amazing surrounding characters to have their moment in the spotlight. I like Jace and Clary very much but I almost love the other characters more.

At this stage in the series, I'd have to say I still prefer The Infernal Devices as a story overall as I felt it was slightly better developed and the writing more engaging. I am absolutely going to keep moving forward with The Mortal Instruments but I am also aware of The Dark Artifices series which is getting a LOT of attention and I'm really interested to be able to delve into that once I'm done with this but I'm aware that Lady Midnight the first in that series has major spoilers for the end of this series so I need to read books 4-6 of Mortal Instruments in order to move forward so I absolutely will be completing this series in the weeks ahead.