City of Lost Souls

This review is also featured on Behind the Pages: City of Lost Souls

Sebastian and Jace have been bound by Lilith's blood magic. Their minds have begun to align with one another, sharing each other's beliefs. And to make matters worse, one cannot be harmed without the other sharing their pain. While the Clave sees Jace as expendable and will do anything to rid the world of Sebastian, Clary and the others are desperate to find a way to separate the boys. But time is against them as they try to find a near impossible solution.

Clary is once again racing to save Jace. But while the first time I read this book, I devoured every page, this time around it took me a bit longer to finish reading. The themes were too similar to the earlier novel, and it felt like a repeat of what I'd just read. City of Lost Souls does take a markedly darker turn and starts to push on some taboos that made me feel awkward reading. In that effect it was well written and hit all the buttons it meant to. However, the secondary characters and subplots that create the City of Lost Souls overtook the actual plot.

There is much less emphasis on Jace and Clary, and a lot more relationship drama with every other couple in the book. I don't need to know what every single couple is doing. There are characters that are barely seen yet I can tell you exactly how their relationship is doing. I want more world-building; I want more background and story outside of relationship troubles.

I was happy to see the Iron Sisters, though I do wish more time was spent with them. Readers are only allowed a glimpse into their culture and beliefs. They seemed sharp-witted and fastidious in their ways. But then again, I don't really know because their scene was so brief in comparison to the vampires, werewolves, or even the Silent Brothers in earlier novels.

City of Lost Souls was missing the conflicts and tension the earlier novels displayed so well. The relationship filler also needed to be cut back to allow the main plot to progress at a better rate. Too many stories were told within the pages of this book. I think for some it would have been best if they had their own separate novel.

As usual for TMI, the novel's prose is unremarkable except for a few profound moments, and the clich??s of YA fiction abound, but also as usual I find myself drawn in by the dialogue and the characters, who resurrect what might otherwise be a tiring series. I kind of hate to love these books, but I love them all the same.

(mild spoilers following): I'm getting pretty sick of the “Jace is not himself” plotlines, but I found that this didn't bother me as much because Clare spent a good deal of time on the character arcs of others: Magnus and Alec, Izzy and Simon, Jordan and Maia, and even Sebastian. This is the main reason for 4 stars. It was also nice to see some actual mature (?) development in Jace and Clary's relationship, although I am somewhat fearful that they'll be back where they started (headstrong and terrible at communicating and selfishly self-sacrificing to a fault) in the next book. We shall see.

I finished this installment of the Mortal Instruments a few days ago and I've been letting it all sink in before posting my review because of all the books in the series this far it's the one I've been least overwhelmed by.

This is the 5th book in the 6 books of the series and by now we have become very familiar with the usual cast of characters and they are feeling like old friends and we are very familiar with the Shadowhunter world and the other Downworlder characters. It is clear with this book that we are building towards a big finale in Book 6 but is it wrong that a little bit of me cannot wait to be done with the whole Clary and Jace fiasco?

The central two characters in this series have become a tad dull and their ongoing relationship angst and the ability for Jace to stumble from one disaster to another is beginning to wane a little at this stage. Clary thinks there is no one like him, in fact, he can literally do nothing to stop her trailing at his heels like a puppy dog. This book is the perfect example of how even his demonic connection to her brother Sebastian and his involvement in a plot to end mankind cannot stop this girl from sticking up for him. Yes, kill Sebastian and you kill Jace is a bit of an issue to helping him but really was it just me who wanted to yell “Just kill them both and be done with it!”.

These books still hold sway for me now because of the wonderful characters that surround our hapless central two. Simon Lewis, our day walking vampire and Clary's best friend continues to hold this series together for me. He has grown immensely from book one and is the real hero of the hour, there is nothing he will not do for his best friend and I could read about him so much more. Isabelle Lightwood is also winning me over immensely with her feisty nature and kickass attitude. I also had such high hopes for Alec and Magnus and Magnus Bane always has held a special place in my heart in this series and The Infernal Devices but in this book, I have to say that Alec blew it. He literally blew this relationship up because he couldn't cope with having an adult conversation with Magnus where he said “I don't know how to cope with your immortality”. Instead, he decided to go behind Magnus' back and try to take the immortality from him. Now that was just stupid and misguided and although I love Alec dearly he dropped in my estimation in this book.

With one book to go in this series I am clearly going to read it's conclusion but now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm reading because I've heard such wonderful things about the series to follow, The Dark Artifices and I've been told you need to understand the conclusion of this series before embarking on that. Lady Midnight and Lord of Shadows have all been clearly highlighted as way better than this series and I cannot wait to start them but I do wonder if without this draw I'd be getting a little disillusioned with Clare's writing by now. The Infernal Devices was incredible and I loved it so much but The Mortal Instruments is at the moment a bit of a ‘meh' for me.

There have been some highs along the way, an equal number of lows and this book is probably one of the lower points for me. Most people will probably read it as a means to an end of getting to Book 6 but I'm not sure anyone really will have loved it.

My Full Review on my blog

I adored this book, This is my second favorite book on this series. I loved how all the characters acted realistically due to the circumstance they were facing. even though what Alec was going to do to Magnus makes zero sense in all the multi universes, I don't he was using his brain to think in this book, he lost Jace and his brian with him.

Lo mejor del libro, como siempre, Jace.
Sinceramente, no me gusto mucho este libro, bastante aburrido los primeros capítulos, tenía demasiada expectativa, creo yo, sobre éste libro.
Peeeeeeeeeeeero... Cassie sabe lo que hace, me dejo intrigada!!! ohhhhh será Jem? o Will??
Sebastian ¬¬
Clary ¬¬
Jace ♥

Yep, una reseña bastante fluida :D

For mature readers.

Surprisingly I liked this book better than the others and mostly because I find everyone (all of the supporting characters) other than Jace and Clary more interesting.

Jace and Sebastian are missing. The Clave has decided that they are no longer a priority, scaling down their search/crew. This of course doesn't sit well with THE CREW and so they all get together to put Operation Find Jace and Sebastian into action. And so the adventure begins. We get a lot more of Isabelle, Magnus, Alec, Simon, Maia, and Jordan. I have really grown to appreciate these characters. Simon totally annoyed me in the last book and was glad that he was very likable in this one. Isabelle is just kick ass. She really is a great character. Magnus is great as always and Alec needs to grow up in more ways than one BUT Magnus needs to be more understanding of Alec's age/maturity/background. Maia and Jordan... they make me happy. I'm happy that they are happy.

I didn't feel that there were any great twists and turns in this book. In fact there wasn't much of a story. The book lent an opportunity to get to know these characters on a more personal level. You get glimpses of how they've grown and/or matured but mostly you get up close and personal with their HORMONES! This book had everyone coupling up (boo-ing up), a lot of suggested sex, a lot of sexual tension and let's not forget drugs to heighten that sexual tension even more. This read more like an adult book than a YA book. For those that felt that the cover made you feel as if you were reading a romance novel or erotica...YOU WERE! For Teens! Itwasthisclosetobeinganadultbook if a few words would have been added.

Unfortunately my son had read this book before I did and I count my lucky stars that my 10 year old is more like a 40 year old because otherwise I wouldn't have allowed him to read this one. Regardless I wouldn't have allowed him to read this one. I just didn't see it coming.

Incest is revisited in this book...I just rather leave that alone because I don't understand the fascination with it. Clary continues to make huge mistakes, Sebastian is evil and Jace is caught in the middle, as usual, waiting for his strings to be pulled.

The real story for me was left for the last few chapters and of course the author closes the last few chapters with an epic battle. A bigger story unfolds in the epilogue. This means that once again this could have been wrapped up using fewer pages.

With that said the last book of the series (I THINK/HOPE) is not due to be published until 2014.



On to the next...

I am behind on my book updates. But I did read this book pretty much immediately when it came out, and I enjoyed it more than the previous book in this series. However, I was behind on the “prequel” companion series and decided to read this right away instead of reading the most recent Infernal Devices book first. I suspect there were some tie-ins I didn't fully get.

3.5 STARS!!!!!

i like the series more with every book that i've read...... even though i still yell out “WTF” at least once per book lol

super excited to finish this series, and i'm already thinking about doing a re-read once i catch up on cassandra clare's books (i just have to read clockwork princess, and the dark artifices trilogy).

i'm just skeptical bc of the whole incest storyline even though it's not real. i just remember being completely freaked out by clary being like "oh! this is so wrong! but i can't wait to make-out with my brother again! ugh he's so hot!"

I sit here at 3 am trying to gather my thoughts on this. It's been, I think, six years since I read this book. I was honestly unsure what I was going to think of it, especially when I finally remembered what the entire plot was about.
But it was better than I remembered it actually. The absolute grandness of the story is insane considering where we started, and in this one we truly get a sense of just how crazy the villain really is. It's messed up and insane and I honestly love that he's just absolutely batshit crazy because there's just something so fucking unnerving about that.
I think the progression of Magnus and Alec's storyline is both heartbreaking and very interesting to follow, and this book really settles how deep Alec's insecurities lie in him as well as proving how in love with each other they are. I had forgotten the book ended with them like it did.
Before reading I was predicting that Isabelle would again be my favorite of the book, but was pleasantly very surprised that Simon crawled out of the shit hole of the last book and went right up there to the top with her.
The entire book is a battle for Clary and Jace, so the fact that they ended up sitting serenely next to each other in the epilogue was almost ironic, 1) because THE PLOT, and 2) because when have we ever seen a TMI book with Clary and Jace feeling serene at the end of it????
Genuinely could not put the book down after about page 200 which is why I'm here writing this when it's almost 4am. Just loved it. It was addicting, haunting at times, there was so much plot progression, like I just loved it.

I liked this one a lot better than City of Fallen Angels. There was a lot of character development on Sebastian's part which I quite enjoyed. I'm not really dying to find out how it all ends though, I still feel like the extension to the original trilogy is unnecessary, but I'll still be reading the next one to see how it all ends.