City of Glass

City of Glass  by Cassandra Clare

This was book three of the  Mortal Instruments Trilogy.  Of course, Clare thinks of a trilogy the way Douglas Adams did, but she is NO Douglas Adams.  I only read this book because I thought it was the end of the series and I like to see a series through, whenever possible.    With this series  that was often much more difficult than with many others.  Cassandra Clare has some of the worst descriptions ever written in her books.  They were repetitive and tiresome and often nonsensical. In her defense, she didn't use words she clearly didn't know very well, but she didn't show a great gift with language, either.

This time out, Clarissa Fray follows Jace to Aliconte, the City of Glass, where she has been pointedly told not to go.  Because we are to believe that she is just an itty bitty little spitfire who always knows the right thing to do.  Even though she is always out of her depth.  So, she draws herself a portal and turns up on the outskirts of the City and goes in search of the warlock who can un-coma-tize her mother.  Blah, blah, blah, she gets in trouble, she thinks only of herself, and lots of people die.  Sharper heads prevail and a little bit of order is established between the Shadowhunters and the Downworlders.  The End.  It really would have been an okay place to end the series and I wouldn't have complained much. The ends were all wrapped up and everyone got what they wanted, of what was left of their world.  I would have been satisfied that this was not a too terrible series. Not terribly well written, but I've read much much worse.  Even Harry Potter and his friends had the same misunderstandings and character quirks in book after book and those books were written very well.

Unfortunately, there have been two more books in the series, each getting worse and worse.  I grew to despise Clary Fray.  I get that a lot of YA books are written with believable characters, which usually means self-absorbed adolescent girls who never seem to grasp that it is not all about them.  Heightened hormone levels, or whatever the catalyst may be, they are filled with self-doubt, unless of course, they should be.  The asking of a straightforward question is just too far beyond them and so  a reader is forced to grit their teeth and wait for everything to get sorted out 300 pages later than it should have.   

I am happy to report that at the time that I finally got around to writing up the books I read in 2012, I have put Ms. Clare firmly and irretrievably in my rear view mirror.