Urban Fantasy, With Tattoos and Swords
City
of Bones
(The Mortal Instruments Book 1)
Cassandra Clare
Margaret K. McElderry, April 2007
ISBN 1-41691-428-5
Review by Lynn Calvin
About to be sixteen years old, Clarissa (Clary) goes to a club with her friend Simon and sees things that seem impossible and that no one else can see. Three other apparent teenagers, with tattoos and strange weapons, seem to commit a murder but the victim vanishes. The apparent murderers claim the victim was a demon, then vanish themselves.
Clary goes home and the next day her mother is acting strangely, and so is a long time family friend whom she regards as an uncle. She goes out and when she returns her mother has disappeared. She is attacked in the wrecked apartment. She almost dies in fighting off and killing the demons and wakes to find herself rescued by a group calling themselves Shadowhunters. Isabelle, Jace and Alex, the three teens from the first incident are part of this group.
Clary's heritage gradually unfolds over the course of the story and she gains additional abilities. The reader learns why she can see things that only Shadowhunters, chosen fighters of evil, can see. Shadowhunters, from an invisible country near Switzerland, are supposed to fight demons, but whom else they are to fight is part of an internal debate over some years, currently part of an uneasy peace. It is also apparently that the battle is a desperate and possibly losing one. The plot is complicated, with betrayals and shifting perceptions of right and wrong, friend and foe.
I did have some doubts about Clary's obliviousness to the nature of her friend Simon's regard for her, and also for the lack of awareness about the relationships and feelings that are present between Jace, Isabelle and Alex, since some of the telegraphing is somewhat heavy handed, but some of that may just be conventions of the Young Adult market.
Although the plot specifics are very different, some of the tone and nature of the conflicts is reminiscent of the Harry Potter books, but starting out with the darker tone and greater moral ambiguities that aren't present in the first book of that series. The Shadowhunters themselves are part of a long tradition of "secret warriors" that runs all the way from the Templars to Buffy. More generally it is an urban fantasy, with teenage protagonists, aimed a young adult market. There's also a dash of Star Wars in some of the relationships.
Clare's novel bears some similarities to other recent popular fiction, but is an enjoyable new take on these themes. In her mid-twenties, Clare has a lot of time ahead of her and a clear knack for clever and original turns of phrase, and as she integrates that with more experience I would expect some very solid work from her. The influences she shows now will get smoothed out and I look forward to seeing what direction she goes in.
Cassandra/Cassie Claire/Clare comes out of the fanfiction writing community, and with a fair amount of baggage including some online feuds over sources in her writing in that community. Online she had generated novel-length Harry Potter fanfiction, and also was responsible for the "Very Secret Diaries" which satirized the first and some of the second Lord of the Rings movies and generated catch phrases like "Still not King." The Internet is a narrow self-referential community and a somewhat incestuous one, and it will be interesting to see how her fiction fares in the wider world.
You can read the first chapter of this book on her website at http://www.mortalinstruments.com/TMI1chapter.html. Be warned that her website makes funny growling noises (or perhaps heavy breathing).
