The Mortal Instruments Series

First! Shout out to Taylor for lending me this entire series, your generosity was greatly appreciated.

Second! I read all six books of this series over the course of about four days, which I think proves that I do not have enough to do this holiday break. Also, books are much easier to read when you are rereading them.

And, finally, to my review!

Teeny-tiny plot summary: Angels, demons, werewolves, vampires, faeries, and warlocks are all real. A race of humans with angelic blood called Shadowhunters exist to protect regular humanity ("mundanes") from demons and any magical being who would seek to do them harm. Many shenanigans ensue.

I really enjoyed the series. It's obviously YA Fantasy and it comes with some tropes because of that. Forbidden love is a frequent storyline, but it's a formula that is successful for many YA authors and Cassandra Clare is no exception. She uses the formula well, even though it sometimes becomes boring (but that might be because I read six books in four days, so feel free to take that bit of information with a grain of salt). I first read (most) of the series when I was in high school (I had never read books 5 and 6 before now) and I was worried that it wouldn't be as good as I remembered it. Tastes change as you grow up. But it held up fairly well. I forgot the frequent appearance of swear-replacements in YA novels, so that was a bit of a surprise. If you don't know what I mean by swear-replacements, the two most common in this series were characters telling other characters to do something "anatomically impossible" (if you don't know what that's referring to then feel free to ask) or characters saying something that rhymed with something else, that something else clearly being a common expletive phrase. Again, this isn't necessarily a problem, but it can become tedious.

I decided to reread the series after I watched the movie "City of Bones". I wanted to see how well the movie stuck to the book and, by way of plot, the movie did fairly well. What the movie did not do was any sort of character development. I could go on forever about how the film could have become a full series like the books if they had just spent the time to give some depth to the villain, but that is not why we are here and I will move on before I get too into that tirade.

In the end, I really enjoyed the books. The characters were interesting, the world building was beautiful and compelling, and the series ended happily, as all YA series seem to. But, there were some major flaws both with the story telling and the editing.

First, the storytelling. Books 1-3 were a standalone series. books 4-6 were a followup series. Books 4-6 were not given the love and care that 1-3 were awarded, making them reminiscent of Suzanne Collins' "Mockingjay" (Clare did not need to put as much effort into them because they were going to be hugely successful no matter what she did, so she did not put as much effort into them). I loved getting to see more of these characters I cared about, but it often felt like the author didn't care about them enough to give them the attention that they deserved.

And, finally, the editing. Oh man. I could go on for days about the editing. There were SO MANY TYPOS! And not even understandable typos like three "f"s in the word "offering" instead of 2 (it's a very easy typo to skim over), but entire sentences that were practically meaningless. For example, on page 597 of book 6, "City of Heavenly Fire" there is a line that reads "not with the stone keep shuddering itself apart around them"... did the tense change mid sentence? What is it supposed to say? I have so many questions about this half sentence. This is not a comment on Cassandra Clare, not every sentence is going to make sense the way it comes out of your head. Many of my pieces are full of sentences that make perfect sense in my head but no sense on the page, but those are the sentences that we're supposed to catch with editing. This is a comment on some of the editors that worked on the series. There are 2 or more of these sentences in every book of the series. Maybe it's just my inner English Major, but it's frustrating to see professionally published work with such easy fixes. A girl who grew up in New York City is not going to say "can't never" (Book 4, City of Fallen Angels, page 86) there are grammars in which that wording would be correct, but those are not the grammar of the speaking character. Plus, it would take two backspaces to make it "can never". It would have been so easy.
This is clearly the hill I've chosen to die on, so I'll wrap up before it gets any worse.

I've never really done a book review before, so I don't really know if this was any good. I didn't want to summarize too much and ruin the story for anyone who wants to read the series. Was my summary ok? I would appreciate any and all feedback.

If there are any particular things you want me to focus on in future reviews please let me know in the comments. And if anyone has book recommendations, I am always willing to hear them, but please note that I have 36 books that I own but haven't read yet that I'm trying to get through, so your patience would also be appreciated.
This has been fun and I'm excited to keep doing these reviews. Hopefully they will get better with time and experience.

XO, Ellen