Review: City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

Title: City of Fallen Angels
Author: Cassandra Clare
Series: The Mortal Instruments, #4
Format: Paperback, bought
My rating: 2 / 5

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The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most importantly of all—she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.

But nothing comes without a price.

Someone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her—his mother just found out that he’s a vampire, and now he’s homeless. When Jace begins to pull away from her without explaining why, Clary is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: she herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace.

-- As seen on Goodreads

My Thoughts

Uhhh. That was disappointing. And boring. Honestly, I feel like we took two steps forward in City of Glass and five steps back in City of Fallen Angels. What the heck happened?! Reading a 435 page book where 15% at best is relevant plot progression and 85% is unnecessary padding gets old VERY fast. I think the best way to tackle this is to list out what worked and didn’t work for me.

Too many Points-of-View: I’m someone who dislikes multiple POVs in books anyway, and City of Fallen Angels is the guidebook to why I dislike them so much. I didn’t have a problem in the previous three books, but this one… uhhh. There was quite a bit of backtracking and repetitiveness when we switch over to a new narrator; character development went out the window in favour of re-explaining things we already knew, and the pacing grinded to an all-out crawl resulting in me craving a character death just to get some action back into the mix.

Too much Simon: He was the unexpected surprise in City of Glass, and while I really liked him in that book, that doesn’t mean I wanted to be stuck in his head for a billion pages in this one. He had A LOT of the main focus in this book, but honestly, I found all of his POV sections very boring and tedious to read. I know he is adored by many, many TMI fans, but… I just don’t get it.

Clary: Now, Clary has never exactly been a shiny beacon of awesomeness, but I feel her character has dwindled down to insignificance the longer the series has gone on. I really feel like she’s at risk of becoming irrelevant beyond being the person Jace loves. And that’s just sad. I don’t particularly like Clary, but geez, the girl desperately needs some decent character development.

Jace: Love him or hate him, I find Jace to be the most entertaining character in this series. Well, snarky humorous Jace is, anyway. Here… I’m torn. I can understand why Jace is acting as he did, but all the moping around got boring after the first hundred pages; never mind the next three hundred! I miss humorous Jace. Also, was it just me or were his POVs too scarce?

Romance: I though all the romantic aspects throughout the book felt forced and unnatural. And this was with all characters, not just Clary and Jace. Alec seemed a bit OCC to me, and the whole Isabelle/Maia/Simon thing… uhhh. Also, was it just me, or did the dialogue in general seem a bit off?

The ending was… pretty good! I know, I’m surprised too! I enjoyed the last three or four chapters, but what grates on every strand of patience I have within me is when all relevant plot progression is contained within those final few chapters. *screams internally*

So, after all that, Alma, do you plan to continue the series? Emm… yep. I do. I know, I know! I’m a sucker for punishment, but I made the mistake of buying the fifth book in the series before reading the fourth book, and I feel like I should at least give it a go. Considering I bought it in good faith that I’d like City of Fallen Angels… Well, look how well that turned out! *sobs*