Part I: Bibliographic information
Type: Novel
Title: City of Bones (Book One, The Mortal Instruments series)
Writer: Cassandra Clare
Copyright Date: 2007
Publisher: M.K. McElderry Books
ISBN: 9781416914280
Genre/subgenre: Young adult: Horror/fantasy fiction
Interest Age: 14 and up
Reading Level: Upper Grades (UG 9-12)
Pages: 485
Awards: Abraham Lincoln Book Award (IL), Buckeye Teen Book Award Winner (OH), Evergreen Book Award Master List (WA), Pacific Northwest Young Reader’s Choice Award/Master List, Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults.
Part I: Reader’s Annotation, Plot Summary, Critical Evaluation
Reader’s Annotation -- This first book introduces the world of the Shadowhunters, a race of half human and half angel beings who battle the demons forces on Earth. The heroine Clara meets Jace, a handsome Shadowhunter, as her fate begins to unravel and she seeks to understand the reasons behind her mother’s disappearance.
Plot Summary -- The novel begins with two teens attending an exclusive dance club where festivities go on all day. Clare’s normal life involves her best friend Simon and attending school in contemporary New York. But she witnesses a killing at the club that introduces her to three young Shadowhunters whose existence confuses her at best. Her mother is normally busy with her boyfriend but suddenly announces they are going away to upstate for the summer. But before they leave a break in to their apartment leads to her mother’s disappearance and the beginning of a strange world revealing itself to Clare. She ends up at the Shadowhunter’s institute where she begins to learn the truth about reality, her mother and herself.
Clare’s goal is to find her mother who is presumed dead but the clairvoyant downstairs neighbor gives her reason to hope. She learns about the weapons that help the Shadowhunters survive their confrontation with the demon world -- who consist of monsters, zombies and other entities with evil intent that are often directed by Warlocks who walk amongst humans but direct dark scenarios sometimes out of the view of normal humans -- called ‘mundanes’ by the Shadowhunters. She also meets their leader at the institute, Hodge, who teaches the young the trade secrets involving weapons, ancient languages, demonology and the secrets of the Shadownhunters. She also learns that in fact her mother was secretly partly one of these unique beings and thus she, too, poses the blood that makes for the special powers of this superhuman race.
Jace and Clary go into the real world and visit the City of Bones, an ancient site known to few that lies under the city. She learns about the battle between the half angels and the forces of evil that populate the underworld. Clary learns that she has more special powers than she thought. Soon they go on a hunt for a sacred cup that holds great power and that her mother had hidden -- the cup is a key to finding and freeing her mother, she hopes. Simon, her bff, is reduced to a rat form and goes along in miniature. There is some love-interest tension between the three of them. They enlist the other young Shadowhunters in a dangerous stand off against a vicious pack of werewolves and other underworld entities. Their lives are in jeopardy along the way. Alexander, who is like a brother to Jace, is nearly mortally injured. They return to the clave with the cup only to find there is more to the story of Jace and his past from the mysterious Hodge.
The rest is virtually a spoiler and should be savored by the reader unscathed by the plot summary. And, the story continues in the next two Immortal Instruments books as well as in the parallel stories told in Clare’s other series, including the Infernal Devices series and the Bane Chronicles.
Critical Evaluation -- This series delves into a fantasy world with a carefully caste set of young adult characters who carry the central drama forward. Clare engages her sense of fashion, romance and danger to make an otherwise action-driven plot into a teen-accessible read with classic good-versus-evil subtext. She uses dialog with surprising mastery. This is a long book and some have criticized it for dragging or uneven pacing -- it’s more fair to say that she uses short chapters in which certain events are framed up. She also is careful to stay with the various characters she introduces to that they continue to develop throughout the story in addition to the main characters, Clare and Jace. She also develops the characters’ relationships with each and includes a love triangle that creates some needed distraction from the intense plot involving the search for her mother. By the time the reader gets deeper into the story, the twists and turns of the plot creates dramatic tension and this reader really wanted to find out what happens. For young adults, this is a critical ingredient. Jace, Clary and Isabelle in particular are well formed characters -- and ones that continue in the other series that this book is essentially the introductory read for.
Part III: Author Info
“Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Tehran, Iran, and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent a month living in her father’s backpack. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old,” according to Clare’s website (Clare, 2013).
Clare explains that, “After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids where she reported on Brad and Angelina’s world travels and Britney Spears’ wardrobe malfunctions. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favourite city.”
Part IV: Curriculum Ties, Diversity, Booktalk Ideas, Challenge Issues
Curriculum Ties, if any -- Clare is available to speak to young readers and attend writing workshops. Her writing is not tied to academics per se but is worthy of inclusion in an English curriculum and certainly a summer reading program.
Diversity of Cultures -- There is not much in the way of racial diversity addressed. The characters are richly developed and offer varying perspectives on the nature of morality and reality, however.
Booktalking Ideas -- A classic heroine is a character that in the face of adversity display courage and sacrifice that is for some greater good. Clary’s character is both brave and loyal but does she qualify as a heroine? What circumstances in the novel demonstrate her heroic nature?
Challenge Issues -- This novel contains a high-level of violence and dabbles in magic. Additionally, there are demonic forces of various manifestations in this work that some might find objectionable.
Part V: Reasons chosen
This teen reader’s favorite is widely praised by some teens in my library that are well read. The storyline is not overly complex and the action moves the novel forward without being nonstop. Clary’s world begins as one of a normal teen until her fate unfolds into an adventure that few would choose but which is very fantastical. This ordinary New Yorker finds her special gift and moves into a realm filled with spectacular beings and settings where she finds her true nature. I found the book engaging from the start and Clare’s descriptive imagery creates a suspension of disbelief that’s surprisingly effective.
Part VI: Citations
Clare, C. (2013). My bio [webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.cassandraclare.com/about/
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