City of Lost Souls

by Cassandra Clare

Well it’s about time.  I’ve been waiting a flipping year for this book.

I loved it, it just lacked a bit of the pacing the other books had, which isn’t bad, but very unlike the first four.  I loved the characters as usual and I truly to love the fact that the book is written in third person and we’re not stuck inside someone’s head.  The entire plot was very…different.  And while Clare’s series are very very fantasy/paranormal, she always makes sure that it makes sense in their world.  She isn’t just going to say, “And a big polka dot bunny came to them….”  We will know, at least eventually (because her readers trust her), that there is a explanation (in the Shadowhunter world) for why there is a polka dot bunny.  So with the whole Jace/Sebastian tied together thing, she had a history of how it happened, it just didn’t “happen” for the sake of a plot and no one knows why.

From here down SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT.

I don’t think there was any one thing I DIDN’T like.  It was a well thought out book with answer for all of the WTFs?  How Jace and Sebastian managed to stay hidden, how the ritual bound Jace.  I think she did a great job with Clary fighting her mind between Jace and not-Jace.  I expected her to buckle with and sleep with him, but she ended up being a stronger character than I thought.  Probably what I really loved the most was the Alec and Magnus relationship.  I wanted to yell at Alec for being so stupid and naive to believe Camille and go behind Magus’s back like that. I wanted him to just talk to Magnus about it. But nooooo.  And you, the most normal thing in the book happened. Magus dumped him.  I know he dumped him because Alec was trying to take his immortality away and obviously, that’s not normal.  But when someone you love does something to that degree and goes behind your back, no matter how much love there is, that is a big no no.  For all of the weirdness in their relationship, I think they’re more “real” than any other fictional relationship I’ve read in the last year.  Jace and Clary for example, would never break up over that, even though it’s a sign of something unhealthy in the relationship.  So that was by far my favorite part of the book.

As for the end. THANK GOODNESS it wasn’t a big cliffhanger.  If it was, I don’t think I could have handled it.  We have to wait until 2014 for the last book! Ack!!!

On goodreads.com I was going to give it a four star, but I’ve changed my mind.  Five stars!

-AB