City of Bones by Cassandra Clare | Teen Ink

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

September 17, 2013
By Catalina3444 BRONZE, Charleston, West Virginia
Catalina3444 BRONZE, Charleston, West Virginia
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City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

City of Bones was written by Cassandra Clare. Cassandra Clare is the author’s penname, her real name being Judith Rummet. Judith’s writing career began while writing articles for a magazine. When deciding she wanted to write more than just magazine articles, she decided to write books. The writing of City of Bones began Judith’s first series. The series continued to have four more books, with the sixth one being written now. Judith has also written a pre series to her books, the first being titled Clockwork Angels. The Clockwork Angels and the City of Bones books are all part of her Mortal Instruments collection.

City of Bones is a fictional story set in New York City. The story begins with the main character Clarissa Fray, called Clary, going to an all-ages nightclub with her best friend Simon. Clary is a strong, independent girl who soon realizes she has a gift that most people her age do not. She could see things that others could not. She realizes this when she witnesses three teenagers murdering a seemingly harmless boy. The strange thing about this is that no one else seems to see these occurrences even with them in plain sight. Becoming a witness to this creates a problem for Clary. When one of the teenagers, the handsome blonde Jace, tells Clary who they were and their purpose, she finds out that the life she has been living is not the life she was born to live. She is a Shadowhunter, and with this revelation comes the news that things she had deemed to be fantasy, such as werewolves, vampires and demons, are all real. All her life up to that point, she had been hidden from who she truly was.

A few nights after Clary meets these teenagers, she receives a strange phone call from her mother while on her way home from her friend’s poetry reading. In the call, her mother tells Clary not to come home. Before Clary can even begin to process what her mother is saying, the line goes dead. Disobeying her mother’s request, Clary goes home, only to find the inside of her apartment in chaos. Cushions are torn, pieces of glass are all over the room, and her mother is nowhere in sight. While looking around, Clary gets attacked by one of the demons. Scared, she kills the beast and runs out of the apartment and right into Jace, one of the strange teenage boys from the nightclub. Without anywhere else to go, Clary is taken to the Institution by Jace, where she learns more about the life she had always thought as fantasy. She is thrown into this life with a vengeance and faces many trying situations. Through all of this, she learns things about her mother and the world her mother left behind. She faces many hardships while trying to get her missing mother back, making new enemies along with newfound love. Does Clary ever find her mother? Why did her mother keep these things from her all this time?

I believe that the theme of City if Bones is that you should never give up and that you should not judge a book by its cover. At the beginning of the story, Clary thinks the three teenagers are criminals, but later comes to get close to them. No matter what is thrown at Clary, she never gives up the search for her mother. One thing I did not particularly love about City of Bones is that the tone seemed to shift throughout the story. I never felt that the story had a particular feeling to it at all times. There were even times when it seemed impossible to tell how a character was feeling.

Clary and her mother are Shadowhunters. A Shadowhunter is a human who has the blood of an angel in them. If one parent of a child was a Shadowhunter, the child is likely to become a Shadowhunter. Most of these people take it upon themselves to take care of the supernatural beings that put people in harms way. When Clary finds out she is a Shadowhunter, she is shocked. She never thought of herself as having anything different or special about her.

City of Bones is an intriguing story filled with interesting twists and turns, humorous characters, and a fun story line. I would not say it is a literary masterpiece by any means, but it definitely held my attention throughout the story and kept me reading. I enjoyed the romance section of the novel; watching the characters deal with new developments while facing their internal conflicts made the story more interesting and fun to read. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a light read involving the world of fantasy and romance.


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