The City of Bones, written by critically acclaimed author Cassandra Clare, is the first book in the deceptively entertaining “Mortal Instruments” series, where ancient myth and modern legend come together in an extremely realistic and flat-out honest metropolitan setting. Now, do not be fooled by the shirtless guy on the cover, or the immediate thought of, “This is a second-rate Percy Jackson book,” because The City of Bones is much more in-depth and believable. At first, I had many doubts about this book, being encouraged to read it by many love-struck female admirers, but I ended up becoming a fan as well, but for much different and legitimate reasons. In general, this is a series that will appeal to all ages and genders due to a variety of unique twists to modern fantasy books.
The first thing that struck me as noteworthy within this book was the fact that Clare can make all of her writing sound as if it came from the point of view of a mildly sarcastic yet serious set of teenage characters, who don’t sound nearly as contrived or faked as Rick Riordan’s attempt at a funny adolescent mind. Clare can make dialogues sound humorous, hard-as-rock serious, or even heart-twistingly sad, but everything is complex. By only reading what the characters say, you can immediately foreshadow how they will later feel towards each other, whether that be love, hate, or everything in between. Take this quote, for example, between the two main protagonists (who happen to be in love), “ ‘I didn’t have friends,” he said. ‘Besides my father. He was all I needed.’ She stared at him. ‘No friends at all?’ He met her look steadily. ‘The first time I saw Alec,’ he said, ‘when I was ten years old, that was the first time I’d ever met another child my own age. The first time I had a friend.’” (310) Although this seems like a relatively simple conversation between the two characters, the small actions and the tone of voice all emphasize the text with a new power. Through this text alone, as well as the dialogue between the characters as they progress through the story, you can see how they grow as people and as lovers. Because most of the book revolves around talking from the people in the story, it looks as the adventure moves extremely quickly, and before you know it, you’ll find yourself at the back cover, asking how it happened.
The other aspect of The City of Bones that made me really interested in it, were the different styles of writing in a single chapter, or page, for that matter. The story can bounce from a joke, to a love scene, to a sudden battle clip, and back to a joke, but you do not feel rushed at all. I believe that the reason this book has been so popular is because it has so many different elements that make it enjoyable. If you get a mushy and lame line like, “The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me...” which make you keel over in agony, then you’ll get a cool action scene where the heroes fight an evil demon through a hidden portal to cancel the corny stuff out. If you dislike one part of the story, there will always be another part of it that you’re going to inevitably like, which means that you can consistently keep reading to find pieces of the story that you will love and savor. Now, you may be thinking to yourself that you’d rather have a book that you would like completely, instead of a book with some faults, like this one, however reading a novel like City of Bones will give you a new perspective of how other people think. For example, I really got to understand how girls feel when they read romance novels, or girl-oriented love stories, however it never got to the point where I got sick and tired of hearing about kissing, or amazing eyes, or anything else in the story for that matter. All in all, Cassandra Clare brings the best of worlds into this intricately crafted novel.

In summation, The City of Bones is the first in a series that I would highly recommend, not only because of the ideas of the story itself, but also because of the way it is written; giving readers some kind of reason to have some kind of interest in it. This is a book that goes far beyond the old hype of Percy Jackson, or even the Hunger Games, because it is shaped into a more mature and complex frame which lets your imagination run even further than you could ever expect. It’s good, because it’s unique. So grab your own copy, and watch the adventure unveil itself.