It’s Fantasy Kitchen Sink at its absolute worst, and I think I might hate Clary Fray even more than I hate Bella Swan. Bella’s whiny, but Clary is so stupid I don’t know how she managed to reach fifteen, and an even more blatant Mary Sue than Bella. She’s an outright bitch to her "best friend", Simon, who was the only character I didn’t wish would drop dead; she slut-shames, fat-shames, and thinks that ugly people wouldn’t want to live forever, because ugly. She hates Isabelle, the only other female in the main cast, for being pretty. (But of course Clary’s Suetiful All Along herself!)
Our Heroine, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, die in a fire, you little brat.
And then there’s Jace Wayland, our supposed Hero. Isabelle, who’s more cipher than character, tells Clary that “his rudeness is what makes him sexy”. I’m just going to leave that there, and let it speak for itself. We’re told, over and over, that he’s “charming”, but he’s certainly never shown to be. What we actually see is a condescending bigot with a superiority complex a mile wide, whom we're supposed to like...because he's attractive? I don't know. I do know that constantly being told he's charming did not make me think he was anything other than an obnoxious little bastard.
That’s one of this book's biggest problems: lots of telling, and little showing. Information is doled out through chunks of exposition, delivered in dialogue I’m sure is meant to be witty, but is at its best cheap Joss Whedon leftovers. The worst, and what makes the book unreadable, are sheer number of bizarre similes and metaphors that are crammed in three to a page. We have “bending as easily as a blade of grass bending sideways” (ow); a character sitting with “a bird’s bright-eyed stillness” (um, what?), and another’s face “shines with the light of his own personal miracle” (again, what?)
The book. Is. Riddled with this garbage. And it’s beyond lazy writing; it takes Viewers Are Goldfish to a laughable extreme, sometimes repeating information already given in the same chapter.
The climax is anticlimactic, the villain is a joke, and the characters are flat, each granted one, maybe two personality traits. Their dialogue is interchangeable to the point that, without dialogue tags (and hello there, Said Bookisms), it can be hard to keep track of who’s talking. The “twist” is obvious a quarter of the way in, and the fact that it takes the characters so long to get there just makes them look completely stupid. 0/10, do not recommend.
Boring Clichés and Obnoxious Characters
It’s Fantasy Kitchen Sink at its absolute worst, and I think I might hate Clary Fray even more than I hate Bella Swan. Bella’s whiny, but Clary is so stupid I don’t know how she managed to reach fifteen, and an even more blatant Mary Sue than Bella. She’s an outright bitch to her "best friend", Simon, who was the only character I didn’t wish would drop dead; she slut-shames, fat-shames, and thinks that ugly people wouldn’t want to live forever, because ugly. She hates Isabelle, the only other female in the main cast, for being pretty. (But of course Clary’s Suetiful All Along herself!)
Our Heroine, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, die in a fire, you little brat.
And then there’s Jace Wayland, our supposed Hero. Isabelle, who’s more cipher than character, tells Clary that “his rudeness is what makes him sexy”. I’m just going to leave that there, and let it speak for itself. We’re told, over and over, that he’s “charming”, but he’s certainly never shown to be. What we actually see is a condescending bigot with a superiority complex a mile wide, whom we're supposed to like...because he's attractive? I don't know. I do know that constantly being told he's charming did not make me think he was anything other than an obnoxious little bastard.
That’s one of this book's biggest problems: lots of telling, and little showing. Information is doled out through chunks of exposition, delivered in dialogue I’m sure is meant to be witty, but is at its best cheap Joss Whedon leftovers. The worst, and what makes the book unreadable, are sheer number of bizarre similes and metaphors that are crammed in three to a page. We have “bending as easily as a blade of grass bending sideways” (ow); a character sitting with “a bird’s bright-eyed stillness” (um, what?), and another’s face “shines with the light of his own personal miracle” (again, what?)
The book. Is. Riddled with this garbage. And it’s beyond lazy writing; it takes Viewers Are Goldfish to a laughable extreme, sometimes repeating information already given in the same chapter.
The climax is anticlimactic, the villain is a joke, and the characters are flat, each granted one, maybe two personality traits. Their dialogue is interchangeable to the point that, without dialogue tags (and hello there, Said Bookisms), it can be hard to keep track of who’s talking. The “twist” is obvious a quarter of the way in, and the fact that it takes the characters so long to get there just makes them look completely stupid. 0/10, do not recommend.