Junior Advisor's Review
Reviewed by Braden Lunn
City of Bones is a chilling science fiction thriller about demons,
werewolves, vampires and warlocks that is certain to keep you up
late at night. Cassandra Clare has created a vivid story line that
is full of numerous plot-twisting surprises that will get the heart
pounding and keep the senses sharp. With its "Harry Potter like"
feel, the first novel in The Mortal Instruments trilogy is a great
book that all sci-fi lovers will want to read!
City of Bones' fifteen-year-old Clary Frey's world has taken a
turn for the worst. Her apartment has been ransacked and her mom
has mysteriously disappeared, leaving only a desperate message on
Clary's cell phone to not come home. As Clary tries to make sense
of what has happened, she finds herself thrust into a world of
demon slayers, a world she thought existed only in mythology. Now
Clary must team up with the demon slayers, known as Shadowhunters,
to find her mom and discover the truth behind why she disappeared.
From the Publisher
Don't miss The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,
soon to be a major motion picture in theaters August 2013.
When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium
Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder-much
less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange
tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears
into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are
invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing-not even a
smear of blood-to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?
This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors
dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first
encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an
angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is
pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother
disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would
demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her
mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters
would like to know. . . .
Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra
Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild
ride that they will never want to end.
About the Author
Cassandra Clare was born in Teheran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family. After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines. Cassie started working on The Mortal Instruments series in 2004. City of Bones, A New York Times Bestseller, is the first book in the series and received numerous awards including: Finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel of 2007, An American Library Association Teens Top Ten Award winner, 2008, Winner of The 2010 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, and Winner of the 2010 Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award. She has gone on to write several more books in The Mortal Instruments series as well as its companion series The Infernal Devices. She is also the author of Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd.
From the Author
Junior Booklover Member Braden Lunn's e-interview with
Cassandra Clare author of City of Bones
Q: While writing City of Bones, did you have a
master plan for the series that you followed, or did you just focus
in on the first book, leaving the plots of the other books for
later?
A:. I had planned out all three books before I
started writing the first one. In fact, I had some difficulty
figuring out where to break the narrative up to figure out which
was book one, which was book two, and so on! Writing a series is
like a journey and for me it's important to know where the journey
starts and also where it ends.
Q: City of Bones is your first novel. In the
past, you have written short stories. Which do you find the most
challenging to write and which do you prefer to
write?
A: People are often surprised to hear this, but I
find writing short stories more difficult and challenging than
writing novels. Short stories are all about an economy of words.
You have much less space to tell your story in short fiction, so
you have to be incredibly careful about choice of words and how you
establish your characters. It's like having a tiny little canvas to
paint your picture on instead of a big sweeping one. But when short
stories work, they're like little powerhouses. Still, I prefer
writing novels overall because I get to spend more time with the
characters that way.
Q: What was the hardest part of publishing this
novel?
A: Getting published is always difficult. It's
hard just getting someone to look at the book once you've written
it! But I got a great agent fairly quickly, and from there the
process went smoothly. The hardest part for me was writing the
book! I must have started it six or seven times, with each version
a little different. In the first version Clary was a tattoo artist
and her job was putting tattoos on Shadowhunters.
Q: Did you base any part of your book on real-life events
or people?
A: Well, I've never been in a battle to the death
with a posse of vicious demons myself, and I don't know anyone like
Jace or Clary. But I based a lot of the locations on real places. I
wanted to give the book a sense of the New York that I know and
love, so I worked in a lot of the neighbourhoods I'm familiar with,
like Spanish Harlem, and Park Slope and Williamsburg in Brooklyn,
and a lot of real New York landmarks like the old Domino sugar
factory, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the old smallpox hospital on
Roosevelt Island.
Q: What inspired you to write City of
Bones?
A: The idea for City of Bones came to me
one afternoon in the East Village. A friend of mine took to see the
tattoo shop where she used to work. She wanted to show me that the
footprints of everyone who'd worked there were on the ceiling,
crisscrossing each other and making patterns. To me it looked like
some fabulous supernatural battle had been fought there by beings
who had left their footprints behind. I started thinking about a
magical battle in a tattoo shop and the idea of a secret society of
demon-hunters whose magic was based on an elaborate system of
tattooed runes sprang into my mind.
About the Book
In New York, 15-year-old Clary Fray doesn't expect to witness a murder--much less one committed by three teenagers covered with odd markings and brandishing bizarre weapons. Exotic and gritty, this book begins a new fantasy series about demons and a secret tribe of warriors called the Shadowhunters.
