City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

 

City of Fallen Angels 

by Cassandra Clare

Synopsis (courtesy of Goodreads):

City of Fallen Angels takes place two months after the events of City of Glass. In it, a mysterious someone’s killing the Shadowhunters who used to be in Valentine’s Circle and displaying their bodies around New York City in a manner designed to provoke hostility between Downworlders and Shadowhunters, leaving tensions running high in the city and disrupting Clary’s plan to lead as normal a life as she can — training to be a Shadowhunter, and pursuing her relationship with Jace. As Jace and Clary delve into the issue of the murdered Shadowhunters, they discover a mystery that has deeply personal consequences for them — consequences that may strengthen their relationship, or rip it apart forever.

Meanwhile, internecine warfare among vampires is tearing the Downworld community apart, and only Simon — the Daylighter who everyone wants on their side — can decide the outcome; too bad he wants nothing to do with Downworld politics. Love, blood, betrayal and revenge: the stakes are higher than ever in City of Fallen Angels. 

Review:

Where to begin...

Though I really enjoyed reading the first three books (aka the complete trilogy - not this "oh wait, let's write 3 more books for the series"), I was sincerely disappointed with City of Fallen Angels.

From the first few pages of the book, I thought it was going to focus on Simon and dealing with his new life, and vampire-sexiness. But no. I had to endure more "let's smash the happily ever after" between Jace and Clary. There are only so many times you can flip-flop from "he loves me, he loves me not" and "I live for her and love her, I should forbid myself to love her and even look at her". In my opinion, this scenario was already a pretty big plot line in the last three books, and like some other reviewers commented: you, Ms. Clare are over-doing; flogging a dead horse. Seriously, essentially every time this drama between Jace and Clary happened in CoFA (which was hmm like 80% of the book, give or take), I was rolling my eyes mentally cringing at Ms. Clare and skimming those parts of the book.

Oh, and because clearly we don't have enough soap opera love drama already, Simon has to deal with his lady issues -- and it really seemed just to be "pfht" and inconsequential.

There were two other big things that bothered me:

1) the growing biblical theme and introduction of Lilith:
While I thought that the first three Mortal Instruments series did not over do the demons/angels/heaven/hell topics and plots, I was thoroughly annoyed with this book taking those plots/topics one step too many. Ms. Clare should have really not went beyond the world and settings she had already created in the first 3 books. Isn't there enough material (aka monsters and races of characters) already within the mortal instruments world that could pose sinister plots and such?

2) the title:
"City of Fallen Angels" -- before reading the book, I assumed that the story line might be about *gasp* fallen angels, devils, or types of "demons" we had not yet been introduced to. Ummm... yeah.... there were no "Fallen Angels" in this book. The phrase is not even mentioned in the book.
I can guess some of you are about to argue "Lilith is a fallen angel" -- No, she is not. Her story was that she was Adam's first wife, gone done somethin' bad, and got kicked out of the garden of eden and into Hell - thus becoming a demon.
Ms. Clare, where are these Fallen Angels? With a title like that, I think this book might have had potential-success if it had a plot line and story involving or revolving around something to do with fallen angels. But alas, it fell well short of being a successful attempt at a continuation of the mortal instruments series.

Rating: 2 / 5 Stars