So this series is what has made me want to finally commit and jump on the blog review band wagon.
*Spoiler Alert*
Anyone who watches mainstream TV has seen a commercial for The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, even if you just watched it flyby as you fast forwarded through the commercials on your handy dandy DVR. I personally had seen it advertised at the movie theaters and on television and every time I thought to myself "That seems so interesting, it also looks like something that was a Fanfiction first". Being a Twihard Fanfic lover, it's pretty easy to get in that mindset for just about anything, plus with so many stories these days being pulled to publish (PTP) it's not very unlikely that anything these days wasn't a Fanfiction from somewhere first.
The week before the movie premier arrives and all I can think is it about HOW MUCH I absolutely just HAVE TO see this movie. LIKE RIGHT NOW! I will not see a movie without reading the book adaptation first (except for Nicholas Sparks but that's another story), so biting the bullet I get the first book. As I start to read it all I can think is "This could have totally been a Twilight, Harry Potter Crossover*". Literally throughout this book I cannot think of anything else, and then low and behold the bad guy is introduced and his name is Voldemort Valentine.
Yea that's not obvious.
The main character is Clary and she is the typical pain in the ass that I want to punch in the face. She doesn't think she's pretty, she's too stupid to see that her best friend is in love with her. She's too stupid to see that Jace is in love with her even though she doesn't think she's good enough. She really has no confidence in herself at all. She fights the fact that the world she has existed in isn't real, she fights that her mother would EVER lie to her. She doesn't listen to anything anyone tells her, and god forbid she talks about her feelings.
Then there is Jace. The whiny broading boy, who normally I might love, but add in Clary and her insecurities and I just wanted to beat them both until they realized how stupid they were being. I understand these characters are teenagers in the story, but to me they were acting more like elementary school children, kicking each other and running away because they have a crush.
Add in Simon, the part of the love triangle that is never really a part of the triangle and really never even stands any sort of chance of being with Clary. He takes too much abuse from his best friend, and yet he was my favorite character. At least he could admit his feelings and that he knew he really had no chance at all. I can respect that in a man.
At this point I am seriously considering just flouncing the entire thing and going back to Fanfiction. I don't know if it's because I have grown accustomed to reading unedited and sometimes underdeveloped stories, but I continued on because the chance that they had once been Edward and Bella still gripped me (I was in denial despite all the HP similarities). Then the end happened. And suddenly the characters who had questioned every other thing in the book took what the BAD GUY said as law. No questions asked.
Even though they kissed.
Even though Clary couldn't find any physical similarities between herself and Jace.
Even though every reader knew in their heart of hearts it eventually WOULDN'T be true.
I was disappointed to say the least. I left my review, and still gave the author 4 stars because I could tell she gave it her all, and overall the story has a TON of potential, even if it wasn't ever reached, at least not in the first book. I also found it amusing that reading through the reviews of others that the author used to write Harry Potter Fanfiction (huge surprise right). Overall the book for me was kind of meh, with characters that had more potential than their creator wrote, which is why I keep going back. I have yet to see the movie, but if I do I'm hoping that for once the movie will be better than the book.
*A Crossover is when you take characters from two different books and make them play together. ie: Harry might fall in love with clumsy Bella, Hermione runs off with the dreamy vampire Edward, etc, etc.
