City of Glass
City of Glass: The Mortal Instruments Book 3by Cassandra ClareYou know things aren't going well when you have to go back and reread your reviews from the first two books to remind yourself why you were reading this series in the first place.As I was making "gah!" noises and rolling my eyes all through this book I was explaining to my husband how I liked the first book a whole bunch, despite it be being rather obvious and formulaic and although the second book was sort of frustrating I had liked it enough to pick this last book up.In City of Bones I liked Clary and wanted more Simon and I didn't like any of the Lightwoods. In City of Ashes I hated Clary was happy that Simon was killed and then grumpy when he survived and I don't think I thought much about the Lightwoods. I loved Magnus and I likes Luke.My dislike of Clary and Jace was a constant throughout my reading of City of Glass. Oddly I thought Simon was probably the only redeeming character with Alec a close second. Both Clary and Jace are the kind of selfish, whiny characters who blunder ahead and do stupid things with no regard to others or rules. I had seriously been hoping for an ending that resulted in death for one or both of them.This book was long and I feel it was long for no apparent reason. It was sort of like a whole lot of nothing was going on and then suddenly you were bombarded by some sort of Big Reveal and then more nothing happened until the next hasty explanation that makes no sense. The whole "Who's your daddy?" thing? WTF? What the hell was that? I had to read the entire chapter over as Jocelyn spewed nonsense over who was who's father and mother and... oh my god! Really? Did she really go there? Ugh!The threats weren't really all that much of a threat. Valentine was around so sparingly. The demons attacked but were defeated pretty easily. The entire book seems to have been split between the "woe is me" times between Clary and Jace.The scene where Clary sees her mother for the first time since she'd been in a coma? GAH! Ok, so Clary had questions and her mom held information back from her, but you'd at least think she'd have started with "Oh, you're all right!" or you know "alive!" but no. Clary goes off half-caulked and tears her mother apart.Clary is a whiny self-centered brat who deserves to be with brooding "I was raised by a bad guy so I'm bad too and I will act like it even though I really could choose to do good" Jace. They can brood and whine together. Maybe get some therapy or something.And then you kill off a character that really wasn't around all that much but was one of the only people I felt for the entire series. There was no reason to kill off a little kid. I guess maybe it was so he didn't have to keep being written into scenes so he wasn't forgotten.I am very disappointed in the ending of this trilogy. I think I might be one of the only people who was not all excited about Clockwork Angel because my love affair with the series had sort of fizzled to low by the second book. I thought I would have enjoyed City of Glass more than I did, however.That being said, even though I didn't like the plot, I did like the writing. I think Cassandra Clare writes very well and I hope that she will write and publish other books outside of this world so that I might try them out. I have not given up on the author, just tired of the world of Shadowhunters because it doesn't really seem all that spectacular. I shall give the author props for imagination and description, I just didn't click with the series as much as I had hoped I would have.Mortal Instruments