City of Bones

The Mortal Instruments

By: Cassandra Clare

Narrated by: Mae Whitman

Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Don’t miss The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, now a major motion picture. Discover this first installment of the internationally best-selling Mortal Instruments series and “prepare to be hooked” (Entertainment Weekly).

When 15-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.

©2007 Cassandra Claire, LLC. All rights reserved. (P)2007 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights resevered.

Excellent premise, wonderful worldbuilding, garbage main characters.

I cannot express how mixed my feelings on this story are. It has some serious ups, and some staggeringly diarrhea inducing downs. The setting and world-building are truly fantastic. Though it doesn’t particularly do anything unique or original, it does put many aspects of modern fantasy together in a way that is truly interesting and fun to experience. So hold onto your toilet paper kids, we are about to spend ten hours on the toilet and things.....might get a little awkward.

I really enjoy the colorful side characters and the writers ability to develop settings had me immersed throughout the story. Small details put together in a way that really helps visualize each scene, and plenty of subtle suggestion lead me to see the underlying world this story is built on. As a writer I really appreciate these aspects of the experience. I always felt like I knew exactly where I was in the story, and yet the world building didn’t distract me from the character development.

Now for the bad. And holy shit the bad is REALLY bad.

The main character is, despite being very emotive throughout the story, so bland and uncharismatic that I simply could not at any point in the story either relate or really care about her situation. She was basically a wet plastic bag being dragged along to react to things and seem impressed by all the shiny neon haired non humans throughout the story.

Simon, Alex, and Iz are all interesting, multifaceted, complex characters that develop throughout the story, and I enjoyed their place in said story. I legitimately felt so strongly towards Simon, as I feel he is a character MANY guys can relate to both in experience and personality. Alex and Liz take a little longer to develop, but do so very well throughout the plot.

Jace however is an unbelievably unlikable edgelord. I’m sorry there is no way around this. He is a 10 year old boys fan fiction character and a 14 year old girls idea of a “dreamboat”. Half of all narrative dedicated to him is purely existent for the sole purpose of constantly describing how gorgeous and flawlessly super charming he is supposed to be, however he only ever comes off as a total douchebag who hurts people for no other reason than he can. There are even points in the story when Clari’s inner monologue states that she is aware of and sickened by his needlessly venomous attitude towards Simon.....and then immediately starts gushing about how fucking blonde he is and spends a page describing the color of his eyes.

To make things worse, the romance between Jace and Clari is the most contrived, shallow, and unremarkable piece of YA trash I’ve ever seen. The first half of the book is spent with the main character constantly going on about how much she absolutely loves and cannot love without her friend Simon, and how much of an insufferable shitbag Jace is. Then all of a sudden he makes some vague mentions of his troubled past and she falls for him like he’s the second coming of edgelord Jesus riding a guitar playing unicorn farting pure happiness and heroism.

As for the audio performance. It was par. Accents were awful. But it wasn’t enough to be off putting. I sat through it because I really enjoyed the story, even though I was wishing the entire time that I could trade the protagonists for literally anything else. FFS a moldy peanut butter sandwich and a bottle of Fanta would have made better main characters than Clari and Jace.

Overall. 3 out of 5. It’s a fun, colorful, and interesting romp through a well built world with some serious flaws. But I managed to sit through it all which is no small feat. And I appreciated the things it did right enough to write this review in the hopes that someone writes a fanfic about Jace sniffing unicorn farts while the rest of the cast goes off to do interesting things.

well done !

Enchanting, best seller for a good reason. Great story full of energy and color, as a rainbow on a calm Sunday's sunset where the rain cool of the grass not filling the air with thick humidity but the sweet aroma of fresh flowers blooming

Shame on Audible

I originally purchased this audiobook from audible with an entirely different narrator who I very much preferred. Based on my (#imold) iPod, it was probably Natalie Moore. This negative review is entirely about how audible switched out the audio performance I purchased for one I did not purchase without warning.

I don't have a lot of loyalty to cassandra clare as an author. Though I find her stories entertaining, they are loveable braincandy in which her core characters, ultimately, suffer no consequences. Again, that is not a negative review for the story. It is entertaining and her characters are reasonably interesting.

However, you've replaced a consistently good, well-peformed reader with one who has a rushed reading style, characterization issues, and voice consistency issues.

I feel strongly that that if you're going to ask a readership to engage with literature in an oral performance medium, the reader is as important to the telling as the author. Ultimately, my biggest problem is that I would never purchase this audiobook with this reader (given equal shares of responsibility for the reading of the thing as I receive it) and, more importantly, it was switched out in my library without my consent. Real cool audible. Real cool.

Read the physical copy

Let me preface this by saying that I LOVED this series in high school - so much so that when I watched the movie I sobbed because it sucked so bad.

So when I had an extra credit, I decided to reread the series! I saw Mae Whitman was the narrator & decided it might be cool. I love her in Parenthood & she’s been in lots of other things. WROOOONG. I almost quit as soon as I heard her accent for Jace. She dropped the accent several times during the book, let alone the fact that her accent just sucks.

Also, she reads the book as if you’re actually READING a book. If I wanted to do that, I would read the physical copy (I read physical copy of one book & listen to Audible of another while driving so I can get through multiple books, so I have nothing against physical reading) but if I listen to someone else reading me a book, I want it to be told like a story. I want to get so into the book that I question whether or not the traffic light was actually green & have to glance in my rear view to make sure the car behind me went too (for legal reasons, that’s a joke).

I love the story but please for the love of everything do not listen to this or it’ll put you off the series.

The Narration is Terrible

I think I would’ve much rather read the book than listened to the audiobook :\ the narrator doesn’t do a good job of pulling you into the story.

Meh

Narrator was great and enjoyable. Just struggled with the story. Not sure if it was aimed at a younger audience, but wasn't thrilled. Good enough to finish, but not great.

next book

good story line on to book two. great story line. interesting idea for a book. entertaining and hard to lay it down.

Performance needs work

Where does City of Bones rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The book is good; the performance is painful. The narrator wanted everyone to have a British accent even if the character wasn't supposed to have one. It's like sitting through a nightmare of a theatre-obsessed Middle School student where she's the only one performing all the parts because nobody else showed up.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Eh.

Would you be willing to try another one of Mae Whitman’s performances?

Not in the slightest. She was horrible. I'm so sorry, Mae Whitman, if you read this. Please understand that I don't want to hurt your feelings. I assume you were directed by someone who told you how to perform this role. It's really their fault.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Nah.

Any additional comments?

I love Cassandra Clare books. She gets better the longer she writes. It's worth slogging through the first book to get to later books. I only bought this book because it was on sale.

WOW

I thought this was going to be an ok book but it is so interesting.

I loved it! The books and TV series are amazing!

I am currently reading the book and watching the series I'm obsessed love it! Mae Whitman's voice is so soothing also. I love the story and the delivery of the book. Hopefully City of Ashes is just as amazing.