The Mortal Instruments Series Book #6: City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

Shockingly, it didn’t take me forever to start reading this book. Usually, when I purchase new releases, it takes me forever to get to them (or like in Scarlet and Cress’s case, I still have yet to read them). But this time around, Clare was next on my reading list once I finished the stack of books I had from the library. So, I’m warning you now, this review does contain spoilers – even though I tried to be vague with my updates on Goodreads – and I’ve split this review into parts based on the book. So you have been warned. Venture further at your own risk.

Part 1: Bring Forth a Fire

So this book begins with quite a prologue. Instead of going back to the usual setting for these books of the New York Institute, COHF starts at the Los Angeles Institute where we focus on Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn – Helen’s brother – and what appears to be a normal training day turns deadly. Sebastian and his army of Endarkened Shadowhunters attack the Institute, and the kids are sent running for safety as all the adults are either killed or Turned. Emma, while trying to rescue the young Blackthorns from the nursery stumbles upon the scene and tries to stop Sebastian from killing Julian’s brother Mark. She throws a knife that sticks into Sebastian’s heart, but he doesn’t die. Emma and the other children escape to Idris and I wish I could say that that is as intense as it gets during the first part…but this is Cassandra Clare we’re talking about and it is the final book in an epic series.

So, a quick summary of the first 365 pages: Jace is still dealing with the heavenly fire inside of his veins. Alec is still recovering from Magnus breaking up with him – although there is that one scene that sends a lot of mixed signals – Simon is dealing with Maureen’s crazy obsession with him, Isabelle finally blows up at her father for cheating on her mother, and everyone ends up back in Idris because of these attacks on the Institutes. While there, Sebastian tries to attack the London Institute, but they are warned, and he attacks the Praetor. Jordan dies in Maia’s arms. Sebastian turns out to be in league with the Seelie Queen, which includes their representative on the Council. A dinner is planned for the other Downworlders, and you know something bad is going to happen at it and it does. Magnus, Luke, Raphael, and Jocelyn are kidnapped and the only way they will be returned is if the Clave hands over Jace and Clary to Sebastian. The Council decides to hold a vote, but while they are discussing the two’s fate, they figure out where Sebastian is hiding.

Favorite part: When Brother Zachariah is returned to his human form. I was literally screaming. Now the events at the end of Clockwork Princess make sense!

Part 2: That World Inverted

Clary, Simon, Jace, Alec, and Isabelle go to the demon realm of Edom – Lilith’s domain – and as usual, they are very subtle upon their entrance and as they try to make their way to Sebastian’s hideout. Jace is attacked by a demon and lets out the heavenly fire. Clary finally figures out what the rune that she’s been seeing does. Isabelle almost dies. Alec and Simon bond.

Meanwhile, the Clave is preparing for battle. Emma figures out that there was something strange about the way her parents were murdered. Magnus, Raphael, and Luke are trying to figure out where they are, although Magnus does have a clue because his father – who turns out to be a demon prince – is trying to get him to call on him. Sebastian comes and offers Raphael the chance to join his side, the only thing he has to do is kill Magnus. Because the warlock saved his life before, Raphael returns the favor and spares him, at the cost of his own undead life.

The ending killed me, multiple times. Whether it was Clary and Jace’s plan to finally get rid of Sebastian, the revelation that Jonathon actually existed, or the deal that was made to get the group out of Edom I was just an absolute mess. I won’t even get into the epilogue because I’ll just start crying over my keyboard.

Favorite Quote: 

"Should I change my Facebook status from 'it's complicated' to 'in a relationship'?" 

"You have a book that's also a face?" 

Died at this.

So I’ll admit that this book, originally, scared the crap out of me. As I state, a lot, I am not a fan of endings, and from what I was hearing about the finale from Cassandra Clare, I was scared out of my mind that my favorite characters were going to die. But I should have known better, especially considering what she did in Clockwork Princess, I should have known that these characters were in good hands. This book was perfect, it finished the story while also not only tying in the previous series, but setting up for The Dark Artifices and The Last Hours as well. I can’t wait to read more.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. There’s a reason Clare is one of my favorite authors and the way that she ends series is definitely one of them.

Bookshelf worthy? Obviously.

A Response to Slate: Stop the Shaming!

In case you haven’t heard, a little article came out yesterday from The Slate Book Review. In this article, the author makes an interesting case that if you aren’t in the YA age group you shouldn’t be reading YA, that you should in fact be embarrassed to be reading the genre. In fact the subtitle to the article: Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you’re reading was written for children. Uh…seriously? Am I seriously being shamed again?

Look, I get where she’s coming from. I’m right with her when I felt some kind of “desperation to graduate to the adult stacks.” And when I did…meh. Ruth Graham calls readers like myself out – Fellow grown-ups, at the risk of sounding snobbish and joyless and old, we are better than this. But in reality we really aren’t. The worlds of YA and ‘literary fiction’ really aren’t that different. Instead of romances with teenage boys, you get romances with working class men. Instead of going steady with your boyfriend, you get over the top engagement scenarios. Illegal drinking becomes legal, etc. Basically what you get when you go from the YA stack to the adult stack is more adult problems that are almost similar to the YA set. Maybe, I’ll admit, I’m reading the wrong kind of ‘literary fiction,’ but even with those classics I’m finding myself wishing the high skirted Elizabeth Bennett was ass kicking Katniss Everdeen, and Mr. Darcy would die a terrible death.*

But while that argument could go on and on, can we just admit that the whole shaming thing needs to stop? Remember back in 2008 when the whole ‘Twi-hard’ thing started? A majority of the population started shaming those people. I was swamped into the masses, even though I had been in it from the beginning and not just because the movie was coming out. It got to the point though that you wouldn’t even try to defend your actions, and closeted your love for the series so as not to feel the shame.

But why? Why do people feel the need to shame you for what you like to read? It’s stupid and ridiculous and it needs to fucking stop. Love who you want. Read what you want. Do what you want. Sometimes growing up ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

*Although, Persuasion by Jane Austen is still one of my favorite classic novels.

Paper Towns by John Green

After reading this book, I only have two questions (okay, it might be more than that, but bare with me here). 1. Where was this book when I graduated college last year? Or better, where was this book when I graduated high school five years ago? And 2. Why the hell was this book so freaking long? I mean, I get that a story had to be told here, but did it really need that many pages?

Some of the reviews for Paper Towns on Goodreads haven’t been kind. A lot of people said that John Green continued the storyline of An Abundance of Katherines and Looking for Alaska in this book, and in some ways I get where they’re coming from, but in others I feel like a new story was told here.

Quentin or ‘Q’ for short is going through the last month of his senior year in high school. One night he goes on an adventure with his next-door neighbor Margo as she exacts revenge on her boyfriend and some of her friends who knew that he was cheating on her. It’s an insane plan – one that involves breaking and entering (but not breaking and entering the felony), vandalism, hair removal, and various other things. When the trip comes to an end, Q is left wondering by things that Margo has said. His wonderment continues when she goes missing…again. Her parents are fed up and change the locks refusing to look for her. But Q notices clues and starts to put things to together.

Most of the second part of Paper Towns I could have honestly done without. Q thinks that he’ll never find Margo alive. That she has gone off for the last time to off herself. But it’s the last four or five chapters in the second part, that I absolutely adored. Q’s wittiness with his friends, them hosting parties like usual high school seniors, was fantastic. And when Q does finally figure out where Margo is twenty minutes before graduation – or so it seems – Ben, Radar, and Lacey come with him for an epic road trip.

The ending was sort of disappointing. Q doesn’t get the girl. Margo never wanted to be found. At least she wasn’t dead and she’s been planning this since Q and her found that dead body in the park when they were ten years old.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. Compared to Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars it was okay. A little too long for my liking, it did drag on in some parts. I kind of wished Q’s friends Ben and Radar had been in it more.

Bookshelf worthy? I’m passing on this one, so support your local library.

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

So after reading the other reviews for this book on Goodreads, I really, really, wanted to like it. The main character Sophie Mercer was witty and sarcastic in all the right ways. Her angst filled crush on one of the most popular/bad boy persona guys in school was adorable and steamy. Her devotion to her roommate was fantastic. So why didn’t I absolutely love this book? Well…

The story takes place at a boarding school for witches, werewolves, faeries, shape shifters and warlocks called Hecate Hall. The year Sophie attends they’re just starting a new transfer student program for vampires and the other species aren’t too happy about it. While dealing with that, Sophie also learns that she is in danger from three different hate groups who are out to get her because her father is the Head of the Council. The boy that Sophie is crushing on – Archer – turns out to be working for one of these groups, and she finds out after she’s already fallen for him.

….does this plot sound familiar to anyone else? Except for a few minor plot points – like the whole Sophie versus Elodie/Anna/Chaston coven thing, Alice the ghost actually being a demon, and Mrs. Chaston the headmistress actually being really cool – you’ve pretty much got the plot to the Evernight series by Claudia Gray. That’s pretty much why I didn’t 100% love this book. At some points it got really predictable.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. Sophie’s character was funny, I just wish I hadn’t read this plot before.

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!

The Chemical Garden Trilogy Book #1: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Another dystopian YA novel, and this time the content made me sick. But before you assume that I didn’t like it, let me explain. The content of this book made me sick, but that was because it was well written to be that way.

In this novel, humans have somehow perfected making children without any anomalies – i.e. cancer and other diseases – but a big problem emerges when these humans start having children of their own. These children and others like it are born with a virus – a shortened life span virus. Girls in this world live to only be twenty. Boys live to their twenty-fifth birthday. Because of this shortened life span, girls are being kidnapped and married off to produce more babies so that way there isn’t a shortage in the population. When Wither begins, our narrator has just been kidnapped with a bunch of other girls and is brought in for inspection. She and two others make the cut, but the others don’t and are killed on the spot.

Rhine, Jenna, and Cecily are brought to a mansion where they meet their new husband – Linden. He’s already married to a woman named Rose, but she is about to die from the virus, even though Linden’s father – Vaughn – is trying to come up with an antidote. What Rhine learns is that Vaughn is almost like Dr. Frankenstein with all his experiments that he does down in the basement. Rhine knows that she has to get out and get back to her brother, but if she tries and gets caught Vaughn will have her killed. Then there’s also the issue of the domestic who brings her breakfast, Gabriel, who she’s starting to develop feelings for…

So I know I shouldn’t have loved this book as much as I did. Another dystopian novel with a main character who’s almost like Katniss from The Hunger Games series, but…. I don’t know, there was just something about this novel that made me fall in love with it. It might have been the way DeStefano wrote about the sister wives and the character of Cecily who is thirteen and very eager to perform her wifely duties. The idea made me so terribly ill, I had to put the book aside for a day. It could have also been the way that she wrote about Rhine developing a friendship with Jenna, Gabriel, the house staff, and Linden. There was a moment near the end when I thought that Rhine was actually going to forget about not letting Linden have his way with her and just let it happen. That’s how close they got.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Different take on a genre that we’ve been bombarded with lately. Loved the characters. Curious to know what’s going to happen in the next book now that *spoiler* Gabriel and Rhine have run away.

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library.

A Beautiful Dark by Jocelyn Davies

I’ve yet to meet an angel series that led me astray. I loved the Unearthly trilogy by Cynthia Hand and I also loved the Hush, Hush Quartet (or at least the first three books, I haven’t gotten around to reading the fourth one yet) by Becca Fitzpatrick. However, when I started reading A Beautiful Dark I thought that I finally met my match.

Skye is celebrating her seventeenth birthday when the story begins. She lives in a city outside Denver, Colorado and has three friends – Dan, Cassie and Ian. She hates celebrating her birthday because her parents died in a car crash on her sixth. But her friends never listen to her and throw her surprise parties anyway. While Skye is getting some air she meets Asher, the definition of a bad boy, and then later his cousin Devin who is everything light. Weird things start to happen after she meets these two; boilers explode, her eyes flash silver, she causes an avalanche, etc. That’s when she starts to wonder if everything is what it seems to be.

Apparently, not. It turns out her mother and father were both angels. The only difference was her mother was a Gifted angel – supposedly one of the good guys – and her father was a Rebel – supposedly one of the bad guys – they met and fell in love. Their punishment when it was found out was they were cast out from the angels and made to live with the mortals as mortals. Until Skye was born…

So about until the avalanche scene I did not like this book too much. Another book with a love triangle and a best guy friend who is crushing on the girl. Gag me. But I kept plowing through and was eventually rewarded with the major reveal that Skye was an angel, and that Devin and Asher were also angels. The downside of the big reveal was I also got this twisted back story of the Gifted versus the Rebels. I’ll be honest, I was seriously confused for the rest of the book.

This book’s only saving grace was the major cliffhanger at the end.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Mediocre characters – seriously the narrator was a trip – and a muddled storyline. However, what an ending. Curious to see what happens next.

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last few years, you know that this is the story of a girl who falls in love with a boy for the first time. The catch is that both of these characters have cancer. The girl’s cancer is Stage IV and is placated for the moment thanks to some miracle drug, while the boy’s cancer is in remission.

A lot has been said about this book since it came out a few years ago, so I won’t bore too much with the details. And those who’ve read my review of If I Stay know that I spent four days back in 2012 reading not only this book, but also 13 Reasons Why as well, and for about a week afterwards I was a complete wreck.

In honor of the movie coming out, and because it’s been two years since I’ve read the book, I decided to reread it and I completely forgot how much of a quick read this book is. The only reason it took me three days to read was because I always, always get stuck on what happens after Hazel and Augustus come back from Amsterdam. It is just…

Okay? Okay.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Another John Green book that is just amazing, and another YA book where the parents didn’t get on my nerves. Hazel had amazing parents. Augustus did too.

Bookshelf worthy? I’ll confess, I own two copies. One is the one pictured above the other is the digital edition for my iPad.