Book 3 review: Final Exam

The Mortal Instruments series

 Some of the seemingly harmless people in New York City are actually demons. But demons aren’t real, right? Wrong. Well that’s not the case for Clary; she lived her whole life believing in nothing but what we think, there are no aliens, werewolves, vampires, dragons and so on. But in The Mortal Instruments, by Cassandra Clare, all of those fairytales you were told as a child are true, to some extent of course. This book may be able to be considered realistic fiction, but the story is all over the place, ranging from fantasy to magic realism. It just depends the way you look at the book. It could be considered fantasy because the book makes up a completely new country, Iris. Now this may not seem completely out of the ordinary, but it is. In Iris, there are many clans of werewolves, vampires, fairies, and so on. They call these downworlders, or in simpler terms half humans who were infected with demonic poison to become what they are. In the very begining of the book, when Clary first enters the world of shawdowhunters, jace and his friends were killing a downworlder. "Thats not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleeed like a person. Buts its a monster." (Clare 13) that is how Jace explained the down worlder to Clary for the first time. As you can see they look down on the 'monsters' they encounter.

The plot for the book is very well set, it follows the general outline for magic realism, the main character, typically a girl, discovers something about herself that she did not know, typically she has powers that come from another world not her own, she falls in love with a boy, there will be some complication to their relationship, the girl ends up having to save the world she did not know about previously. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this; this is usually just the general outline for magic realism. Each individual book has its own way of interrupting this outline, but in general, they all stick to this plot, with a few twists. Any way you look at it, The Mortal Instruments follows this pattern.

Though this book isn’t a sappy love story, it will have you routing for Clary and Jace to work out. The book picks you ups and sucks you in like a vacuum cleaner, only to get out when it gets emptied at the end.  The fact that Clary and Jace like each other so much, is so out of the world crazy because they met each other all of five days before something happen between them.  That is another thing I find crazy in these stories with love, they take like five days and imply love at first sight. Things happen too fast, not with just the romance, but everything in the book. When one thing happens too fast in the book, everything else gets jealous and starts moving just as fast to keep up. This can make things confusing at some times, but reread it and it should come out clear soon after. Things move too fast in this genre, it needs to slow down and grab a break, or it will get tired too soon.

                The way Cassandra made Jace act is really thought out. He’s one of those people who know he has a pretty face, and he uses that. She made him very full of himself, very cocky. Now does he really have the right to be so full of himself? He does. ", Jace still in his bloody shirt with the knife in his hand. He grinned at her and dropped a half-apologetic, half-mocking shrug." 9clare 16) He has a pretty face, or so the text explained, and he uses it to an advantage in more than one case, like in the Seelie court, talking to the queen. He used his face and wittiness to get out of a very bad situation. Cassandra really thought out how Jace was, on a very deep level. He has the face, the attitude, and the act to be a modern day annoying rich kid. Not that there is anything wrong with that, she just made him very relatable on a deep level. It confused me at times, because it’s easy to hate Jace for his cockiness, but it’s also easy to empathize with him for all he has gone through.

                This book is written in third person, making it easy to see everyone’s point of view, and what is happening at every time. Once you miss something from one person’s point of view, the next chapter goes back a little and shows how that person thinks about all that just happened. Because this book is in third person, it makes it easy to read and follow along with, because you get so many views and you know what is going on, even when the other characters do not really know what is going on. This book being in third person makes it easy and fun to read.

                In conclusion, The Moral Instruments would receive an A+ in my mind. This book was a fun and interesting read, I highly recommend it.