City of Bones

                                                           CITY OF BONES 

                                                                  

                                                 BY CASSANDRA CLARE                                                                          ★★★★★

City of Bones is the first part of The Mortal Instruments, a YA urban fantasy trilogy, as well as Cassandra Clare’s first novel. 

Set in New York City, the story opens with fifteen year old Clary witnessing the murder of a blue-haired teenage boy in a nightclub - the only problem is no one else can see what she has seen, not even her long time best friend, Simon. 

Events in Clary’s life just get stranger when her mother disappears without warning and monsters start to infest her home.  Suddenly Clary is seeing odd and unusual things everywhere. Demons, vampires, werewolves, faeries and warlocks start to be apparent all over New York City.

Luckily Clary’s path seems destined to cross with that of Jace, a shaggy haired blonde teenage boy that Clary first saw in the nightclub (murdering the blue haired boy) and he introduces her to the hidden world of the Shadowhunters.  A world where werewolves roam the streets of Chinatown, faeries live in Central Park, and vampires ride demonically powered motorbikes…

The Shadowhunters are Nephilim.  Traditionally Nephilim are the children of angels who have bred with mortal humans, but in City of Bones the Nephilim were created when the Angel Raziel mixed his blood with human blood in the Mortal Cup.  The Shadowhunters exist to fight demons and are trained from birth for this purpose, the Mortal Cup can be used to create more Nephilim - making it a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. 

The vampires in City of Bones have most of the traditional vampire weaknesses and strengths (including being able to turn into bats) but they are the results of a demonic viral infection rather than the more traditional evil undead.  

The Shadowhunters refer to them, and all other races not of pure human origin, as Downworlders - but they do not hunt vampires unless they turn rogue and start to kill humans.  The vampires only have a small part in this story but they make their presence felt with both humour (drunk vampires have an unfortunate habit of spontaneously turning into piles of dust until they sober up) and menace (drunk vampires seem more likeable than sober ones)!

I honestly enjoyed this book and think it is a must for any bookworm

-Aiofe