City of Ashes: The Mortal Instruments, Book Two -- Cassandra Clare

City of Ashes picks up not long after City of Bones left off (spoilers about the first book coming up):  Clary is still learning about and dealing with her new-found knowledge about the world and her place in it as a Shadowhunter, her mother is still in a coma, her best friend Simon is still in love with her, and she is still fighting her feelings for Jace, which are impossible and wrong now that they know they are siblings.  Jace is also fighting his feelings for Clary, and as his true parentage has been revealed, he is now under suspicion for spying for Valentine among other things.

Whew.  It should be obvious by now that if you're planning on reading these books, you need to read them in order!

Things I liked:  It's fast-paced, very readable, has likable characters (Magnus Bane is top of my list at the moment), a fun magic system (I love the tattoos), a major twist I didn't expect, and I especially appreciated the fact that Cassandra Clare didn't spend a lot of time getting new readers up to speed -- she just jumped right into the story.   

Things I liked not so much:  Sometimes the plotting made me feel like I was reading the transcript of a D&D game (albeit a very entertaining one), sometimes the prose veered a bit too far into the Romantic Fantasy Description Zone ("Jace was glaring at her, his golden eyes bright as a cat's."), the descriptions got to feel repetitive (rather like the Twilight series), and sometimes I felt that I wouldn't mind if the author made me do a little bit of work, rather than having the characters explain every little thing.  But I suspect that those are personal taste issues.

It's brain candy, with less angst and more action than the Meyer books (and, in my opinion, a more entertaining heroine -- she's still kind of brainless at times, but she seemed quite a bit brighter than in the first book and she's not a whiner like Bella).  Spoilers/theorizing in the comments.

Comments

[Leila]

Yeah, they're totally not siblings. What with the Inquistor's pre-death unvoiced realization, Valentine's "I wasn't talking about--" line, and the bit about Jocelyn's "You turned my first child into a monster" line, Jace is going to turn out to be the Wayland kid after all. Whether or not that means that Valentine killed Clary's real brother or not, who knows?

[Kitty]

The first book was amazing until the sibling part. It made me not want to read the next two, but reanalyzing it I too believe they cannot be siblings. Cassandra Clare wouldn't have put out that the book was an adventure as well as a love story if the lovers turned out to be brother and sister. Hopefully we won't see the last book turn into another Breaking Dawn and ruin the series.

[Chelsea lynn]

i just finished the first book. i literally screamed in class when i found out the sibling part. i KNEW valentine was clarys dad right from the beginning. its just so shocking! i start the new book in a couple of days when my order comes in. Jace better not be her brother that just ruins the WHOLE ENTIRE SERIES!