The Mortal Instruments: Book Four: City of Fallen Angels

by Cassandra Clare, 424 pages

Clary tries to settle in as a new Shadowhunter while her friend Simon gets used to life on an altered diet, but neither are finding the adjustments as smooth as they had hoped. Clary's Shadowhunter significant other Jayce is acting weird and avoiding her, and Simon's got multiple females pulling him in multiple directions (two as date material, one as her minion, and one as his mother's once-normal son). To make matters worse, someone's trying to breed demons from the wrong source material while someone else (?) is going around killing Shadowhunters and leaving their bodies lying around, apparently to foment discord among Shadowhunters and the various Downworlders (vampires, werewolves, warlocks, and faeries) among whom they've all been trying to build a new peace. Dots are connected and lives are affected.

I don't mind poor communication as a conflict-generator in a plot, but it can get old quickly when it's the main excuse for drawing out the conflict and putting off the resolution. If Jayce bottles up his feelings anymore, I'm going to drop-kick him. He's not the only offender, but for whatever reason it annoys me more when he does it (perhaps because it is such a habit of his and I'd rather hoped we'd finally got that out of the way after the first three books in the series). Angsty teen whinging aside, I definitely liked this one better than its last two predecessors (which I liked ok but which made me cranky) and Simon is still far and away my favorite character in the series. I find Clare's fondness for last-page cliffhangers to be a little frustrating, but I understand the desire to link your plots across volumes and snag readers. I just wish she'd do it more gently and maybe let us relax for the months / years between releases. I'm not sure when book five will be out, but right now, I think I'm looking forward more to Clockwork Prince, the second in her Infernal Devices series, which is supposed to be out in December (yay!). Nice of her to stagger the two series so we have something with which to occupy ourselves while we wait. :)