City of Ashes (The Mortal Instrument #2) by Cassandra Clare

Rating: Four stars

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance
Available from:https://www.amazon.com/City-Ashes-Mortal-Instruments-Book/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/city-of-ashes-cassandra-clare/

Synopsis

Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what's normal when you're a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who's becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go — especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary's only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil — and also her father.

To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings — and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?

Review

This book was so much better than the first in my opinion, but I could be thinking this way because my vision of the first book in the series was clouded by my vision of the movie, but, nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book a lot more.

I rated this book four stars so that there's room for higher ratings as the series goes on (and hopefully gets better) 

City of Ashes got the 4 stars because it had me constantly thinking about the book, and finally I've connected to the characters more, which was one of my major problems about City of Bones! 

The characters in this book, I felt became so much more complex, and I actually found myself caring about them (yay), and can I just say that Cassandra Clare can write some amazing characters, with the perfect amount of humour. 

Having read Clockwork Angel, I can say that this woman is a character making a genius. I really enjoyed Jace a lot more in this book, he reminds me of Mr. Will Herondale in many ways ;) I also appreciated Isabelle, Magnus and Alec a lot more, and can't wait to see where the character development will go in the book to come. Maia was also a great addition to the story.

The only slight problem I may have had with this instalment is that sometimes the writing drags a bit with certain concepts, I don't know, I'm probably just being bitter because Cassandra Clare always creates such complicated and amazing worlds that take me a little longer to read than most other books, due to a lot more thought has to be devoted to the writing. I guess in a way though, that's definitely props to Miss. Clare, and I have no doubt in my mind that this series WILL get better as her writing matures. 

City of Ashes delves deeper into the war conflict between the shadow hunters and Valentine.

I absolutely loved all the different aspects of supernatural characters, it created a very Supernatural/Charmed effect, and those are two of my favourite TV-Shows of all time. 

I really hope that more paranormals (not a word, but of the well), is explored in the coming books and that the shadow hunter world continues to become even better and provide me with more excitement and some surprises would be nice too ;)

I can't wait to read the City of Glass because I've heard it's most peoples favourite! So proud of myself that I randomly decided to start reading this, as I wasn't sure if I'd ever continue with this series, even though I wanted to... but here I am. ahh, relief :)