**Lots of spoilers but better to be prepared**
I have invested so many days into this 6 book series, The Mortal Instruments, and have come out severely disappointed and angry at how wasteful the experience was.
What is Good?
- Jace and Clary. 1st book only. He has this frenetic energy and a daredevil death wish that for the length of the 1st book is appealing to my YA angsty hero loving self. Premonitions of a dark and hopeless future for these two is laid out right.
- Jace and Clary. 2nd book. They are brother and sister! Wait.. what?! But.. they kissed, remember? This is supposed to be young adult, not Game of Thrones. Fascinating, that incest is a thing acknowledged. So how does the hero get to be with the heroine?
- Villains. Valentine was complex. And is apparently Clary and Jace’s father! Sebastian was crazy, but for the most part, this unpredictable evil madness worked well in the confines of the storyline.
- Jace, Alec, Isabelle. Fighting team, sibling love. Their banter at inopportune moments remained entertaining through book 1-3. Plus Isabelle is the 1 supporting character I liked.
What is Bad?
(Sigh.. Where to start and how to end…)
- So, so, so many things. I can’t be eloquent because of how strongly I feel this was a waste of time and lost potential.
- Clary. Why did everyone think she was life-saving angel blah blah? She was foolish multiple times. And boring.
- Ending. In book 6 the villain dies and random things happen for the remainder of the pages (no elder wand breaking critical things), so I don’t care at all. Probably no one does.
- Nothing bad happens. Simon, Clary’s best friend and Isabelle’s love of life gets his memory taken by a sadistic demon who just conveniently showed up in the storyline. All this sacrifice to save everyone. 20 pages later he semi remembers everything and everyone is happy again.
- Simon. He is insipid, predictable and boring. Why does he get so many pages in the series? Also his own spin-off series? Why would anyone care to read it at all?
- Book 4-6. The story needed to end after book 3. 4-6 destroyed everything. Too many side characters and random meandering things. Silly grown-ups. I don’t care about the vampires or werewolves. Why waste time on them?
- Bad, no awful, editing. ‘Jace who isn’t Jace’. We get it. He is acting under Sebastian’s influence in book 5. We don’t need to be reminded every single page of the book. Same way we don’t need Clary to remind us, every single time she looks at Jace, that her boyfriend is hot. And we don’t even care if Simon and Clary see their childhood safety in each other whenever they see each other, or think of each other or get mentioned in the same paragraph.
- Spin-Off. My deduction is that all these loose ends and new characters are for spin-off series. Tess comes in too late. Emma and Julian, I actually loved, but am terrified to read Dark Artifacts, where they will be the main characters because I have undying faith that Cassandra Clare will do a bad job and make me lose all interest in these 2. The rest of the side characters. A book on Magnus Bane? Simon. No. NO.
Credit to a conversation over coffee for the elder wand inspiration
