Reviews

The Mortal Instruments Boxed Set by Cassandra Clare

Only show reviews with written explanations

sharonsm_28's review against another edition

5.0

BEST SERIES EVER!!! LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!!! THE ENDING WAS PERFECT!!! SO HAPPY FOR MALEC!!! YAY!!! lots of laughs, cries, and just non-stop action and suspense. Love the way Cassandra Clare write! so glad she is making more books for the Shadowhunter world! Can't wait for the last three series!!!

addisonbrady's review against another edition

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4.0

This entire series is top-notch. Top ten favorite series of all time.

jessclaybee's review against another edition

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4.0

Wow. So, I have a few things to say about this series of books; it's not perfect. There are many many flaws in Cassandra Clare's writing but you know what? SUCH an addictive series! I am OBSESSED with this!

So there are six books in this series, usually I would say that's a little too many but to be honest I think it kind of worked here.

I'll start off with the plot. The plot is all right, but the thing is with these books is that the plot was going on strong and sturdy up until book 3 (City Of Glass), at the end of City of Glass everything had been tied up neatly and I was very happy with the ending. I think I remember even Cassandra Clare saying that she was originally supposed to only have three books in the series. But then suddenly City Of Fallen angels came along and I really did think it was the weakest book in the entire series. Hardly anything happened, Clary was just as annoying and selfish as ever, and it was just flimsy and didn't feel right. And then it was the same for City of Lost Souls, the only reason I enjoyed City Of Lost Souls was because Sebastian is my favourite character and there's LOADS of him in that book so I was basically thrilled.

But I still think this should have ended at the third book. I loved City Of Heavenly Fire and I was pretty satisfied when this series ended... I just think City of Glass was just wrapped up way too well. I loved Sebastian as a character, he's my favourite and I'm glad the continuation of the series lead to a better exploration of his behaviour and objectives; I just think it should have remained as a trilogy because despite the introduction of the better characters - it still meant the less interesting characters such as Clary and Maia had to be dragged out even more which just got tedious after a while.

I like to see this series as two parts, obviously the first three books follow one story line while the 4th, 5th, and 6th book follow another. It just seemed a bit higgledy piggledy and not very well organised.

Another issue I had with this series, the same only issue I had with The Infernal Devices, was how Cassandra Clare likes to drift of to what the minor characters are doing. I honestly hate that. It was even worse in City of Heavenly Fire when Cassandra characters from the sequel series (The Dark Artifices) were introduced... and took up half the fucking book. I adored Mark Blackthorn. I cannot WAIT to read about him and I think he's the only reason I will carry on reading these. And Cassandra Clary has also very sneakily put him into the Shadowhunter Chronicles (a series of short stories) to so I guess I'll have to read them too.

But I was pretty annoyed with the new characters taking up so much of the books. I don't give a shit about Emma- I don't know who she is and I don't want to know either. She seems like a brat. And I only sort of cared about Julian but I can all ready sense that he's just going to be another cocky love interested like Will and Jace.

And I don't give a shit about Jordan and Maia, I really don't. I want to find out what's happening with Sebastian. Maia was honestly the least interesting character of the series. Her entire story was created around her miserably forced back story being constantly forced down our throats. And you know what I hate even more? How Cassandra Clare accused people who dislike Maia of being racist. No, it's not that I disliked Maia because she was black. I dislike Maia because she was uninteresting, stroppy and selfish. I found her just as annoying as Clary. And Clary is white. And another point; I liked Raphael and he was Mexican. I liked Jem and he was half Chinese. I liked Magnus and he's half Indonesian. No. I am not racist. I just have an opinion.

And now with the characters. Clary is the most idiotic female protagonist I've ever read about. She settles right in nicely with Ever from the Immortals series and Bella from Twilight. These three are like the trio of idiots in YA literature. Oh my god, don't even get me started on how many times I wanted to slap Clary. Selfish bitch. Stupid bitch. She happily dances off into trouble like some naive little pansy. All she ever cares about is her and Jace. My god woman! Get. A. Grip. She's met Jace for like a month and suddenly he's the only thing she cares about. I don't really like to throw the Mary Sue word around but it just seemed necessary here. Sure, her stupidity may be a flaw, but the book doesn't portray it as a stupidity, it portrays it as a completely normal thing to do.

There's a bit in City Of Ashes when they go to visit the Seelie Court for information off the Seelie Queen. Jace clearly explains to Clary 'Do not eat or drink anything the faeries give you', and they're all handed out drinks during the viewing. And guess what Clary does? 'Oooohhh, a drink, I think I'll just STICK MY FINGERS IN IT AND THEN SHOVE MY FINGERS IN MY MOUTH!' And then she seems surprised when suddenly she is unable to leave the court because she accepted the faeries beverages. She had one job, ONE JOB. DON'T FUCKING DRINK ANYTHING! My god, she's a burden to everyone! Honestly, if I had to drag that dip shit around I would have just left her at the court. I think the only thing I severely hated about this series was that we were forced to read within the eyes of Clary and her magical powers.

And the other characters. A lot of people don't like Jace. I'm one of them. All he ever does throughout the series is sulk. He sulks more than a 5 year-old girl. Whenever something doesn't seem to be going Jace's way; he'll throw a tantrum and maybe punch a few windows. I have to admit though, he isn't the weakest character in the book and I did actually enjoy reading about him since he is funny and at least has a little more common sense than Clary.

And of course we have the really good characters. I adored Magnus for a starter, by far one of the most beloved characters in the entire series. And Simon too, along with Alec (he improved as the books went on), Isabelle, and of course Sebastian. I hated Jocelyn. Worst mother ever. But I found Simon another fun to read as he had his flaws and his advantages, his entire character also wasn't built up around misery like Maia's was. Same with Magnus who also seems to just stand out by himself with his wacky behaviour. I found Alec interesting because he was one of was one of the only characters that held some kind of mystery to him. I loved how held back he was and how he progressed as the series went on. I also loved Isabelle for being the only true strong female character in the series. Cassandra tried to pass Clary off as this but honestly Clary has the emotional strength of an apple. Maia was just pathetic. But to me Isabelle really stood up well and I enjoyed reading about her.

One of the things I liked about Cassandra's writing is her description. Like the Infernal Devices; she's always been great at describing characters and surroundings. I have noticed that all her characters just so happen to be outstandingly attractive but I do like the way she describes them in full detail instead of just throwing in the brief comment about their hair and maybe the colour of their eyes. I do think she overuses the eye colour description since any normal person really doesn't pay that much attention to someone's eyes... and also any normal person doesn't have eyes that miraculously change colour like Jace's do.

I also liked Cassandra's way of grabbing your emotions. I mentioned this in the Infernal Devices review. I do think she does it a little better in The Infernal Devices; but that's probably just because The Infernal Devices was written a little later when she had probably got better at writing. But she still has this unique way of making you feel sad when she wants you to feel sad and making you feel happy when she wants you to feel happy. At times I even felt myself maybe sympathising with Clary or feeling rejoice for Clary even though I hate her guts and wanted her to maybe fall off a cliff or something (she certainly seems capable of doing that since she's the most useless character in the entire series)... well, you sympathised with the characters you were SUPPOSED to sympathise with anyway.

because to be honest... the character I felt sorry for the most was Sebastian. The most tortured character in the entire series. I didn't care about Maia, I didn't care about Clary (aside from the frustration she felt with Jace), I sort of cared about Jace, and I didn't really care about Alec up until City Of Heavenly Fire. But the character I felt most sorry for was Sebastian. To be honest, I didn't BLAME him for being fucked up. And I partially blamed Jocelyn... in fact I REALLY blamed Jocelyn. Let's break it down shall we?

- He was experimented on by his own father
- He was abandoned by his own mother. I don't care whether she thought a baby was 'evil' or not; abandoning a child like that is fucking disgraceful. Even if she thought he was dead; she could have maybe seemed a little bit happy to find her dead son actually alive. Remember, when Jocelyn discovered it in City of Glass she didn't really know about what he had done and just how evil he was. She knew about some things but she hadn't been there to witness it herself and the hate she had for him was mainly based around the idea of what she experienced when he was a baby. Which was just stupid. No wonder she gave up being a Shadowhunter if she was scared of a fucking baby.
-He was lonely. One of a kind. He was brought up with his only company being Valentine. But Valentine hated him and betrayed him. Then Sebastian found hope in Clary and thought she would be like him. But then found out that Clary hated him and was a dumbass.

I mean, no one sympathised with him at all. Clary mentioned it for like a paragraph that maybe, just maybe, there was a reason for Sebastian being like this (she said it was loneliness). But no one tried to help him. No one even bothered to maybe make him understand he was wrong. Instead, Cassandra went on the 'KILL DA BAD GUY' routine that I'm kind of tired of. He was such an interesting character that could have brought on an interesting plot line but instead we had the average 'good guy' 'bad guy' routine of the flawless heroes tracking down the bad guy. I understand why Cassandra didn't kill him off. But I also hate the fact that Sebastian's character wasn't really appreciated enough because he really was the most interesting to read about. In the end he was just the psychopath with that one unexplainable and completely uninteresting motive of killing everybody for no apparent reason. I mean, he was supposed to be smart wasn't he? And he was also supposed to be lonely:

Killing people doesn't = friends. It just equals even more loneliness.

You know what would have been interesting? If after Sebastian died he became a demon... that would have been cool. I mean, he's got the demon blood so it would have been interesting if he went to hell but came back as a demon who occasionally went up into the human world from time to time. Like the demons described in the Downworlder bars or something.

So there we have it. It was a very enjoyable series. The only problem (I didn't have this) that my friends have mentioned, is that it starts of REALLY slowly. I've tried to get several people to read this series and most of them couldn't get into it because the books are so big and in some parts they really do just drag out. I have to admit that I felt this when reading the first and second book. I just struggled to make my way through them. But by the time I got to the third I was hooked... and it was even better when I discovered that there were another two books to the series! Yeah... I didn't realise it was a (then) five book series and I was thrilled to find out that there were even more of them.