City of Fallen Angels- Cassandra Clare
If you have not read the books, you will be a bit confused unless you read my previous reviews of this series which can be accessed below.
So, the weekend of November 4th I, unfortunately, had my wisdom teeth cut out of my face. Fortunately, I had the entire weekend to do nothing but read City of Fallen Angels, the fourth book in the six book Mortal Instruments series. And it was awesome! According to a few interviews with Cassandra Clare, this book focuses in a bit more on Clary’s best friend, Simon. As many of you know from my previous reviews of City of Bones and City of Ashes, City of Glass, Clary has been our heroin and Simon, in the first three installments, has been entangled in a love triangle with Clary and Jace (the super sexy Shadowhunter). Well, now Simon has been turned into a Downworlder (a vampire to be exact) and he is now pursuing other love interests. Two to be exact. That gets a little complicated and puts Simon into a tricky situation, but you have to read the book to get any more details out of me.
With Valentine dead (our antagonist in the first three books), the new Accords (peace and promised equivalence between Downworlders and Shadowhunters) are in place and each Downworlder has representation within the Clave. Everything is at peace for the first time in the Shadow World.
Well, that’s boring………..
Someone is upsetting the peace by killing Shadowhunters and forces an investigation. This leads to a glimmer into the past, Camille, a powerful and old vampire. This meeting foreshadows happenings in Cassandra Clare’s prequel to the Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices.
Anyway, the entire book leads us to Lilith, the mother of demons; some even refer to her as Adam’s first wife- that ought to raise some eyebrows in the cyber world. She’s portrayed as someone who is quite intelligent and has an interesting grasp on dark vs. light, good vs. evil. My favorite line in the book is said by Lilith and goes something like this, “They say that history was written by the winners.” Her point being that the winners are of course going to put light on the things they did, leaving out the details that they burned down a village or killed innocent children in their quest for success. There is a gray area between dark and light.
Now, why is Lilith part of this story? Well, we find out in the third installment that Valentine was experimenting with his wife and children by giving one of them demon blood and the other, angel blood. The son with demon blood was killed but his body was never found (hint, hint) at the end of City of Glass. Lilith was the demon who, you could say, “mothered” Valentine’s demonic son. She wants her “son” back and has an interesting argument about the balance of life. An eye for an eye you might say.
I don’t want to give anything else away, so you’ll have to read the books, I’m telling you, they’re amazing! And………….drumroll please…..it’s going to be a movie! Check out the details on IMDb.com.
Read more about The Mortal Instruments.
Read about The Infernal Devices, the prequel to The Mortal Instruments.
Follow Cassandra Clare on Twitter.
Happy reading,
B
B as in Book 