Clockwork Angel and Clockwork Prince- Cassandra Clare

So, I’ve taken a while to write this blog post because once this is posted, I will have to move on with my life without any Cassandra Clare books for five months. Ugh, I hope I make it. Well, let’s get this over with…

A few weeks ago, I posted a review about City of Fallen Angles, the fourth and most recent installment in the Mortal Instruments series. Since then, I discovered another series by Cassandra Clare, the Infernal Devices. This series is also in the world of Shadowhunters and features the same families, but is set in 19^th century London. In the first installment, Clockwork Angel, Tessa is our new heroine, who comes to London to live with her brother after the death of her prime caretaker, her aunt. She is quickly intercepted by the Dark Sisters of the Pandemonium Club. These women torture our Tessa by forcing her to use her previously unknown talent called the Change.  The Change is another word for shape shifting, being able to turn into anyone and to take on their personality. This is obviously a hot commodity in any fantasy driven plot, so Tessa is in trouble. She is saved by the young Shadowhunter, Will Herondale, and taken to the London Institute. Now Tessa is bent on saving her brother, Nate, from the wrath of the Dark Sisters and who they call, the Magister.

Now, Cassandra Clare is kind of obsessed with the idea of love triangles, so she obviously feels the desire to torture us all and features one in this series. Here it goes…

Will and Jem are parabatai, warrior brothers, and they both love Tessa. Tessa has feelings for both, but Will is having an inner struggle with his past, so he takes any chance he can to be incredibly rude to Tessa. Tessa and Jem start to get close, and then Will figures out the answer to his inner struggle, and then………….oh gosh, I just can’t tell you, but it’s seriously amazingly torturous for everyone involved, you’re going to love it!   

Now, at the end of Clockwork Angel, Nate is found but there is a bit of a twist, which leads us to Clockwork Prince. Now in this book, we learn much more about the Magister, who likes to think of himself as the Clockwork Prince- a master of clockwork devices. He has created an army of “robots,” you might say, to wipeout the Shadowhunter race.

Now, as you know, demons are my weird and demented interest. Cassandra seems to take the idea of demons incredibly literally. They are an actual species from other realms of the universe that come to Earth and suck all the life and resources from our planet. This interests me because most stories feature demons to be a very abstract or ghost like creature. These are things that enter into the human body to use that body for evil, like the new movie, The Devil Inside. So anyway, I liked this less Catholic, more liberal idea of what a demon is and how they spread evil throughout our world.

Beyond this interesting tidbit, another theme throughout this series is trying to find out exactly what Tessa is. No one’s ever seen anything like her and no one is exactly sure how she even exists. We find out that she was created by who we come to know as the Magister. Her creation was a long time in the making and the big question is……why?

Well, hopefully we’ll find out in Clockwork Princess, due in 2013!

Read more about the Infernal Devices here.

Follow Cassandra Clare here.

Happy reading,

B