City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

Clare should have stopped after she finished her trilogy. This book seemed like an excuse to write about everyone's love life. The main plot was more of a side story. The majority of the pages were taken up with Clary worrying about whether Jace loved her, Alec being with Magnus, and Simon's double relationship with Maia and Isabelle. Really, it's all very shallow. Why does Alec get so mad when he finds out that Magnus dated someone a couple centuries ago? Why does Jace start to pull away from Clary because of some nightmares instead of telling her about them? No, all he says is that he doesn't want to hurt her. Of course, it all adds to the romantic drama. At least the bit at the end was cool, but I'm not sure it was worth reading the rest of the book just to meet the awesome character at the end. There should be more text dedicated to the actual plot, not the boring, unnecessary side stuff. A little is ok, I guess, because it's clear that Clare wants to write about that, but to have most of the book devoted to it is a bit much.

So it can have a 2.35. The first most of it was bad and needed plot development, but the end was cool. It was like bad chocolate, that really cheap kind. It's chocolate, which is good, and there's good in it, but it could be so much better, and it doesn't actually taste that good.

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

This one is definitely the best of the first three books. Clary finds out how to heal her mother, and needs to travel to the City of Glass. However, Jace does not want her there and figures out how to leave her behind. He accidentally brings Simon, which is against the law because Simon does not have permission to enter. In a fit after being left behind, Clary figures out how to get herself there, though she does it illegally and brings Luke, who is also not allowed. By the end, Clary and Jace discover secrets from their past, and everyone is happy. It was supposed to be the end of a trilogy, so everything is resolved. The best thing about the book was that everyone's love life played a much less significant role in the story; it was much more like any other book in that respect. This one was more fun to read, though I figured everything out before it happened. This is actually one of the few books were I was able to do that accurately.

So it gets a 4. Better than the other two, a good book, fun to read. It was like sweet bread. It was better than I expected, it complemented the sandwich meat of the first one nicely, and it provided something to dip in the sauce of the second one.

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

This is the second book in the Mortal Instrument trilogy (apparently trilogies have four books in them now, and more books are coming). Like the last one, the biggest thing that bothered me was the messed up romance. If you take the messed up romance, the book was fairly good. Magnus Bane plays a bigger role in this book than in the last, and he's cool, in that I am a powerful 300 year old warlock who charges money for everything and likes to wear lots of glitter kind of way. Jace is pretty annoying; he keeps switching personalities. Sometimes he's a hero, sometimes he's the original sarcastic jerk (though the sarcasm does bring up some good lines), and sometimes he's in love. Simon is... interesting, Clary is Clary, and she takes her part in the messed up romance, and I don't even know what to think about Isabelle. Luke and Valentine are the same. Max, the youngest Lightwood, comes into the story, and he's fun. There's the basic character overview. This one was a continuation of the last one, and it wasn't significantly different, except the romance was a little more messed up. One thing that did differ was that everyone seemed to hate everyone else a little more.

City of Ashes is a little worse than City of Bones; it's a 3. It was just about what I was expecting, except there was too much internal conflict within the characters. Please stop the messed up romances. It was like a spaghetti dish with good sauce, but awful spaghetti. Spaghetti is hard enough to eat because of its habit of being long and thin, but when it tastes bad, it's just really annoying. You eat so you can eat the sauce. The sauce tastes good, like the good characters and basic plot.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Clary is a normal girl who likes to do normal things. Until she sees a murder that isn't a murder where invisible people kill someone whose body simply vanishes. That's how she begins to figure out that all is not as it seems. She really gets the message when her mom mysteriously disappears and she gets attacked by a giant monster. This book was much better the second time I read it, probably because the predictability of it didn't bother me as much. It had several good lines, but it had a seriously messed up love triangle. The book could have been incredible if it focused more on the plot and less on the crushes the characters developed, then screwing with their relationships. I also liked the demons more than the Shadowhunters, the demon killers. When the book started, there was a boy, who was actually a demon, and he walked around and thought about all the life he could suck out of humans. Then he died on page 14, and I was stuck there thinking about the fact that I was holding another book in which the bad guys were better than the good guys. It's really hard to feel bad as the protagonist struggles when you know that each blow she takes is a victory for your favorite characters. The characters who were supposed to be the good ones were really annoying. Okay, so Jace's idiocy is supposed to be funny, but he's really just a jerk.

I give this book a 3.4. Lots of points for the good lines, but definitely lots of negative points for that love triangle. And Jace's behavior at the end is totally out of character. I liked many of the characters, just not the ones that were supposed to be likable. Those ones were shallow, predictable, and jerky. Food-wise, it was like good sandwich meat. It had great extras and the stuff that makes a really good sandwich (or book), but it was missing the bread. If just a few of the basic bits of the book were different, like getting rid of the love triangle and making better main characters, it would be amazing.

The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card

Danny is from a family of what are known as mages, specifically the North family. The mages are descended from the mythological gods, but their powers have been greatly diminished because of a lack of gates, as the title suggests. Gates are made by gatemages, and a powerful kind of gate can be made to go to another world, Westil. If a mage passes through this gate and back, their power will be multiplied and they will be a god. Unfortunately for the mages, Loki locked all the gates that ever existed over one thousand years ago, and the current families promised each other to kill any gatemage they found after a war. They are left with not very much power and a lot of contempt for normal humans, called drowthers by the mages. Danny is a smart boy who is isolated because he seems to have no power. Some mages have an affinity with animals, and they can "ride" with them; others are good with plants, and can make things grow. Basically, each mage gets a certain kind of magic with which they associate. Most mages can make clants, a kind of copy of themselves made of things in the world that they can move around and see through. Danny can do none of the normal magic. Danny, naturally, is a gatemage, and a super powerful one at that. My main problem with the book is the gaping holes in Card's explanations. Some explanations were so flimsy I almost gave up on the book. Most mages get power by treating whatever their affinity is with kindness and whatnot. So Danny has to be nice to spacetime? And he likes to prank people because... Oh, of course, because spacetime pranks people all the time. Right. So Danny gets his power by being mean to people. But he's really a nice person! You can't blame him for doing nasty things; it's just his nature! And all gatemages get all sorts of special talents, like being able to learn a language by listening to just a couple of sentences. This is justified by the fact that gatemages can travel around in an instant to anywhere in the world, so they need languages. The gates also completely heal whoever passes through them, so gatemages can heal from any wound, even a bullet to the head (if they survive long to make and pass through a gate) and they never get sick. How convenient. There is no explanation offered for this. No other kind of mage gets added skills, and it isn't really necessary. Nor is it necessary to make Danny thousands and thousands of times stronger than any other gatemage that has ever been. Really, just twice as strong would have been more than enough. Some of the scenes were also unnecessary. Card really did not need the scene where a grown woman practically molested 13-year-old Danny in front of her husband and a friend. Where did that come from? There is an explanation, of course; the women had a troubled childhood. Sure, whatever you say! And the seen when Danny spends about 20 minutes in a public bathroom trying to work out how to hide his backpack in a gate while describing the loud sounds coming from some man in a stall. The sole purpose of this scene seemed to be so that Danny could make fun of the man for the remainder of the chapter. The book is also very shallow. The reader follows Danny through most of it, though there is a side plot taking place on Westilin, and Danny doesn't have to try for anything. He basically sits there and goes, "Wow! I can do this! And look what I figured out in two minutes! And now that I know you, I can suddenly do this! And it's all because of my super fast learning skills that come with being a gatemage (another of those superfluous skills)." There was no depth to the book. Card tried to develop it, but the plot was shallow, and it spelled everything out. It said in the book that wow, maybe not all drowthers are the same. And maybe there's more to them than mages think. (I'd quote, but I can't find the page). This isn't usually so bad, but it was stuck tactlessly in the middle of the chapter in a blatant attempt to develop Danny.

That said, I can now explain why I'm not taking all five points away. I enjoyed the idea of mages and the basic plot. It was interesting to read, and I liked the magic system if you ignore the gatemages (which is hard because both the man character of the main plot and the main character of the side plot are gatemages). I also liked how the idea explained ancient gods, with different families being the gods of different places, such as Greece and Norway. It also had a cool concept of the clants being what people thought were fairies, elves, and sprites.

It can have a 2.3. If you just accepted everything, it made a nice story, but it was hard to get past some of the things. It was also a little confusing at times, and the explanations really stretched the limits of my imagination. I suppose it's like flat soda. It has a nice flavor, but missing that fizz that makes it wonderful, as well disappointing because you were expecting something a bit better. And it tastes, well, flat.

Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan

Faerie Wars takes place in both a world parallel to our own and our own world. It begins with Henry Atherton in our world. He works for a man called Mr. Fogarty doing odd jobs and stuff around his house that Mr. Fogarty can no longer do because of his age. In the realm of faerie, the prince Pyrgus Malvae is up to being his not-so-obedient-son type. He gets into trouble with a man who enjoys summoning demons and almost gets sacrificed to a demon prince. He gets sent to this world for his safety, and finds, to his horror, that he has been turned into a mini thing with wings, our common image of fairies. What I really liked about this book were the demons. They were just cool. They were sneaky, devious, and evil. Just what demons are supposed to be. For a few short, glorious pages, I even managed to convince myself that the demons would manage to kill Pyrgus. No such luck; I still have yet to find the book that gives a really satisfying villain win. Oh well.

The great downfall of this book was Henry's personal life. Really, I don't care that Henry's mom is having an affair with his dad's female secretary. It has way too much emphasis in the book, and adds absolutely nothing to the story. It would be much more fun to read if Henry could have his adventure with Pyrgus and Mr. Fogarty without being called back home for a family meeting about his parent's problems. It's not much fun to be reading about Pyrgus and his mishaps, then be pulled back to Henry and his confusion with his mom.

Overall, the book gets a 3. Fun, easy, and quick to read. The plot was fairly simple, but engaging. It had all the basic good guys and bad guys and magic stuff. It could be compared to a fortune cookie; it's small and pretty good. But when you just want a cookie, there is that little message in the middle that is impossible to ignore.