Review- City of Ashes (Audio Book)

Title: City of Ashes

Author: Cassandra Clare

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Rating: 3/5

Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads

A murderer is loose in New York City...

...and the victims are Downworlder children. Clary Fray and her fellow Shadowhunters have a strong suspicion that Valentine, Clary's father, may be behind the killings. But if he is the murderer, then what's his true motive? To make matter worse, the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, has been stolen, and the mysterious Inquisitor has arrive to investigate, with her eyes vigilantly targeted on Clary's brother, Jace.

Clary will need to face some terrifying demons and even more terrifying family decisions. No one said that the life of a Shadowhunter would be easy.

My thoughts:

After the horrible experience I had with the City of Bones audio book, I was dreading City of Ashes. As I have said before, the reader didn't do much to enhance the story. But lucky for me, City of Ashes has a different reader, one who does a much better job.

Even with a new reader, I'm still not a huge fan of this series. Clary seems to whinny, she has no idea what she's doing but she always insists on going out and being in the middle of the action. She just seems so stupid to me. If it wasn't for Jace and the other Shadowhunters, she would have died first action scene in the first book.

And don't even get me started on her guilt and how she constantly blames herself for everything that's happened. I just want to scream in her face and shake her until she understands that everything would have happened that way anyway, no matter what she did. I know that she is going to have a certain amount of guilt which is natural, but her's is just blown out of proportion. For some reason, Clary just really annoys me a lot. But I like the other characters in the book, especially Alec, Isabel and Magnus. I would be a lot happier if Isabel was the main character.

After saying all that, the plot of the story still interests me and curiosity makes me still want to know how the series is going to end. It was much better than City of Bones because the story was able to develop more and Cassandra Clare was able to get into the meat of the plot. There's just something fishy about who Jace and Clary are and whether or not they're truly related. There are also many mysterious facets that have yet to be explored that could be very entertaining if done the right way. I can feel that there is some big revelation that is yet to come in the next two books. And because I want to know, I will most likely listen to them, as well.

Fans of the Mortal Instruments series will most likely not enjoy this review. But that's not saying that I'm completely opposed to Cassandra Clare. I very much enjoyed Clockwork Angel and I'm eagerly anticipating Clockwork Prince. I know the stories are somewhat the same, but I just really like the steampunk setting of the Infernal Devices series. So, in my closing statement: to each his own!