City of Fallen Angels, by Cassandra Clare

*Disclaimer* This is the fourth book in the “The Mortal Instruments” series, so if you haven´t read the first three books yet please be aware of spoilers. I would not advise reading this post if you want to start this series without being spoiled, but if you don´t mind continue on, just be warned. However if you have read the other three books, this review won´t spoil the fourth book.

Title: City of Fallen Angels

Author: Cassandra Clare

Pages: 480

Published by: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Rating: 4/5

The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most importantly of all—she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.
But nothing comes without a price.
Someone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her—his mother just found out that he’s a vampire, and now he’s homeless. When Jace begins to pull away from her without explaining why, Clary is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: she herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace.

I enjoyed this book very much. It wasn´t as great as City of Glass, but I was happy to see all my little babies happy again, after having suffered through the events of the past books.  Well kind of happy, since Jace and Clary face lots of struggles in this book. This leads me to one of my complaints for this book: Why in the name of the angel (see what I did there?) is Clary always on the edge of tears? She is pretty much always sad or people worry about her being sad, where did that come from? Luckily that stopped halfway through, or else I would have been really annoyed. Another thing was their relationship in general. The prominent problem I have with Jace is that instead of talking to someone about his feelings, fears or whatever, he just bottles everything up. And now that he is in a relationship one would think that he would talk to Clary, but nope. He much rather leaves her standing and goes off distracting himself.

But let´s talk about Simon. This instalment is the most Simon we have gotten so far and I love it! He is one of my favourites from this series with Isabella, who we also see lots in this book, though by far not as much as Simon. There are new character intruded as well, like Kyle, whom I really like. Sadly we don´t get lots from Alec and Magnus until the end, except from hilarious vacation snaps. Also they went to Vienna, my hometown, so that was cool. Big fan of these two, I ship it.

But gosh the ending! Once again it was the highlight of the whole book! It was really intense and fast moving. For the first time it wasn´t fully relying on fighting, but rather on suspense, which I really liked. One thing I have noticed in Cassandra Clare´s books though is that I am not a big fan of the way she paces her books. They always start out slow, exploring what happened in the last book and slowly starts building plot until the last hundred pages or so, where we finally get tons of action. This is the main reason why I give most of her books only 4 stars, as for the most part of the book I feel like the story is dragging a bit, but then BUM last 100 pages, the action is finally here. Don´t get me wrong I like the formula, but by now it feels a bit generic. I would much rather prefer it if she would give us a bit more of a faster pace in the first three to four hundred paged as well. By now though I finally feel attached to the characters (finally, it took quite some time) and I really want to know what happens next, because that ending gurl, that ending!

Have you read “City of Fallen Angels” and if so, what did you think of it?

Read on xx

Lena