Thought Train to Pusan

Listen… Listen… Okay, just listen… I’m weak. I should know not to get myself into this cheesy nonsense, but good grief I do every time. Let’s follow the path that led me down this rabbit hole: It all started in high school when my friends told me to read The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare, and boy howdy I really enjoyed them! Well, I never got around to reading the last two, but I really liked them. Then that HORRIBLE City of Bones movie came out based on the first book of the series and it was so unintentionally hilarious but also so cringe-worthy, I still can’t even understand it. And now there’s the Shadowhunters show on Netflix… and well… Like I said, I’m weak. And it’s so corny and a total thirst-watch at this point (y’all, the two they got to play the Lightwood siblings are both GORGEOUS and I’m sweating) but I really do enjoy it in all it’s cheesy goodness. But my friends started noticing in the show a lot of references to things in The Infernal Devices t...

I told myself I was done with The Mortal Instruments books after the third one…. but then my friends and I were discussing how corny the movie was, and some things about the next few books were mentioned and well, my curiosity got the better of me (I’m weak, okay?). Considering how I already had the whole series up to this point already acquired on my reading device, I saw no problem in just taking a gander at what happened next to these characters I’ve already spent some time with, even though now the whole thing is a little tainted by the whole plagiarism and Weasley incest fanfiction thing that I was unaware of before (yeesh). And I have to say, given that this 4 th novel in the series features Simon as a central character whose point of view takes more precedence than before, there is less adolescent moping about Clary and Jace’s “forbidden love”. Though, who am I kidding? The story is still wrought with their yearning for one another and difficulties communicating even though...

Or as I like to call it: City of Why Can’t You Guys Just Communicate a Little Better? And so, after a strong first novel and slightly less-engaging sequel, this installment to Cassandra Claire’s Mortal Instruments series hits the third-book-slump for a number of reasons. While the story is still engaging if you have become invested in these characters from the previous books, there is a definite increase in melodrama and love-angst in City of Glass . Furthermore, many of the plot twists and outcomes can be seen coming from a mile away, making it far less exciting than say, City of Bones with all it’s amusing turns. Although I must admit, I did accidentally spoil one of the big twists for myself before reading this book (I was dorking around on the internet, rookie mistake, I know), but I still feel as though you could see where all of this was headed very easily. [Hold on to your hats, kids, if you haven’t read any of these books before, this plot description is likely to ...

Whenever I read a young-adult series, I find that I fall in love with the first book, only to be extremely disappointed by each sequel that comes to follow it (I’m looking at you, Maze Runner , a series I still haven’t finished from frustration with the second novel). Because of this, when I embarked on reading City of Bones before the film adaptation is released this week [Jonathan Rhys Meyers film career, back from grave!], I also decided to read City of Ashes immediately afterwards. While City of Ashes does experience a bit of a sequel slump, it’s not nearly as drastic as I feared it would be, and is still quite good. In any case, the first two books of The Mortal Instruments series have definitely made me want to continue reading to see what happens: I’m enjoying them a lot. Maybe it’s my love of all that fantasy, angels and demons stuff (which we can see in the fact that I never met a Supernatural reference I didn’t want to make). Or maybe it’s that everything seems to ...