City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

It seems that everything has just gone right in the world of Shadowhunters, demons and magical beings, but, in reality, the great triumph for the Shadowhunters against Valentine has opened up a world of even greater evil…

When Valentine was killed, the Downworlders given a place among the Clave and Clary Fray and Jace Lightwood finally got together, everything seemed to turn back to normal. Simon Lewis, however, is feeling anything but normal. His vampire compulsions are getting stronger and his unusual condition forces him into the world of vampire politics, a place he never wanted to be. His two girlfriends and new werewolf friend aren’t helping. Jace is acting very strange and his relationship with Clary is getting dark and noticeably tense. An old girlfriend of Magnus Bane’s pops up and there’s something scary going on with human babies not far away...Can Jace and Clary work out what’s going on with Jace? Will Simon discover and take the right path for his new, vampiric self? Can the whole group stop the evil lurking in all their lives before a new horror arises?

Cassandra Clare has been welcomed lovingly into the arms of the young adult fiction fan base, her Mortal Instruments series thrilling, delighting and ensnaring many young-ish readers. The latest instalment to this series, City of Fallen Angels, was highly anticipated by these readers and is something that I couldn’t wait for!

I wasn’t sure whether I liked C.O.F.A. or not. On the one hand, it was just as exciting as ever and still closely linked to the plot of the previous three books in the series, which I wasn’t expecting- where I thought that the old problem would die down and something new would come up elsewhere, a stronger, more disturbing issue has risen from the ashes of Valentine’s failure and Clary’s mistakes. On the other hand, there is an immense contrast between C.O.F.A. and the first half of the series- the quality of Clare’s characters has been lost, for the best in everyone except Jace. Jace’s problem has robbed him of his wit, sarcastic humour and self-centred attitude. The Mortal Instruments series just seems so much emptier without the humour that Clare had no way to pair with the darkness of her themes.

I think that the book being predominantly in Simon’s point of view was a good thing. Simon has grown as a character and his story is one of the most interesting by far, because he is so unsure of what he’s going to do about almost everything! It was good to wonder what side he would take in the vampire’s political troubles, which girl did he like the most out of the two he was dating and how was he going to cope with the struggles of his bloodlust. People that I spoke to before reading C.O.F.A. were pretty negative about Simon’s point of view and I am happy that they were more or less wrong in their presumptions.

This was a sufficiently exciting story with a strong plot and a good link to the first half of the series. Upset though I was with the absence of Jace’s usual character traits, I am intrigued by the rest of the story and cannot wait until the next book comes out. I recommend this to any teenager seeking an adventurous, action-packed, dark read with watered-down horror (very watered-down, or I wouldn’t have been able to read it).

My Rating: 4/5