City of Bones by Cassandra Cla(i)re
Feb. 2nd, 2009 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vickyduckyFirst things first - I really enjoyed this book. I'm pretty certain I'd never have read it if it hadn't been by CC but I didn't want to spend any money on it either! When it shouted at me from the teen section in the library I picked it up without hesitation and I'm glad I did. It was easy to read, kept up a good pace throughout and I liked all the characters.
Apart from the Potter series and my failed attempts to read Lord of the Rings (which is quite different anyway) this is the only 'fantasie' book that I've read so there were things which could be standards of the genre but which in all honesty seemed to me distractingly like things in the Potterverse. For example - ordinary people being called 'mundies'. For all I know using the term 'mundane' for non-magical people is rife in this sort of book; in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
emmagrant01's 'Left my Heart' American wizards use this term instead of 'muggles'. Anyway there were any number of things like that which shrieked 'Potter' at me but which may not be unique to that world.
I know it is not an original idea that the male lead in CoB (Jace) is DV!Draco. I'd gone into this knowing that but I'd imagined CC had done it by accident. That she was writing this at the same time as finishing DV and that she just likes people like that so that's how she wrote him. What I mean by that is that all the good guys in, for example, Rosamunde Pilcher books like gardening and aren't keen on central heating and think it important to have fresh flowers in guest rooms so in the same way Jace and Draco are blond and have eyes the colour of precious metal and use sarcasm defensively and have a sharp wit but are vulnerable and have very odd relationships with their fathers etc etc. What really took me by surprise was that she clearly made them the same deliberately, that in fact to her DV!Draco and Jace are the same character she just called him Jace because she'd be sued if she called him Draco! Why do I think that? Well because time and again she used the exact same phrase about Jace as she had used about Draco in DV - 'it was the first time she had ever seen him do something ungraceful' and the absolute clincher, a whole long story about Jace being given a falcon to train by his father and then his father killing it - word for word that story is used for Draco and Lucius in DV. I've dug out my old copy of DV and I'm re-reading it just to see how similar they really are. There's a whole lot of stuff at the end of CoB between Jace and Valentine that seemed very reminiscent of Draco Lucius interactions and I'm sure there was something about mirrors in DV as well.
Also - Clary's mum's best friend is a werewolf and Valentine is so Lord Voldemort. It's like she decided to publish DV and changed it just enough to do so.
Any way that's just my opinion.
Apart from the Potter series and my failed attempts to read Lord of the Rings (which is quite different anyway) this is the only 'fantasie' book that I've read so there were things which could be standards of the genre but which in all honesty seemed to me distractingly like things in the Potterverse. For example - ordinary people being called 'mundies'. For all I know using the term 'mundane' for non-magical people is rife in this sort of book; in
emmagrant01's 'Left my Heart' American wizards use this term instead of 'muggles'. Anyway there were any number of things like that which shrieked 'Potter' at me but which may not be unique to that world. I know it is not an original idea that the male lead in CoB (Jace) is DV!Draco. I'd gone into this knowing that but I'd imagined CC had done it by accident. That she was writing this at the same time as finishing DV and that she just likes people like that so that's how she wrote him. What I mean by that is that all the good guys in, for example, Rosamunde Pilcher books like gardening and aren't keen on central heating and think it important to have fresh flowers in guest rooms so in the same way Jace and Draco are blond and have eyes the colour of precious metal and use sarcasm defensively and have a sharp wit but are vulnerable and have very odd relationships with their fathers etc etc. What really took me by surprise was that she clearly made them the same deliberately, that in fact to her DV!Draco and Jace are the same character she just called him Jace because she'd be sued if she called him Draco! Why do I think that? Well because time and again she used the exact same phrase about Jace as she had used about Draco in DV - 'it was the first time she had ever seen him do something ungraceful' and the absolute clincher, a whole long story about Jace being given a falcon to train by his father and then his father killing it - word for word that story is used for Draco and Lucius in DV. I've dug out my old copy of DV and I'm re-reading it just to see how similar they really are. There's a whole lot of stuff at the end of CoB between Jace and Valentine that seemed very reminiscent of Draco Lucius interactions and I'm sure there was something about mirrors in DV as well.
Also - Clary's mum's best friend is a werewolf and Valentine is so Lord Voldemort. It's like she decided to publish DV and changed it just enough to do so.
Any way that's just my opinion.
