Here’s one that surprised me. I really didn’t like Clare’s earlier book ‘City of Bones,’ but I decided to try out this book anyway. Clockwork angel is set in the same universe, but at a different time to the ‘mortal instruments’ series. I started reading the book with apprehension, sure I wouldn’t like it. Now, it has its flaws, but in my opinion Clockwork Angel is a much better book than City of Bones. The author has improved so much.
City of Bones had a lot of technical problems that, as an author made me cringe. I really liked the idea, so wanted to love it, but it was a three star book for me at best. Clockwork Angel is a much smoother read. While the characters are very similar to the types of characters used before, they seemed deeper, more real. The technical writing difficulties (such as a boatload of convoluted similes) are less, and the storyline is more structured. Reading City of Bones was an odd experience as the storyline seemed to hop around for little reason. Clockwork Angel was more tied together. I didn’t get the idea that she’d chucked a scene in for the heck of it, instead every scene seemed to have some purpose to the overall story.
I think she did a good job of capturing Victorian London. Some might argue that they were strangely modern thinking in terms of women, but I think she managed that quite well by making her main character surprised that the Shadowhunters involved women so much. And even then, the Shadowhunters weren’t at our standards of treating women as equals.
There were things that I didn’t like about it. The writing itself still felt a little off, some of the things the characters said felt stilted, and it still had a little of the ‘everyone has a tragic back story’ vibe that drowned City of Bones. But all in all I enjoyed this one. It had a couple big twists that were pretty good, and it was an easy read.
As always, if you still aren’t sure whether to read it, check out more reviews here:
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