Challenge...4? The Mortal Instruments

I've been spending the last week working everyday at the restaurant and most of the rest of my time reading for my internship. But fear not Challenge followers! I have also been working on what I have dubbed the "long term" Challenges: namely the running challenge, the hundred push ups, and the writing everyday.

All that being said, I made time to finish the Mortal Instrument series by Cassandra Clare. It's that good. So good that after a long night of running food out to tables, when I come home dead exhausted, it calls to me, and I find myself propping up these behemoth sized books instead of vegging out in front of re-runs of The Closer.

I know what you're thinking. Behemoth sized? Doesn't that mean expensive? Yes and no. For you see, I have also been working on the "free things to do" challenge in the process of all of this. I have learned how to exploit the public library system so fantastically that even I, an avid reader, have only had to buy one book all summer. But that's for later.

On to the review: I had picked these books up before Lili suggested this challenge. I sat down in B&N and read a chapter or two of the first book, City of Bones. I wasn't terribly impressed. Less impressed, even, when I saw the display that compared the series to another recent supernatural love story. Initially, I found Clary, the heroine, to be a little thick, the explanations tedious, and I really just wanted to slap the hero, Jace. I found their romantic chemistry to be kind of sneaky, but much more believable than other stories I've read recently.

But oh, the action. Though it took me a book or two to get immersed in Clare's world, I think she writes action sequences beautifully. She writes action scenes like I imagine Joss Wheadon thinks out scenes: simple, but intense choreography, straightforward description, focus on the internal and external while fighting... ah yes. As I learn how to write action sequences, I have a feeling the final fight in City of Glass between Jace and his surprise nemesis will go on my to-be-studied shelf right next to the escape from Privet Drive in Deathly Hallows.

It took me until the second book, City of Ashes, to get really into the series, mostly because I was mad at how the first book ended. But when I finished the third book (City of Glass) yesterday, I found myself wanting back in. I re-read a few chapters just to be in that fantasy world again, which is (in my mind) the mark of a good fantasy novel. On top of that, the characters are pretty well-developed and layered. Even Jace kind of grew on me by the end, mostly because his reveled dimensionality may explain why I didn't like him initially. I may have to go back and look at that.

I eagerly await the release of Clare's next series, which will combine her world from The Mortal Instruments with steampunk and the Victorian era, due out in Fall 2010.