City of Bones

i love this book as well as the series!!! one of my favorites!!

This book would have probably been ok. The narrators voice and delivery was terrible. Annoying,monotone and ditzy.

Let me start off by saying I really enjoyed the narration. Mae Whitman had great voices throughout for every character and made it fun to listen to. The story however? Cassandra Clare is a very amateur writer. Her writing style isn’t the worst but sometimes she writes with very jarring analogies, detracting from the picture and taking me out of the story. Other times it is clear she wrote with a thesaurus nearby to expand her vocabulary. The plot structure is also very weak. There will be a chapter of exciting action and then five chapters of boring history lessons and dull dialogue. The twists are rather poorly executed, either making no sense or being the most obvious cliche in the book. Another issue I had with this novel was our protagonist, Clary Fray. She is the definition of a Mary Sue. Clary is perfectly “mundane” in every possible way. She undergoes zero character development and learns zero lessons. Clary consistently treats her best friend poorly, often ditching him and getting angry over his happiness. Oh and he still forgives her regardless because of course he does. Clary does almost nothing to advance the plot. Wait actually: she can throw a knife and perfectly hit her target with no practice and can understand Spanish with no studying. Oh wait, those are just traits of a Mary Sue. Clary will also occasionally slap someone or curse them out because she’s a “strong female character”. Eye roll. She also has the intelligence of a brick wall, being absolutely oblivious to *SPOILER* Luke being a werewolf or Valentine being her father. Things we could see coming from miles away. The worldbuilding and overall plot is pretty good!! It’s very entertaining and I completely understand why people would fall in love with the world and want to continue reading this series. It’s not the best and it never swept me up in its magic like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson did, but it’s definitely not bad. Lots of potential here. HOWEVER the biggest issue I have with this novel is the use of cliches and rip-offs instead of originality. Many of you might not know but Cassandra Clare used to be a fanfiction writer and has gotten into trouble in the past for her plagiarism. She has since stopped and moved forward from blatantly stealing the works of others, but City of Bones is far from the most original concept. In fact, it actually started as a Ginny x Draco fanfiction. See the connections? She also wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfiction, which heavily influenced her worldbuilding of this Shadowhunter world. Valentine is an obvious rip-off of Voldemort even down to the names. Two evil lords with Nazi ideology who were once powerful and have “come back from the dead”. I could continue but you get the gist. Overall, City of Bones could have been a fantastic debut novel. It’s set in an exciting world with an author full of potential. However, Clare relied on an amateur writing style, a Mary Sue protagonist, and an abundance of stolen ideas. Quite depressing as I know I would have absolutely adored this book. Please do not let this review discourage you from reading! I’m sure many people will enjoy this book! However, please do not believe it is literature of any sort. And also be aware that Cassandra Clare is a very problematic person for an abundance of reasons, including fetishizing incest but that’s for another time...

I love the book but the ending just tears out my heart and stops on it. Awesome book.

Amazing narration

I forget that there is only one person reading! She is very good over the past couple years I’ve listened to it three times!

I’m originally a fan of the film before I realized the film was based off the books. I’ve tried watching the tv show but it’s just way to corny for me like it’s targeted towards younger teens. So I thought I’d try the books and am happy so far with the first book... Moving on to Book 2... Fingers crossed hoping the rest of the book series is as good as the first...!!!

I appreciate the narrator and the excitement at the right times. It is not easy to create different voices when taking on multiple characters. Story was really good

Great book to listen to.

Great,amazing,thrilling.

I liked the book. Had a food amount of action. It was easy to follow. Narrator was excellent. Liked the character development. I liked the preview to the next book in the series. That one looks interesting.

Really love this book. The series and movie both just don’t do it justice. It’s almost too magical to be reinacted. I love a book that can take my mind places it’s never been. Excited to read the rest of the series!

I love love love The Mortal Instruments series. I love that it has a little of the romance but also a little action. I can appreciate that Cassandra gives the characters relatable personalities as well! I think the narrator did an pretty good job as well, her voice was a little irritating at times but over all pretty well done.

love it! Great Narration. I really enjoyed her portrayal of each character.

Overall it was ok. The narrators British accent is terrible. She switches in between the characters being British and American. If you look past it it's not so bad but I wish she would've just pick one nationality.

I love this book. I've read it twice and listened to it once. The narrator was awesome. I definitely recommend it. :)

It was funny listening to a female do Jace's voice, but she did really great.

The narrator does a great job and I love the book!

She does a wonderful read of the book, great inflections of voice and feeling/emotion of characters!

Wondeful book and great reading. Loved this book. One of my favorite series and the voices were not bad at all.

Loved the book. It's something great to listen to while I'm at work. I get things done and I get to listen to a book while doing it. The book itself was amazing, great imagery. I could really see a little movie inside my head. And the narrator was the best. Not monotonous and not too over the top either. Perfect audiobook!

I loved this book however the narrator wasn't that great.

I thought Mae Whitman did a good job with the narration.

I enjoyed listening to this book. I thought the narrator was quite good and presented the various characters very well and with consistency. I look forward to listening to the other books in the series. Guess I should start with the first one. LOL

Loved the book ms and I, personally, thought Mae Whitman was a fantastic narrator. She managed to capture Jace's haughtiness and Clary's whininess perfectly. Ive found very few audiobook narrators that I like, (males just can't do female voices and females just can't do make voices) but I definitely approve of Mae.

Someone different needed to narrate the book. Love the series but her voice was a tad annoying

loved to see the difference between the book and movie. the narrator has to be one of my favorites!!!

I read this book a long time ago and didn't really enjoy it. Since then, I've read the rest of the series and liked the subsequent books much better so I thought I'd give City of Bones another shot. Unfortunately, it was worse for me the second time around. I just can't get past how immature Clary is. I wish the author had made her character a year or two older.

one of the best books I've read since Harry potter.... love this series!

WOW! I had "read" this book years ago and didn't like it but "listening" to it was a completely different experience! I was more focused on what was happening to the story (rather than how it was written) and this story has so much going on. Jace is incredible, I can't wait to see him on the big-screen. The story is incredibly unique and there's such a huge array of characters - it's an amazing world. I can't wait to see the movie! The narrator could have done a better job, though, in my opinion. In describing scenes and situations it was great. But when it came to dialogue I didn't agree with how the animated voice made some of the characters appear. For example, there were many times when Clary's words sounded stuck-up, like she was a pissed off, spoiled rich girl - had I read the dialogue myself I could have made Clary's responses more meek, soft-toned. That's my only gripe with this audiobook.

It was not as good the other books in this category. And then it really hit rock bottom when I got to the ending. It put me off reading the second book.

Great book all around lots of action and drama.like the tuff heroine

I was a bit worried as I typically don't listen or read this type of book, reading the reviews it seemed it may be a book geared to young girls or strange guys. I did enjoy the book and found it was nice to listen to a different Author from my standard. the plot was easy to figure out so toward the end I found myself wondering why the characters in the book hadn't come to the same conclusions as myself a bit sooner. I would likely read or listen to this Author again to see if it gets any better.