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Cassandra Clare – Clockwork Prince | Review

Title: Clockwork Prince

Author: Cassandra Clare

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 512

Rating: 2.5/5

Cassandra Clare – Clockwork Prince

Yeah, I’m still not a fan of this series. The Mortal Instruments has been okay so far, but both of The Infernal Devices books that I’ve read have been so dull and lifeless. I don’t like Clare’s depiction of Victorian London, mainly because I don’t think she actually bothers to do it too much, and I feel as though these books could just as easily be set anywhere else in the world at any time period given that they spend most of their time inside Shadowhunter institutes or whatever anyway.

I was also under the impression that this was supposed to be urban fantasy, whereas the two books so far have just been romance novels with maybe ten pages of fantasy thrown in. This one has a love triangle in, a trope which I’ve always hated, and Will Herondale is such an asshole that it physically pains me to read about him. I hope he dies in the next book. This book tried to explain why he’s such a douchecanoe, but I don’t think it’s any excuse.

Not that I really care for the other characters, either. Tessa is a wet blanket, Jem is okay but again, because such a big deal is made about the fact that he’s dying, I hope that he does actually die so that it’s not all a big cop out at the end of the next one. I’m pretty sure that some cure will be found or something, though. In fact, if her other books are anything to go by then he’ll die and be brought back to life, which is another thing that I hate. Death isn’t a joke and shouldn’t be used so lightly, and Cassandra Clare isn’t the only author to devalue it by constantly killing and resurrecting her characters.

Cassandra Clare

But I’m going off on a tangent. Part of the problem for that is that I just don’t have too much to say about this book. Nothing much happened because like I say, it was all about romance. A bunch of different people hooked up and then hooked up with other people like some giant game of pass the parcel where you don’t want to see what’s inside. Then it ended, and I already can’t remember what actually happened. And I only finished it a couple of hours ago.

Granted, I’m not necessarily the target audience for this book, but The Mortal Instruments series is at least tolerable. With this one, I’m just so over it and the thing I liked about it the most was the fact that it had massive print. When your favourite thing about a book is the size of the print, you have to start asking yourself questions about why you’re even reading it, and I’m actually not sure. I’d have given up on Clare’s books by now if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m buddy reading them with some friends. Eh. Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t re-read.

Cassandra Clare Quote

Click here to buy Clockwork Prince.

Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light | Review

Title: Skulduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light

Author: Derek Landy

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 605

Rating: 8/10

Derek Landy - Skullduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light

Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

This book messed with my mind, man – at first, I really struggled to get in to it, and I could never tell who was who, whether they were good guys or bad guys or even what they were actually doing. But then I got absorbed, after the first hundred pages or so, and everything got a lot more exciting.

I get the feeling that I would’ve suspended my disbelief a little sooner if I’d read the earlier books in the series, because the author seems to assume that you know a lot about his fictional world, although the occasional exposition that he uses to fill you in on what happened earlier is actually well-handled and subtle enough that you don’t even notice what’s happening.

Which is a good thing, because there’s a lot going on – people dying left, right and centre, and occasionally coming back to life, switching allegiance or doing something else that’s equally surprising. It gets confusing to say the least, although I suspect it’ll be easier to understand it all if you’ve started the series from the beginning.

Derek Landy

And from what I understand, quite a lot of people do just that – when I was reading this at work, one of my colleagues stopped me and asked to take a look at the cover. It turns out that her kids, and her kids’ friends, are obsessed with the Skulduggery Pleasant series, in the same way that my own generation was obsessed with Harry Potter.

In fact, when I first started reading the novel, I did detect the influence of the Harry Potter series, and to begin with I was worried that it might just be a rip-off. It turns out I was wrong – the world of the Skulduggery Pleasant series is completely different, and in places I think it weakens the plot-line. Magic needs some universal laws that must always be obeyed, otherwise it can just be used to explain away gaps in the story, as it was occasionally used here.

But despite that, The Dying of the Light is a pretty compelling read, and once I really got in to it, I did find it hard to put it down. Sure, the barrier to entry is a little high if you haven’t read the other books in the series, but once you get past that, you’ll be interested in the huge collection of characters on offer, and I bet that you’ll find a favourite and settle down with the back catalogue to read about what happened to them before the events of The Dying of the Light kicked off.

Valkyrie Cain

I don’t want to go in to too much detail about the plot, partly because it’s too complicated to go in to and partly because I don’t want to spoil it – suffice to say that if you’re in to magic, fantasy and the fight of good against evil, then you’re going to enjoy it. Hell, I’m not even going to tell you who wins!

The only problem for me, when you consider the target audience of kids and young adults, was the level of gore that the book contains – it seems like every couple of pages, someone’s being beheaded, dismembered or otherwise brutally murdered, even some peripheral characters who the author could’ve left alive. It might bother you if you’re reading it to kids.