{"id":144,"date":"2010-11-09T07:35:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T13:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=144"},"modified":"2011-03-29T18:03:20","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T00:03:20","slug":"book-review-city-of-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: City of Bones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Title: City of Bones<\/p>\n<p>Author: Cassandra Clare<\/p>\n<p>Genre: YA fantasy\/contemporary<\/p>\n<p>City  of Bones tells the story of Clary Fray, a fifteen-year-old girl who is  about to awaken to a hidden magical world. One night, while dancing at a  club with a friend, she sees something she shouldn&#8217;t have seen &#8212;  couldn&#8217;t have seen. Before she has a chance to learn more, her mother is  kidnapped, leaving Clarey alone but determined to discover the truth.<\/p>\n<p>There  are a lot of fantasy novels out there about an ordinary person  discovering a hidden world, about magic and demons and dark creatures.  There is something comfortingly familiar about all of them and yet there  are a few things that set the good ones, such as City of Bones, apart.<\/p>\n<p>At  the top of the list is character. Clarey is a headstrong teenage girl,  perhaps a little self-absorbed at times but not when it counts. When her  friends and family are in danger, she will help them, no matter what,  and this is what drives her. One of the things I like about Clarey,  especially compared with some of the other heroes I&#8217;ve read of late, is  that she&#8217;s real. She doesn&#8217;t go around poking at sleeping dragons for no  apparent reason, trying to stir up more trouble than she already has,  and she doesn&#8217;t take unnecessary risks. Believe me, there&#8217;s enough  danger without doing any of that.<\/p>\n<p>The supporting characters,  especially Simon and Jace, were also well done. I found the love  triangle intriguing, which is saying something because I&#8217;m not usually  into love triangles. I really enjoyed spending time with all of these  teens.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the other things that set this novel apart are  strong world building and an exciting plot. The ending left me  scrambling desperately for the next book in the series.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 4.5\/5 stars<\/p>\n<p>Recommended to anyone who enjoys fantasy, especially young adult fantasy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: City of Bones Author: Cassandra Clare Genre: YA fantasy\/contemporary City of Bones tells the story of Clary Fray, a fifteen-year-old girl who is about to awaken to a hidden magical world. One night, while dancing at a club with a friend, she sees something she shouldn&#8217;t have seen &#8212; couldn&#8217;t have seen. Before she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,57,60],"tags":[25,29,28,26,27],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading","category-fantasy-what-im-reading","category-young-adult-what-im-reading","tag-book-reviews","tag-cassandra-clare","tag-city-of-bones","tag-fantasy","tag-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}