Let’s start out with the good things I liked about this book, before I say what I didn’t like about it. Despite being one of those young adult fantasy series Clare does the unthinkable with writing this book - she uses third person narration instead of the more popular, highly overused, first person narration. And let me tell you this book is all the better for it. Because this type of narration really lets the story and world building unfold in a more detailed manner where first person narration greatly limits world building, which to me has become more a cheap gimmick and crutch.
Claire’s world building for this story is a delight to read as her world unfolds in thick rolls of complex history and mythology that made me want to know more about her world. That is a good thing, because creating new and interesting worlds is a hard thing to do and for her to do it like she has was a delight to read. The mythology and history she created was so rich and detailed as to make any geek jump for joy with devouring so much of it - and the geek inside me did do just that.
But unfortunately there were a lot of things she did that hindered her world and book from being all that it could be. There were way too many things she used that were blatant thefts from Rowling’s Harry Potter. Now some things I can understand, but she went a little too far in my opinion. They call humans “mundanes” in her book (Rowling called humans “muggles”); her villain is named Valentine and wants to pretty much wipe all downworlders off the face of the earth in some kind of racial genocide (Rowling’s bad guys is named Valdemort and he pretty much wants to wipe everyone but pure blood witches off the face of the earth in some kind racial genocide); there are hints at some kind of search about to take place in the later books much like Rowling did with her gang chasing down the horcruxes; there’s a picture of Claire’s main character’s parents and their friends much like Harry’s parents and their friends; and, last but definitely not the least, there’s just this feeling that the main character in Claire’s book is going to be some kind of chosen One that is going to save the world. Each time these came up I just groaned inside, because it would have been so easy to come up with something more original than that and, considering all of the trouble she went too to create this richly detailed world, one would think she could have came up with more original ideas than those.
Also her characters who are under eighteen talk and act like adults, which just drove me nuts that I didn’t care for many of the main characters. I found the side characters much more interesting, believable, and easier to relate to. In fact, I kept wanting the main characters to either get killed or just really badly beat up, because their annoyance became so grinding at times that I felt nothing for them but hatred. But such was the world she created that I felt compelled to keep reading. I just felt Claire forced things to quickly pacing wise, whereas Rowling took her time to build characters before she really started revealing the past histories of everyone. Because she took that time to develop the relationship between reader and character, the reader became invested in the character so that when revelations and histories became revealed they were a big deal. Claire just starts out revealing some many revelations and histories that none of them have any real impact except as a gimmick because I have nothing invested in the characters at all. She hasn’t earned it, whereas Rowling earned every ounce of it.
Now after saying all of this, this is still a good series to commit too and one that I will be reading the next books in the series, unless the characters just start to over power the world building that has taken place.
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