City of Glass is the third book in Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments Trilogy. I don’t want to go too much into the plot, as that could spoil what happens in the previous books for someone who hasn’t read them… but, a brief overview is probably needed. Clary previously discovered that she is a Shadowhunter (part of a group of people who hunt demons), and that her father (who she though was dead) is an evil man who wants to destroy the Clave (the group of Shadowhunters) in order to create a new “pure” Clave that he would rule. This book takes place in Alicante – the ancestral home of the Shadowhunters. Clary, Jace & co. need to convince the Clave that Valentine (Clary’s father) poses a real threat, and needs to be defeated before he enslaves and kills not just all the Downworlders (vampires, werewolves, fey and warlocks), but also all the current members of the Clave.

I really enjoyed this! And I can happily say that I am finished one of the series/trilogies that I was in the middle of. (Which is ALWAYS a good thing!) I know a lot of people really don’t like this trilogy, but it is a lot of fun. Yes, there are flaws – yes, Clary is very Mary-Sue-ish. Yes, the writing isn’t the best ever. But, it’s fun. Plus, the quality Clare’s writing has gotten so much better throughout the trilogy.

Her ideas throughout the book still aren’t always the most original – there were a number of parts that felt like they had been done before. Not to the extent of plagiarism (and I only bring this up because of the whole history of CC’s plagiarizing in the Draco Trilogy deal). But the ideas behind them felt very familiar. For example, Simon gets Marked with the mark of Cain. This isn’t the first time Cain has been tied in some way to vampires.

One thing that I did really like about the book was how Clare could take what I expected to happen and make it into something better. Take how she applied the Hero Quest in this book. It was very obvious that Clare followed (whether consciously or not) the basic Hero Quest for most of the book, but I’m left wondering now if we saw the Hero Quest happening to Clary, or whether it was to Jace. Because both would fit for the most part. One thing that happens a lot in the Hero Quest is that the hero dies (or takes a journey through the underworld or whatever) before coming back to our world – we see this in Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Egyptian mythology, the story of Odysseus, etc, etc – but it wasn’t Clary who did this in City of Ashes, it was Jace. And so I’m left thinking back on the other books, and I’m going to need to reread them all in order to investigate further.

I know people who have been a bit unsure about certain aspects of this trilogy – mainly the whole brother and sister bit. To those people, I want to say that you should keep on reading. I won’t tell you exactly how it happens, but let us just say that neither Jace nor Clary end up with a sibling, and everything makes sense in the end.

(Random sidenote: Luke is one of the VERY FEW fictional werewolves that I actually enjoy. More than enjoy – he is awesome. A werewolf who owns a bookstore? How did I not love him before this book?)

Bottom Line: A satisfying ending to the trilogy. It’s by no means the best written book, but it is a lot of fun. If you read the trilogy, I recommend not leaving a long period of time between each installment. There are A LOT of mentions of things that happened previously in the trilogy that I couldn’t remember anything about – definitely would have been much more enjoyable if I could remember everything I was supposed to.