City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
So I finally have had the opportunity to read the first two books in Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy, City of Bones and City of Ashes. My assessment? Two thumbs WAY up. I shouldn’t be surprised, really, given how much I love Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier, and not only are the three of them friends, but they seem to have very similar approaches to urban fantasy. In fact, if I had to compare the MI books to anything, it would probably be Holly’s Tithe and sequels. Not necessarily in ideas or content, but just some spark that makes the fantasy very gritty and real. It makes me feel like I need to live in New York for a while to be a good writer. (I should also add the caveat that Holly was one of my Clarion instructors and probably one of the coolest people I’ve ever had the opportunity to hang out with.)
I’m always pleased to see new systems of magic and new takes on magical creatures (one of my favorite things about urban fantasy is seeing how different authors handle vampires in particular because there’s so many different myths associated with them), and Clare’s shadowhunters are quite different than anything else I’ve seen. She’s got great characters, ones that you care about, the kind that you find yourself rooting for and reading between your fingers by the end of the books, hoping that she doesn’t kill any off. The kind that, given the time to build up a fandom, will probably start shipping wars (which I always thought would be a kind of fun thing to see as an author).
A lot of people probably realize that Clare was (still is, really) an incredibly well known Harry Potter fanfiction writer (and unlike many people in fandom, she doesn’t make a secret of this). She came up more than once in interviews when I was studying fandom in graduate school, and then again when I was researching my note this past year. I would consider this a feather in her cap rather than a negative thing–at the very least, I imagine it helped her sell books! But I’m really pleased to see that the books are doing well on their own, and that her name is moving on past the fanfiction stuff.
I did actually bring her up in my discussion of social norms in my note (which is out now, actually – “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Fandom: How Existing Social Norms Can Help Shape the Next Generation of User-Generated Content”), because her case was a great example of the self-policing of copyright matters. She was accused (by fellow fandomers) of plagiarism in her fanfiction, and whether or not it was even a valid accusation, it followed her into her legitimate writing career. Because googling her writing name (Cassandra Clare) still had hits to pages about the “Cassie Claire plagiarism debacle.” However! That was… nine months ago that was I writing it, and a new google search just now showed that the page still shows up on the first page of hits, but it’s now at the bottom and it’s the only mention of “Claire” at all on that first page. So I think that’s a really good indication of how well her writing career is going.
And I can definitely see shades of a Harry Potter fan in her writing, too – which, to me, is also a good thing! I always like stories that have the shadow of a previous generation because it provides such rich backstory with very little work, especially if there are parallels with the current generation. So like the Marauders in Harry Potter, Mortal Instruments gives us the “Circle” and there’s even the Giles/Remus/teacher-with-a-darkside character in Luke, which is probably my favorite character archetype.
So all in all, I highly recommend Cassandra Clare’s work, and personally, I think that these books (along with Holly’s and Justine’s and a number of others) are far better than the Twilight series, which seems to be getting all the press lately. And as someone who’s always said that fanfiction can be a springboard for legitimate writers rather than quicksand, well, here’s one good example for me.
(Oh, and also, Clare wrote a story in my friend Steve Berman’s recent anthology Magic in the Mirrorstone. Which I haven’t read, but I’m sure it’s ace if Steve liked it.)
