Thursday, September 19, 2013

Mortal Instruments: A Disaster

I am a fan of YA Fiction: compelling stories, coming of age character arcs, young love triangles and some
sort of necessary decision making that borders the line between good and evil. Needless to say that when I heard Mortal Instruments was going to be made into a movie - I felt that I owed it to myself to read the book prior to the Hollywood manifestation.

It doesn't happen very often that I become so irritated with the protagonist of a story that I am glad when the book is done (with the exception of David Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius which I set down and abandoned without completing). But in Mortal Instruments, Clary Fray was just too oblivious. The whole story centers around the fact that she has a gift of some kind. We find out that she is the offspring of two Shadowhunters, and so she too is a Shadowhunter.

Her gifts are buried beneath a Warlock's mental block built in her mind to keep her from seeing the world as her Shadowhunter nature wants her to see it. I just don't see the scenario of Clary transitioning into a Shadowhunter going very well, because Clary seems totally incapable of piecing things together.