User:Nddunnum/Student Draft of City of Bones

Reception
Although City of Bones received positive reviews, and appeared #8 on the New York Times Best Seller list (Children's books) in April, it gained criticism from School Library Journal.

Publishers’ Weekly praised, “[C]lare’s atmospheric setting is spot-on, informed equally by neo-gothic horror films, and the modern fantasy leanings of Neil Gaiman,” and commented, “…[t]his is a compelling story about family secrets, and coming-of-age identity crises.”

However, School Library Journal criticized the characters, “[T]he characters are sporadically characterized and tend toward behavior that is both predictable and slightly repellant…” but they added that the novel was, “… [e]ntertaining and will have fantasy readers anxiously awaiting the next book in the series.”

Major themes
The novel's theme is ‘descent’. Author Cassandra Clare says, “[I]t’s structured as the hero’s journey to the underworld.”  The book introduces the main protagonist to a supernatural/fantasy world that she’s never been into, and describes her journey there as the descent. Each epigraph in the novel makes a reference to the descent.

Background
The idea of City Bones originally came to author Cassandra Clare when her friend took her to go see a tattoo shop. Her friend showed her footprints on the ceilings, that were criss-crossing or creating patterns, but to Clare,"...[i]t looked like some fabulous supernatural battle had been fought there by beings who’d left their footprints behind." She then got the idea of having a secret society of demon-hunters whose magic was based on an system of tattooed runes. Clare wanted to write something that would combine the elements of a traditional fantasy and, "... [r]ecast it through a modern, urban lens."

Plot Summary
Clary notices two boys with a knife following a blue-haired boy and a tall, beautiful girl into the back room of the club. Clary tells Simon, “who doesn’t see anyone” to get help while she goes inside the room then Clary witnesses the beautiful girl she saw earlier, Isabelle and the two boys with a knife, Jace and Alec, introduce themselves as Shadowhunters, and murder the blue-haired boy that turns out to be a demon.

Clary gets attacked by a Ravener Demon that she later manages to kill by shoving Jace’s stele down its throat before she passes out.

Hodge explains to her who Valentine is, the possibility of her being a shadowhunter because of her ability to withstand a rune that Jace drew on her, and then he sends her home with Jace to investigate her mother’s things for any proof of what happened to her. At her apartment, they are attacked by a Forsaken Demon that Jace kills, and they meet Clary’s neighbor, Madame Dorothea who also has the Sight. They go through Madame Dorothea’s portal,

he has placed a block on her head because of her mother’s requests to stop Clary from having the Sight. after the vampires get distracted with werewolves who were actually looking for Clary.

Madame Dorothea turns into a Greater Demon

Hodge wants his curse of being stuck inside the Institute lifted. Luke returns to fight Valentine, but Jace is hesitant about attacking his father until he realizes that Valentine has never properly treated him as a son.

Renwick’s Island

The novel ends with Clary and Jace, on a motorcyle, over New York, where Clary muses on how “different everything down there is now” because the Sight enables her to look at the supernatural world clearly now.