Just Finished Reading City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

City of Ashes is Cassandra Clare's second book, published in 2008, of her six-part series The Mortal Instruments.  Once again sixteen-year old Clarey, still progressively discovering her supernatural talents, finds herself in another string of life-or-death adventures with her friends Simon, Jace, Isabelle, and Alec as they fight their nemesis Valentine.  The setting once again is New York City as the angelic Shadowhunters...assigned to Earth to destroy demons...find themselves in a developing civil war between those who follow Valentine's mission to destroy non-demonic "downworlders" like werewolves and vampires and the "good guys" who want to preserve and respect them, of which Jace and Clarey stand out as the heroes.  It's hard to reveal the plot beyond this since by doing so I might not only be spoiling the book for potentials readers (like you) but also would be unwittingly spoiling the first book in the series, City of Bones.  Instead, I'll just post some general reactions...

Stephanie Meyer, in my opinion, did a much better job with her Twilight series of presenting a young adult fiction series that vividly painted a picture of an alternative culture where vampires and werewolves thrived.  And as for that genre of fiction in general, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling are the gold standards...The Mortal Instruments to me falls short to a degree.  Still, it's entertaining escapist reading although I wished that the author had invested more time and energy in developing the main characters' personalities before undertaking the numerous plot and identity twists prevalent in the stories...and some of the dialog seems stilted and unnatural.  Well, that's just my opinion...why don't you read it and share yours?  In any event, I'm going to read on to the end of the series: the next book is titled City of Glass...