City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

June 2009, Walker
496 pages, Paperback
Personal Copy

Young Adult, Urban Fantasy

Werewolves, vampires, fairies, governing body, rebellion, great dress sense, awesome array of weapons, fire (pretty!), glass (duh - why else would the title have glass in?), fear, escape, torture, acceptance, huge secrets uncovered, family ties and friendships formed and lost, 100% wow factor, quite a lot of violence - most of it gruesome, the odd use of bad language and a few adult situations, tissues will be needed, a fair amount of humour.

Summary from Walker. 
Amid the chaos of war, the Shadowhunters must decide to fight with the vampires, werewolves and other Downworlders - or against them. Meanwhile, Jace and Clary have their own decision to make: should they pursue the love they know is forbidden?

Nayuleska's reason for loving Clary...I feel so happy to say I love Clary 100% now. This book was it. Clary wasn't a nitwit in this one. The whole incest thing - I can't spoil it, but yeah, totally understand why it happened and very happy with the outcome. She really comes into her own here, she has quite a strength of character.

Is there another character who deserves a special mention? Maia! She gets cooler with each book. But I'd like to bring the focus on Isabelle, who I positively adore in this book, because she gets hurt terribly, but manages to stay focused at the crucial moments.

How evil/nasty is the enemy? Valentine didn't get any evil-er, he's a prime psycho, definitely bent on destroying the world. He deserves everything that happened to him.

Are there plenty of plot twists and surprises? Understatement of the year. I didn't like book 1 & 2 that much. The incest thing really bugged me. But finding out the truth about that here, suddenly everything made sense. Clary came into her own, the revelations kept thumping down from the sky. I now want to reread the previous books, which I didn't necessarily want to do by the end of book 2. There are some tissue moments which are pretty heart breaking.

One of my favourite parts was...a Maia thing. 1) I love the slogans on her clothes. 2) - this made me laugh on page 232: 'She [Maia] put her hand against her stomach. "And gross, by the way. I can't believe I munched all that demon. I hope I'm not allergic.'

Seeing as I 101% loved this, it gets 10/10! You can see what Cem thought of it here. We have quite different takes on the book, which goes to show we all have different tastes (I did not have a clue about the truth between Jace & Clary at the end of book 2).

Definitely head over to Cassandra's website to check out more about her and her books.

Suggested reads
These two are pretty obvious - book 1, City of Bones

Book 2, City of Ashes (link to follow)

(And book 4, City of Fallen Angels which I've just started reading)