Review: #720
Title: City of Heavenly Fire
Series: The Mortal Instruments - 6th and final book
Author: Cassandra Clare
Read Before: no
Comments: The final novel in The Mortal Instrument series and the actual final one closing off Clary’s story this time, not like the semi-reboot/continuation that was the fourth book. If you expected bloated text and heavy descriptions of relationships, love and the characters’ feelings for each other, then you won’t be disappointed. Again, it feels overbearing at times but surprisingly, the author cuts back just ever enough during the last third of the book to deliver a fantastic climax. This was always the potential of the series, with an interesting world and mechanics, that the author neglected in favour of focusing on teenage love, it is finally somewhat realized in Heavenly Fire as surprise after surprise is told. Considering the fourth and fifth books were slogs in terms of story pacing, Heavenly Fire does a much better job of pushing the plot forward towards the end, and how the Shadowhunters overcome the immense odds against them. Clary’s brother, Sebastian, is going to destroy the world and it is up to her and her friends to find a way to defeat them, when he is effectively invincible. The ending closes off most of the plot threads which is great, and while it ends up being a happy ending, it sure took a long time. Considering the novel is 700 pages long, it’s a bit annoying when the epilogue takes 100 pages, the author definitely unnecessarily droned on for too long to wrap things up. There were some events that were disappointing, such as where characters who were heavily focused in the previous books were shafted here, giving readers a sense of what’s the point. City of Heavenly Fire is a surprisingly better conclusion to the series than expected.
Rating: 6.5/10