Finished City of Bones

Oh My God. That was not how I was expecting City of Bones to end. So shocking. But overall the book was so good, I had to go out and buy the next book City of Ashes. I think the most impressive thing is that it has action, romance AND humor. It’s hard to get that last part in when you have the first two. But I LOVE it when authors do that. Great books, though I have to admit both are mildly disturbing.

The ending of the second one got me thinking about something that Sarah Cloots from Greenwillow said in her speech last Saturday — she said she doesn’t want books that are obviously part of a series without having a satisfying ending in themselves. I’ve heard this from several different editors and I can see where they’re coming from especially with the first book in a series. The writers in my group were talking a lot about this on the car ride home (in which we did not get lost) and we all thought that it was okay to have a cliffhanger for us as readers as long as we felt satisfied anyway.

But the second book in the Mortal Instruments series City of Ashes really made me worry because it was so open and we really didn’t learn any of the secrets that kept getting hinted at that I thought we would know by now — does the author have a plan in which I will one day know everything??? Because I want to feel that there is a master plan here — that one day I will be satisfied (like with HP7). But with series now not being in neat little bunches as much as they once were (quartets, trilogies, sequels) are they just going to go on forever and keep stringing me along? I don’t think I can take it!

Not that I want the Mortal Instruments series to end, I’d like to just keep reading and reading, but at the same time I don’t want to be strung along forever. Like Days of Our Lives — I watched it in college and was waiting for the day that Marlena and John got together (okay, I wasn’t that into their storyline because I thought they were sort of boring, but I did want them to find love) and I just read the headlines of Soap Opera Weekly and they’re still just about to get together! I don’t see it ever really happening, the only conclusion here is for them to get booted off the show or for the show to get canceled. I don’t want that in my books — I want some kind of an ending at least of that story arc. Pretty Little Liars does this too — will we ever know who “A” is? I’m okay with not knowing for awhile but please tell me I’ll know someday!!!!

BZ