The Dark Artifices In City Of Bones

I was worried that the world of the Shadowhunters would not capture my imagination the same way it did when I was sixteen reading City of Bones for the first time. While I enjoyed The Infernal Devices, it did not live up to the first trilogy for me. It seems as if The Dark Artifices is going to be the same way, thoroughly enjoyable but not as good as the original. While my opinion might change as the other novels come out, Lady Midnight was a great read, but just didn’t hold me in the way that The Mortal Instruments did.

That being said, I was engulfed in the world of the Los Angeles Institute and the residents there. The Blackthorn family and Emma attempting to stay above water after the events at the end of City of Heavenly Fire, while a new threat has entered the LA area mirroring the deaths of Emma’s parents five years earlier. While I adored the Blackthorn family and company, the cast of characters in this book were far too large. I was about two thirds done with the book before I remembered the order of all the siblings and many didn’t serve a purpose other than to be there. I’m sure that they will become more important in other novels, but it just seemed as if siblings were popping out of the wood work. Ironically, I would have also liked to see the family have at least one conversation with Helen, the banished sibling, instead of having her be a name dropped without any
I admit it was a while since I have read the first series and I had no clue who Diana was, making her characters feel two-dimensional. I didn’t care about her at all so any emotional hit she was supposed to have was lost on me and she felt more like a plot device than a character. There was also a lot of references to what happened before and while it was well enough explained, I felt as if the novel relied a little too heavily on the series before