Review: City of Lost Souls

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Beware of spoilers ahead for the first four books in the series...

After the events of City of Fallen Angels, Jace and the seemingly dead Sebastian have vanished without a trace. Clary is, understandably, highly distressed, as are Alec and Izzy because the Clave has decided to put this whole situation on the back burner. So, what is a gang of three Nephilim, the warlock boyfriend of one of them, and the vampire best friend of another, to do?

They try a lot of things, each one more drastic and outrageous than the last. I'll tell the first one, but no more: they go to the Seelie Queen, and she demands that they give her a pair of rings that are, apparently, faerie-made and give the wearer the ability to talk to another via their thoughts, no matter how far apart they are, as Clary and Simon eventually find out. What's that? You want more? Well, let's just say it involves a lot of inadvisable summoning.

This really is a wonderful book, even better than any of its predecessors - although, of course, none of the Mortal Instruments books have quite held a candle to the absolutely amazing Infernal Devices stories. Beware of plotlines even more insanely tangled-up than the last TMI book, and also a major cliffhanger, which, back in 2012, was even more painful given that we had to wait a whole TWO YEARS until City of Heavenly Fire came out!

Oh, and one more thing - thanks to this book, it's now more clear how far back Cassie planted the seeds for The Dark Artifices by introducing some of the Blackthorn siblings pretty early, even more so than in CoHF. It's nice to see the names we know now, attached to much younger kids this time, though.

View all my reviews