Book Review: Clockwork Angel

Title: Clockwork Angel
Author: Cassandra Clare
Publisher/Year: McElderry / 2010
Date Finished: 10 March 2011
Source/Format: Gift / Print

Buy | Borrow | Accept | Avoid

Challenges: TBR Dare, Steampunk Challenge, Gothic Reading,

The Short and Sweet of It
Tessa leaves New York to join her brother in London, but once she arrives she is taken captive by two sisters intent on perfecting Tessa's powers. But Tessa didn't know she had a power; she didn't know anything about the strange and magical world existing alongside her own. Soon she is embroiled in the world of Shadowhunters and demons.

A Bit of a Ramble
I can not express how much I freaking adore Clare's novels. The Mortal Instruments trilogy, City of Bones, City of Ashes, and City of Glass, rocked my world when I read them, and I was thrilled to receive this novel, a prequel to the MI trilogy for Christmas. Clockwork Angel includes everything I loved from Mortal Instruments - passion, mythology, kickassery - and then it puts two cherries on top: Victorian London and steampunk. Purrrfffect.

The layers of depth Clare injects in her work really adds to the world building. Some film terms to explain: a narrative in film comprises two parts, the fabula and the syuzhet. The syuzhet is the story you see on the screen. The fabula is what you don't see but still know. In other words, the syuzhet is the plot and the fabula is the story. While I appreciate plots, quite a bit actually, what I want is a story. I want a complete world populated with not only the characters I am reading about, but tales of people who came before and the promise of those who will come in the future. Clare's world building is perfect in this way; the world created within the pages of the text refers to and develops its own past and promises a future.

If you have not read Clare yet, you are really missing out. On a side note, I do think it beneficial to read Mortal Instruments before the Infernal Devices. While this may seem backwards because of chronology, sometime the publishing order should guide you instead.