City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments #5) – Cassandra Clare

City of Lost Souls continue the story just after the ending of City of Fallen Angels. Sebastian and Jace are missing at the beginning, and Clary is willing to do anything to find Jace and have his soul separated from Sebastian's. A lot of the action takes place away from New York, hidden from even Magnus' magic.

City of Lost Souls really did not impress me.  The writing is not very fluid, and some repetitions are really irking me!  Also, quite a few characters are not at all acting the way I would expect them to.

Alec – as if he would really want Magnus to become mortal just so that they would be each others final lover…
Izzy – acting all vulnerable and clinging to Simon…
Simon – acting very strangely around the girls in his life…
Jocelyn – one day acting like a mom, the next forgetting she has a daughter at all… (oh, wait, that isn’t all that strange, is it?)

He turned his head, his cheek against the back of the car seat.  OK, how is that even possible?  He is sitting in the driver seat, and somehow, he is able to turn his head in a way that makes his cheek touch against the back of the seat??

Then she looked at the rack of shower products and said an unladylike word.  This is Izzy, and she very often says ‘unladylike’ words!  What’s the big deal?

When Magnus and Alec opened the portal for (and left with) Jocelyn and Izzy, I didn’t get it at all.  First of all, why couldn’t the women open their own portal?  Secondly, Jocelyn was very keen on staying at Magnus’ place because she wanted to make sure Clary was safe.  I would think most mothers who wanted their children safe would at least check in on said children before leaving them alone in an appartment… And why didn’t she just ask Magnus or Alec to stay with Clary instead of coming to open portals for her?

The desk was a slab of marble set upon the statues of two snarling wolves.  What’s with the statue desks?  Wolves in this extract, and kneeling angels in the library.

Jace and Clary spent the day wandering – through mazelike tiny streets than (shouldn’t that be ‘that’ and not ‘than’?)  ran along canals whose water ranged from deep green to murky blue. […] There were no roads here, no cars, only twisting little alleys, and bridges arching over canals whose water was as green as malachite.  Yeah, I got that the canal water was greeninsh… really, I did!

She alighted in the bow of the boat, wobbling on the wooden seat, but steady.  Could someone please explain to me how you be both wobbling and steady at the same time?

Their eyes were so close together, she could see the pattern of gold and darker gold in his irises, like a mosaic opal.  Both gold an darker gold, eh?

The above happened in a little over half-way through the book, and I am still not impressed with this installment, but it did get a lot better in the last 25% of the book.  Actually, most of the first 75% of the story was not completely necessary IMO, as if it was added to the important part of the story only to make it a full-length novel.

I have som other strange quotes I highlighted in my kindle :

..but he also wore a scarlet leather tunic… really?  Scarlet Letter – scarlet leather?

Alec had long, long legs, and, though she was fast, it was hard to keep up with him when he wanted it to be. When he wanted what to be exactly?  This made no sense at all to me!

‘Jace.’ The voice was familiar to him as his own...  I am wondering if my English is faulty – or if this should have been the voice was as familiar to him as his own…

There are a lot of things that happened in City of Lost Souls that I don’t think made a lot of sense, but that was completely in line with the ending of book 4.  I, of course also thought that the end of book 4 was not the best, and far from necessary for the story to move forward.

And I am disappointed in Magnus – he didn’t even let Alec explain anything.  Magnus has lived long enough to understand how a guy could be jealous and insecure, no? And at the same time, Alec was almost not recognizable in this – he seemed to be further away from his normal personality than Jace was, and that’s truly saying something.

I did, however, really enjoy how Jace and Clary finally got together again in the very end, and their conversation was just what was needed to make me want to read the next book in the series.

About Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms

Linda is an English as foreign language teacher and has a Master's degree in English Language and Literature. She's an avid reader, blogger, compulsive one-clicker and a genre omnivore. Ever since she learnt how to read she has been seen with a book or two in her hands everywhere she goes.

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