Wednesday 8 May 2013

Review ~ Clockwork Princess ~ Cassandra Clare



Title: Clockwork Princess

Author: Cassandra Clare

Published:  March 19th 2013

By: Walker Books.

First line: "I'm afraid" said the little girl sitting on the bed.

Last line:  Sorry, spoilery!

Fave line: Sorry, if I started adding fave lines in here, I'd end up re-writing half the book!




So Clockwork Princess has been my most anticipated book since the release of its predecessor, Clockwork Prince.  I've certainly made no secret of my affiliation to Team Jem and I have devoured every teaser and every plot theory on every website that I could get my hands on whilst I waited for its release.  To compound the anticipation further I spent hour after hour speculating further with my twitter peeps as to how things might conclude.  In the end was I disappointed? Um, that would be a huge no! Actually I got everything I wanted and more!

Clare has managed to wrap up the lives of everyone in the Infernal Devices series very neatly and I will talk about that soon. Now is not the time. We have far more pressing matters to get out in the open. I can’t really go any further without discussing what is undoubtedly the most perfect love triangle ever created! EVER! Jem, Tessa and Will. Oh. My. God. There were so many feels  in this last read I can’t even begin to explain.  Are there winners and losers in the end? I actually think there are but you have to get right to the end of the book, right to the end of the epilogue and then you have to think about it for a bit to realise it.  Or at least I did, but then I was pretty numb for about a week so it did take me a while… No spoilers here, but just to say that what with Jem being so ill and so in love with Tessa, with Will being so in love with Tessa and trying to hide it because of his love for Jem, with Tessa being in love with both of them and with Will and Tessa both fearing for Jem’s health this book chewed me up and spat me out over and over again.  I lost almost a whole nights’ sleep, partly because I couldn't put the book down, partly because when I did put the book down, when the words were starting to blur, I was so overdosed on the feels I couldn't sleep anyway!

The furore surrounding the Jem/Tessa/Will triangle does have the potential to steer readers attention away from the main plot.  Thankfully this did not happen for me.  Mortmain’s plans really start to take centre stage in this final instalment and we finally get to see just how deluded he is and how much he is prepared to sacrifice to get his own way.  The final battle scenes in this story are really well written and provide a fitting conclusion to the story as a whole.

I was pleased that the peripheral stories still stood out, even amongst the angst and the feels. Jessamine’s return to the Institute, Gideon Lightwood’s relationship with Sophie, Charlotte’s battle to keep her role as leader of the Institute and to keep her family together and Henry’s devotion to her kept me transfixed from the first page.  Magnus was a joy as ever, and I love how much softer he is in this series. He often speaks throughout both TID and TMI about how immortality and the losses one experiences hardens one over time and I can see how that has clearly happened to him over the centuries.  I will admit I was a little annoyed by Will’s sister Cecily at first and she seemed to come across as a spoilt brat but I did start to warm towards her towards the middle of the book.  Did I like her by the end? Jury's still out on that one…

There are some fab little snippets in here that tie in really nicely with The Mortal Instruments, not that I'm telling you here because that would be spoilery but when they do pop up it's like a eureka moment.  You'll see what I mean when you get there. There is also a lot of humour in this book and it stands out even more when it crops up in the most dramatic of scenes.  As ever most of the humour revolves around Will, unsurprisingly. There were also a couple of scenes that took me completely by surprise, more because of their timing than anything else but having read the rationale behind Clare’s decisions I can kind of see why she wrote what she wrote even though I may not fully agree.  We do also lose a couple of well-loved characters along the way but by the epilogue we have gained so much more.  As for the epilogue itself  Yeah, that was the final nail in my coffin.  And whatever you do, do NOT look at the family tree until you've finished the book.  It will totally spoil it for you!

Clare states that this book is about love and loss and she handles both beautifully. One day soon, once I've taken the books out of the freezer I'm hoping to sit down and read the series again from start to finish.  Until then I'm just going to sit on my sofa and sigh a lot and hope that there are other books out there that can match this one.  I don’t think they’ll be easy to find…

Rating: 5/5  Team Jem! That is all. Thank you.


3 comments:

laurafergs said...

Team Jem! :-D x

Cait said...

I'm so glad to see such a positive review for this! A lot of people I know have disliked the epilogue but I loved it. glad to see a fellow fan ;)

Cait x

SallySmurf said...

Thanks both! I have considered picking the book up to re-read it a couple of times but the feels are still just too strong!

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