Zen's review
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
I thought this had a lot of promise in the beginning, and settled down in happy anticipation of a trashily enjoyable read, but then it got boring. Probably it would have helped not to have been spoiler'd; usually I don't mind being spoilered for books, because if they are good books it doesn't really matter, but this probably needed the twists to surprise in order to be effective.
I think there are two reasons why this wasn't as much fun to read as her fanfic:
1. Her own jokes are not very funny; the book would have benefited from some lines from Buffy.
2. The characters weren't that interesting. The characterisation felt very thin to me -- you kept being told that Simon was a good, funny, smart guy, but not really seeing it. And there's not really anything to Clary. Of course drumming up interest in a character isn't something you have to do when you write fanfic, which is why her fanfic worked much better. Probably the appropriate Dworkinian constructive interpretive approac...more
I think there are two reasons why this wasn't as much fun to read as her fanfic:
1. Her own jokes are not very funny; the book would have benefited from some lines from Buffy.
2. The characters weren't that interesting. The characterisation felt very thin to me -- you kept being told that Simon was a good, funny, smart guy, but not really seeing it. And there's not really anything to Clary. Of course drumming up interest in a character isn't something you have to do when you write fanfic, which is why her fanfic worked much better. Probably the appropriate Dworkinian constructive interpretive approac...more
