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This is much less dense than I remember Guns, Germs, and Steel being, and I'm finding much less reason so far to disagree with Diamond. This is going surprisingly well.

I think I understand now why Nick narrates this book, more than I did when I was fourteen, but I still don't necessarily like that he does.

I'm just not feeling the voices so far. They're somewhat distinct, but neither of them really works for me. Ashlyn's voice in particular is kind of cheesy, and she uses a lot of turns of phrase that I just don't buy from a teenager. Moreover, the way Martin presents the emotions just lacks nuance. I'm not sure if I can describe it, except to say that it doesn't speak to me at all.

I'm sorry I haven't been updating much, guys. NaNoWriMo and applying to college have been killing me. But once I have an acceptance letter in my inbox, I plan on going on a reading spree.

Man, Clare is not at all committed to having Shadowhunter culture be separate from Mundane culture. There are constant references to Mundane things, and sometimes, Clare doesn't even bother lampshading it. She really does want to eat her cake and have it too.

('Mundane' is still a stupid thing to call muggle-equivalents, btw.)

I guess it's too early in this book for me to really judge - I feel like I don't have a handle on what's going on yet. But so far, this strikes me as really obvious and not nearly subtle enough. It's not about grief, it Deals With Grief and Self-Harming. It's too calculated, not organic enough.

I feel like if Gatsby lived today he would listen to a lot of angsty boy bands. Seriously, is he okay? He's acting like an eleven year-old who's meeting his crush outside of school for the first time.

I guess last time I tried reading this book, I stopped before the interesting parts really started. But to be fair to my fourteen year-old self, the interesting parts take a really long time to start.

I'm actually surprised to find how long it's been since I read something like this. I feel like I used to read angsty, pessimistic YA all the time. I'm afraid the fact that this isn't resonating with me yet means I've outgrown the genre.

This isn't actively painful like City of Heavenly Fire was, it's just really slow and boring. In retrospect, it's so odd that I used to like this series. I used to complain constantly that books were too slow, something that I rarely talk about now. How could I stand this slog-fest? Well, these books used to be shorter, maybe the pacing has slowed over time.

Why does the Faerie world operate under the lottery system from Shirley Jackson? I mean, I guess in a vacuum, it makes sense within the logic of the universe. But still, what a weird, out of place homage.

I feel like if Nick hadn't been a character and this were written in omniscient 3rd person, I would really love it. As it is, it's okay.

Does this novel consist of anything except conversations between people more important than me?

Why does every single protagonist of Clare's books have to be special in some way? Emma, for all this book's flaws, is by far the most interesting protagonist Clare has ever written, and Clare just ruined it by making her a Special Snowflake.

I pretty much have all the same likes and dislikes that I had about this book the first time I read it, except this time, the good elements feel a lot stronger, and the bad elements feel a lot less prevalent to me. I've grown as a reader since 2013 you guys!

This is a subtle thing, but I think the most amateur-ish thing about this book is how elegant and pretty Clare wants the tone to be. It seems like a lot of the description and dialogue is chosen not because it's best for the story, but because it contributes to a romantic aesthetic. It's the kind of thing a kid would do when they're trying to look adult, and it's the most fan fic-y thing about this series.

This book is startlingly okay. I guess I just don't see how it's still so relevant and popular today, most of the things Fitzgerald is commenting on seem to be very 20's-specific. Like, if I lived in this culture, I could picture appreciating it, and the book is undeniably atmospheric because of that. But I just can't relate much to it.

Ugh, the pacing is so damn slow in this novel. The exposition should be over by now, but this still feels like mostly set-up/character establishment. Also, some of this dialogue is truly ridiculous.

Nick's voice is definitely a problem, especially in a book that's going for such realism. But it's not as big of a problem as I remember it, and I feel like Daisy could be an interesting enough character to counteract it.

This book is kind of slow and boring, but I'm surprised to find that the writing isn't actually that bad. Maybe Clare's been improving. She still goes into way too much detail, but on a sentence level, this is largely fine.

I can definitely see why I didn't buy Nick's voice the first time I read this book, but it's not as bad as I remember. It's definitely more conversational than I thought it would be. That said, I feel like Fitzgerald thinks he's constantly dropping wisdom bombs on me. It's like the book keeps interrupting itself to give me horoscopes and fortune cookie wisdom.

This tone is so inconsistent. Clare seems to want it to all be magical and mystical, but then there are all these dumb, unfunny jokes. For all its flaws, at least The Infernal Devices had a consistent tone - this is all over the place.

Also, while I appreciate that Clare is trying not to write expies of characters she's previously written, Malcolm is deeply obnoxious. Like she had no Warlock ideas other than Bane

These twists are surprising, but they don't hold much weight because the stakes are so low. I essentially have no reason to care about anything that's happening - there's no urgency to this plot, and little immediacy to the consequences of anything that's happening. We don't even really know who the villain is.

Gee, I wonder if Emma and Julian are going to fall in love? Clare's foreshadowing is so painfully obvious it hurts.

So many infodumps. Geez, was this series always like this? No wonder these books are so long - there's so much filler exposition and unnecessary details.

A big part of the reason this novel doesn't work is that we don't know Kumiko at all. She's a totally flat character, and while we do know George pretty well, I don't care at all about his relationship with her. It's just a boring thing to build a novel around - Amanda's story is far more interesting.

This is easily the least original thing Ness has ever written. I wasn't a fan of The Crash of Hennington, but shit, at least I had never read anything like it before. How did one of the most innovative writers I've ever come across write something so generic and bland?

God, this dialogue is terrible. The writing isn't even that bad this time, but... ugh, nobody talks like this. Picture Buffy, if Joss Whedon wasn't clever.

Welp. This sure is an ending.

This reminds me of The Marriage Plot, in that it's well-written (although sub-par for Ness), but pretentious and boring, and it barely has a plot. There are too many characters, and George is kind of a boring protagonist, to be honest. But even worse is the feeling I get that Ness is subtly looking down on him and Amanda throughout the novel. This irony is the opposite of what normally makes Ness good.