Uptown Oracle Reads… City of Heavenly Fire

The final book in The Mortal Instruments Series, City of Heavenly Fire, meets expectations. It wraps up the story nicely, with a fast plot and a good continuing focus on characters.

At 600 pages, City of Heavenly Fire is the longest book in the series. I think this was needed as the majority of this book was packed full of relevant information and plots. There weren’t a lot of filler scenes which previous installments suffered from. Overall, the pace just seemed faster even though it was longer to read.

As you know, if you’ve read my previous reviews for TMI, I dislike the romance. I just really don’t care for it at all. It did have romance, but it did seem a lot less focused than previous installments. This also helped with reducing the filler material I mentioned before.

We got to explore more places within the Shadowhunter world. The demon realm reminded me of something a bit horror-like, similar to the Demonata* books I read when I was younger. Which I really enjoyed, but I felt like it could have been more scary/dangerous. Although, as a YA book, it was possibly toned down for younger readers.

Clare seems to enjoy rounding things off into a happy ending. It was similar with City of Glass. But I was thinking that this ending was getting very long. I kept thinking is it finished now. Although it could’ve been because I’d stayed up until 3am as well, so let me know if you thought differently. My sleep deprived crankiness might just be being fussy. The good thing is you do know that everyone has a specific ending.

I haven’t read The Infernal Devices Series which is a prequel trilogy. For Cassandra Clare’s books, you are supposed to read in publication order. So I may have been spoiled from City of Heavenly Fire for The Infernal Devices. I feel like it probably wont affect me too much though, as I did have some spoilers for this series anyway. So if you are going to read City of Heavenly Fire* and spoilers are a problem for you, read The Infernal Devices* first.

Clare has also set up her next series within City of Heavenly Fire, with the Blackthorn children. So this book has characters from three different series’ of Clare’s. I’m not fully sure whether I like this or not right now? On one hand, it’s nice to know the characters before diving into the plot of the next series. On the other hand, it would be nice to have a series where you don’t have to read 6 books before you read it to get the introduction. Please do correct me if I’m wrong though. I haven’t started the Dark Artifice’s either. She might set up the introduction to re-introduce the relevant characters.

Overall, I enjoyed City of Heavenly Fire the most in the series. I enjoyed less focus on romance, without reducing friendship and relationship building. The pace picked up and made me want to continuously read. The ending just worked really well to meet the expectations of the series.