Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
City of Bones takes Clary to a variety of locales, some exotic, some mundane. But as Clary soon learns, even the mundane has magic in it. Clary's story opens in what might be, to some, a magical pl...
Genre
Clary's fifteen years old. While that doesn't automatically make this a young-adult book, it's filled with a lot of young-adult themes: dating, identity, a changing view of the world. Plus, Clary h...
What's Up With the Title?
City of Bones has an intimidating ring to do it, doesn't it? It has an allure, too, like the Elephant Graveyard in The Lion King, which is a city of bones Serengeti-style for Simba. However, the ha...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to reascend...—John Milton, Paradise LostThis sounds fun, huh? Get ready to descend into hel...
What's Up With the Ending?
There are two major things that happen during the last chapter of City of Bones and they're not good:(1) Valentine escapes with the Mortal Cup. Um, dang. Clary and friends spend the majority of the...
Tough-o-Meter
Maybe if we had Clary's Sight, we'd discover that City of Bones has insanely complex two-hundred word sentences, tongue-twisting wordplay, and metaphors so dense they'd make black holes look like w...