Gingerbouf Does Books

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was, all in all, a really great finale to the series. It was highly readable, had enough enough action, excitement and general plot stuff mixed in the with the romance to keep me interested without rolling my eyes. There is a simple elegance to Clare's writing that I find ridiculously enjoyable. It is easy to overlook, but I find myself thoroughly impressed, which perhaps isn't the greatest praise coming from me, but I find that a lot of YA authors tend to sacrifice their prose in favour of bland writing so they can concentrate on the story (and by that of course I mean the romance as that usually IS the story).

The reason then, that this didn't get four stars, was that there was something about the ending that just didn't sit well with me. It was all a bit too 'they all lived happily ever after'. Ok, I'll admit that without giving anything away, some characters take a bit longer than others to get their Happyily Ever After (from here on referred to HEA's), but that they all do, somehow seems to be a bit of a cop-out, a bit of a cheat. Almost like the author couldn't bring herself to choose between any of her characters, so she just didn't. I don't know, maybe it's just me. In these kind of stories there has to be a bit of suffering and sacrifice, it's what makes the HEA's more meaningful. Don't get me wrong, there was both of these things present, but they never stuck, as if the author just couldn't do it to her characters.

But on the other hand, a part of me is really happy that most of the characters got their HEA. Because some of them really did go through a lot of shit, and they did deserve it.

Ahhhh, the ending has me really torn. I really can't put my finger on how I feel about it. I am completely divided!!! Overall, I did really like the book, but that ending!! I am not a fan of time-spans being recounted in a few pages, or time jumps, so that was always going to taint my opinion slightly, but I really don't want to say any more because I would have to give away major spoilers and 1) I hate doing that and 2) it would make this review hideously long. So I will leave it here I think.

I still much prefer this series to the Mortal Instruments, which started well but should have ended three books ago...just saying. Oh and I liked the characters in this series LOADS more!!!

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