Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader

by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan (Contribution by), Holly Black (Contribution by), Rachel Caine (Contribution by), Kami Garcia (Contribution by)

Overview

Explore the world of the Mortal Instruments with Cassandra Clare and more

Join Cassandra Clare and a Circle of more than a dozen top YA writers, including New York Times bestsellers Holly Black, Rachel Caine, and Kami Garcia, as they write about the Mortal Instruments series, its characters, and its world.

Inside you'll read:

• A cinematic tutorial on why the best friend (Simon) always loses out to the bad boy (Jace)
• The unexpected benefits of the incest taboo
• What we can read between the lines of Alec and Magnus' European vacation
• The importance of friendship, art, humor, and rebellion
• And more, from the virtues of Downworlders to the naughty side of Shadowhunting

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937856229
Publisher:	BenBella Books, Inc.
Publication date:	01/29/2013
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	227,167
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Cassandra Clare is the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices trilogies of young adult fantasy novels. Her first book, City of Bones, was a 2007 Locus Award finalist for Best First Novel. Her books have been translated into 32 languages. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two cats.

Editorial Reviews

A selection of essays about the Mortal Instruments series edited by the series' author offers a couple of gems and a lot that's not. Amid the mostly shallow veneration, a few entries stand out. Kate Milford's "Unhomely Places" is not so much about the Mortal Instruments series as it is a love song to New York as seen through the uncanny lens of the books. Michelle Hodkin, in "Simon Lewis: Jewish, Vampire, Hero," examines both the parallels and the contradictions of Judaism and vampirism, closely reading Simon to see the heroism in his complex combination of the two. Other essays miss the mark. Kami Garcia's "Why the Best Friend Never Gets the Girl," for example, uses John Hughes movies to explain why Simon would never date Clary; are there no recent appropriate cultural touchstones? Multiple entries heap praise upon the series for its incorporation of queer relationships and mixed-race characters, though none of those essays point out that these queer and mixed-race characters are never the protagonists. Most of the entries focus on the series' romantic aspects: incestuous tensions, one-sided crushes, brotherly love. Textual analysis sits side by side with "Malec" as a portmanteau describing the Magnus/Alec relationship, "OTP" to refer to the idea of a fan's one true pairing and Facebook relationship statuses to explain character interactions. Self-serving, but enjoyable for committed fans. (Nonfiction 15-18)

Kirkus Reviews