Infernal Devices are a prequel to The Mortal Instruments and the CLOCKWORK PRINCESS is finally explaining some unanswered questions. And there is a big spoiler but wonderful surprise in the Epilogue.
Clockwork princess is set in months after the surprised entrance of Will's sister Cecily, who came to the institute to train to become a Shadow-hunter. Will is moping around the Institute. He is unhappy. Cecily came to become a Shadow-hunter so he is learning to accept his sister back in his life. His love - Tessa - is engaged to his best friend and parabatai - Jem. There is still the threat. from The Magister who wants to wipe out the Shadow-hunter race. Tessa is preparing for her wedding to Jem. She loves Jem and she wants to become his wife, but there is Will. Will who owns a part of heart. The same size as Jem does. And Jem has a secret on his own. He is running out of time. Since the engagement with Tessa he started to take more of the Demon drug which keeps him alive and somebody is buying off the regular sources. There is no more yin fen left. Jem is dying. Gideon and Gabriel Lightwood are seeking a refugee in The Institute after the death of their father. Demon Pox got him at the end. Charlotte is also under a threat from an unexpected source. The Counsellor is trying to get her removed as the head of the Institute as there is a talk that the Clave wants to replace him with her. There is a lot of back-stabbing going on. And major fights. After one of these fights, Tessa is kidnapped by The Magister, Jem is left dying and Will is torn. He wants to go after Tessa. but his parabatai is dying.
Clockwork Princess is a great conclusion to the Infernal Devices book series. I think I have never been on such an emotional turmoil while reading a book. I must have cried rivers of tears. Every single page was just perfect.
We finally found out what Tessa is - half Shadow-hunter, half Demon - that's why she has her power and that's why she is immortal. We also found out the details on why and how The Magister put his plan into place so many years ago. This book is full of revelations and it's tying up the loose ends.
The love triangle - WILL, JEM & TESSA - is in full bloom with a great ending. Twist after twist. Surprise surprise, it is Will who ends up with Tessa. Really ??? How predictable. All the way through the series there were a clear signs that Clare decided to favour Will Herondale as Tessa's love interest. Not happy with the ending. To be true. I always preferred Jem.
Jem dies. Well not really. He becomes a Silent Brother. Brother Zachariah. Ring a bell? Finally we know why Brother Zachariah seems to be the most human of all of them.
There is a lot off coupling going on. Tessa & Will. Sophie & Gideon. Cecily & Gabriel. Charlotte & Henry. The only single one in the group - Magnus Bane.
As always the book is packed with witty smart dialogues and exchanges between characters but this time there is a lot of emotional scenes which made me cry and cry. Especially when the group found out that Jem is not dead. And there is the emotional sad exchange between him and Tessa, which is a partial goodbye with his blessing for Tessa to marry Will. JUST GREAT!! (I hope you sense my sarcasm.)
But Cassandra Clare makes up for my disappointment in the Epilogue. We found ourselves on Blackfriars Bridge. The year is 2008. Tessa is immortal and she is walking the Earth on her own. Will is long dead, her children are dead. She fled her family and home after Will's death as she couldn't cope anymore with watching her family die when she gets to live forever. Tessa is looking back at her past while waiting for Brother Zachariah. Their yearly meeting, as promised when Jem was leaving for The Silent City. Tessa is suddenly disturb from her memories by a familiar voice. But this is not a voice of Brother Zachariah. The silent voice you hear in your mind. This is the human, gentle voice of the boy who she loved so long ago. JEM'S VOICE. It turns out there are some great discoveries in the Shadow-hunters world and the Jem is now cured. For the first time Tessa sees the true face of Jem. The gorgeous beautiful Jem before yin fen sucked all the colour and life out of him. And he still loves her. She is this the one true love for him. And they have another chance. Will Tessa get the courage and give her heart to mortal Jem? And yes she does!! THANK GOD!!
What a great ending to a great book series. I am sure if you are a fan of Will Herondale or Jem Carstairs (like me) you got the ending you wished for. I love the fact that Cassandra made possible for Tessa to have a lifetime with both of her loves of her life. It made me cry so much (I am crying even while thinking about it).
Cassandra Clare has this amazing quality in her writing. I go through so many emotion while reading her books and that is a sing of a great writer. Her stories are romantic. Witty. Smart. Exciting. Adventurous. Beautiful. Sometimes even heart-breaking. Every book I read leaves me with a great feeling of satisfaction.
Infernal Devices are a great book series. I couldn't help but to compare with The Mortal Instruments and I must say that Infernal Devices are the winner for me. I just got to enjoy the story more. I went through much more while reading these books.
I would recommend these books to anyone who enjoys a good book. You won't be disappointed. You go an adventure filled with love, betrayal, friendship...you will discover a world hidden within our world and you get sucked into it. And will not want to leave it behind. You just keep reading on until the end. Trust me I've been like that. My sister has been like that. All the Shadow-hunters around the world went through the same motion. So get on wagon and read these books. You are for a treat.
HAPPY READING LOVELIES xXx
Quotes I loved:
“He began it,” Cecily said, jerking her chin at Will, though she knew it was pointless. Jem, Will’s parabatai, treated her with the distant sweet kindness reserved for the little sisters of one’s friends, but he would always side with Will. Kindly, but firmly, he put Will above everything else in the world.
Well, nearly everything.”
“You said I am a good man," he said. "But I am not that good a man. And I am--I am catastrophically in love with you.”
“I love you so much, so incredibly much," he went on, "and I forget when you're close to me, I forget who you are. I forget that you're Jem's. I'd have to be the worst sort of person to think what I'm thinking right now. But I am thinking it.”
“There's nothing you could have done that would cause me to cease loving either of you. Will is myself, my own soul, and if I am not to have the keeping of your heart, then there is not other I would rather have that honor.”
“Do you remember when we stood together on Blackfriars Bridge?” he asked softly, and his eyes were like that night had been, all black and silver.
“Of course I remember.”
“It was the moment I first knew I loved you,” Jem said. “I will make you a promise. Every year, Tessa, on one day, I will meet you on that bridge. I will come from the Silent City and I will meet you, and we will be together, if only for an hour. But you must tell no one.”
“Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two.”
“I did not think you would be angry, Jem burst out, and it was like ice cracking across a frozen waterfall, freeing a torrent. We were engaged, Tessa. A proposal-an offer of marriage-is a promise. A promise to love and care for someone always. I did not mean to break mine to you. But it was that or die. I wanted to wait, to be married to you and live wit you for years, but that wasn't possible. I was dying too fast. I would have given it up-all of it up-to be married to you for a day. A day that would never have come. You are a reminder-a reminder of everything I am losing. The life I will not have.”
“We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us”
“The measure of love is to love without measure. -attributed to Saint Augustine”
“It is not easy to be different, and even less so to be unique.”
“If there is a life after this one, he said, let me meet you in it, James Carstairs.”
“I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet hims and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that.”
“For five years it had been his absolute truth. Jem and Will. Will and Jem. Will Herondale lives, therefore Jem Carstairs lives also.”
“I feel like you can look inside me and see all the places I am odd or unusual and fit your heart around them, for you are odd and unusual in just the same way. We are the same.”
“Life was an uncertain thin, and there were some moments one wished to remember, to imprint upon one's mind that the memory might be taken out later, like a flower pressed between the pages of a book, and admired and recollected anew.”
“If Jem dies, I cannot be with Tessa,” said Will. “Because it will be as if I were waiting for him to die, or took some joy in his death, if it let me have her. And I will not be that person. I will not profit from his death. So he must live.” He lowered his arm, his sleeve bloody. “It is the only way any of this can ever mean anything. Otherwise it is only —”
“Pointless, needless suffering and pain? I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that was the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away,” Magnus said.
“I want more than that,” said Will. “You made me want more than that. You showed me I was only ever cursed because I had chosen to believe myself so. You told me there was possibility, meaning. And now you would turn your back on what you created.”
“I am not going to live, and I can choose to be as much for her as I can be, to burn as brightly for her as I wish, and for a shorter time, than to burden her with someone only half-alive for a longer time. i is my choice, William, and you cannot make it for me.”
“He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs; and when he was done, and he'd set the violin back in its box, Will's eyes were closed, but Tessa's were full of tears.”
“What I do know is that if we are born again, I will meet you in another life, and if there is a river, you will wait on the shores for me to come to you, so that we can cross together.”
“When I am in the darkness, I will think of it in the light, with you.”
“This was a voice that drew out memories stretched thin by years of recollection, like paper unfolded and refolded too many times. A voice that brought back, like a wave, the memory of another time on this bridge, a night so long ago, everything black and silver and the river rushing away under her feet...”
“There are so many worse things than death. Not to be loved or not to be able to love: that is worse.”
“His eyes went soft and silver as she spoke. “Zhe shi jie shang, wo shi zui ai ne de,” he whispered.
She understood it. In all the world, you are what I love the most.”
“No, the last thing she cared about was whether people were staring at the boy and girl kissing by the river, as London, it's cities and towers and churches and bridges and streets, circled all about them like the memory of a dream. And if the Thames that ran beside them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves: At last, the wheel comes to a full circle, they kept their silence.”
No comments:
Post a Comment