Book Review: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

I’ve been rereading so many books lately, but honestly Clockwork Angel was worth it. I forgot a ton of things about it, and it was so nice to dive back into the Shadowhunters world, especially after reading and loving Chain of Gold (where you can find my review here!) I missed reading about Jem, Tessa, and Will, and I really remember why I loved this book so much the first time around.

The relationships between the characters are really interesting, and I think Clare does a really good job at this in general. Tessa is your average bookworm who loves quoting novels, poems, and fantasizes about living in these novels. While she contains shapeshifting powers, it is unclear who or what she is, as she has no visible mark of being a warlock. She’s scared of being taken advantage of, and throughout the story, you can tell that she has a fear of being manipulated from all the time she spent with the Dark Sisters. I love how fleshed-out she is as a character, and how she grows to love and trust those in her institute. After being thrusted into this strange world (with demons and clockwork beings roaming around), she joins the Shadowhunters on their journey to fight back against The Magister.

I am usually not the biggest fan of love triangles, and I honestly don’t really know how to feel about this one. You can definitely see it growing and I think it’s more of a me-thing. Besides the love triangle, I enjoyed seeing the relationships between both Jem and Tess and Will and Tessa. While Jem remains steadily kind to her, Will is more of a wildcard and constantly pulls and pushes her away. I think that it’s interesting how different but similar these two are, because it adds even more to the love triangle.

I also enjoyed the friendship between Jem and Will. I feel like it’s rarer to find good, solid friendships in books, and I enjoyed reading about these two. I liked how protective Will was of Jem, and how they both respected each other, even with Jem’s “disability”. It’s nice to hear them interacting each other with Jem’s calmness and Will being sporadic in general. Between the two of them though, I have to say that I enjoyed Will’s character more. While he jokes about nearly everything, he does care about the people he loves, including Jem (and maybe Tessa) and I think that it makes for a really interesting character.

Surprisingly, I actually liked Jessamine more than I thought I would going into this book. While she is a Shadowhunter, she desperately wants out, unlike everyone else in the institute. She goes as far as to make Nate fall in love with her by caring for him with his sickness, so that she can leave and lead a more normal lifestyle. Jessamine is a heroine and protects, but I think that it was interesting to have a character that didn’t want to live this way.

The actual plot itself was nice and I think that it set up really well for the following books, both with the relationships and the actual forming of the story. The plot twist in the middle shocked me, even though I’ve already read this book (given, I did forget), and I enjoyed being a little surprised. I’m excited to see where the story goes, especially with the clockwork inventions.

As usual for Clare’s novels, I loved the world-building of the story. The Shadowhunters world is such an interesting one to read about, and I enjoyed the inclusion of the clockwork characters. I found that they were really unique, and something that I haven’t really read about otherwise. I thought that it was interesting that they were also a representation of how far technology can take us to the point of being destructive.

The actual setting of London was also interesting to explore, and I liked that it had very real elements to it. I loved that the buildings were real (like the Blackfrias Bridge going over the River Thames in real life) and it added another thoughtful element to the story. I’m always a big fan of real life locations being used in a story, and it’s nice to jump into this fantasy world, that is simultaneously very real.

Overall, I loved this book, and it was super interesting to be able to reread and remember everything that happened. I would honestly recommend this to anyone who loves YA fantasy and hasn’t already read this (which is probably a small portion of any of you). I actually got into this series two years ago, and I’m pretty disappointed in my past self that I didn’t get into it sooner. All the ratings for this series are so good, and I can say that it definitely did not disappoint (and I would totally read it again, instead of getting to another book on my TBR that I need to read).

Happy Reading!

-Allison