Books and Movies: City of Bones

So over two years ago, I picked up the City of Bones novel from the library, read it, liked it, and read the sequels, but there were only three books in the series (The Mortal Instruments) at the time.

Yes, a look at the cover makes it look like a cheesy romance novel aimed at teens, and yes, there is an endorsement from Stephenie Meyer on the back.

But, this book has less actual romance than any given chapter from any of the Twilight books and more action that the entire franchise, so it gets points for that. Also, it's got very good pacing - not only is there plenty of action, but what could have been a long, boring "infodump" is broken up into brief segments through the book - but the worldbuilding. Oh my god, the worldbuilding. If there's one thing that will make me fall in love with a series, or at least forgive more major flaws that I would otherwise, it's worldbuilding.

The book is set in New York City, with plenty of references to local geography, and the premise that some run-down or defunct appearing locations in the city were only an illusion to hide places with supernatural elements. And, the supernatural elements are plentiful and interesting for a fantasy book: There are the expected werewolves and vampires, and several other species, but so far every species has an origin that more or less makes sense within the universe. The weapons and magic are also creative, and seem to consistently follow rules.

The plot has a few predictable elements, although mostly from the heroic epic archetype (seriously, if you can't guess who Clary's father is by the end of the first bit history she hears, you must not have read much fantasy at all) but also a couple twists, and the dialogue is very believable for a YA fantasy, so while it's not amazing on the level of Hunger Games, it's definitely better than some more popular YA fantasies and most of what's on the CW right now.

So, back to the point, when a friend and I went to see Breaking Dawn Part 2 (yeah, I know) we saw a trailer for it, and it looked pretty awesome, so I went to re-read the books.

Then, my sister and I were chatting online, and we ended up discussing the beautiful human being that is Aidan Turner (as we often do when we chat online) and we looked at his IMDb page and discovered that he was actually in the City of Bones movie.

Which made us very happy. Then we saw that it had an August release date.

Shit.

In all of three years that I was working at a movie theater during late August, I cannot remember one good movie that was released during that time. Which is kind of discouraging, because really: Lots of interesting visuals, plenty of action scenes, and dialogue that's practically written to be onscreen? It seems like someone would practically have to try to make an adaptation of this that wouldn't be at least marketable and popular with teens in movie terms. One can only hope that the release date was not the studios resigning it to the dumping grounds of mediocre movies, but because someone decided that it was better to release it after the last Twilight movie and after SDCC 2013.

Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

And now a few spoilery things!

The one that I'm most looking forward to is that Aidan Turner plays a werewolf, because apparently previous roles as a hot vampire and a hot dwarf just weren't enough for the universe. I can't complain, and I'm probably going to see the movie no matter what kind of reviews it gets solely because of that reason. He also survives through at least the first couple books.

And, if you decide to pick up the book as a result of this, don't panic about the thing with Jace near the end. As it turns out, there were three baby boys born almost exactly at the same time (Actually, four, but I'm *pretty sure* Alec escaped this) who were shuffled around in a manner similar to the opening scene of Good Omens.

There's also a scene with a flamethrower in the trailer. Which makes me worry, because as awesome as a flamethrower is, they didn't use one in the books. The things they used may have actually been more interesting or cool than flamethrowers. Still, it's totally in character... the only thing I could imagine is if they were using it when they attempted to rescue Simon - as a rat - from the vampires.