The thrilling novel City of Bones, the first book in The Mortal Instruments series, written by Cassandra Clair is about more than just killing demons and stopping the bad guy. It’s also about the relationships that the characters have with each other and how you can start over if you make a mistake Though the book is thrilling and has you at the edge of you set at every turn of a page the book is filled with love, and not just one type of love. Some of the types of love displayed in the book are; unrequited love, family love, and complicated love. By the end of the story the amount and strength of love between the characters will have your head spinning trying to make sense of half of the relationships.
Through out the book unrequited love becomes one of the larger problems that cause characters to dislike each other and fight with each other instead of focusing on their goal of stopping the evil forces at work. One example of this is Simon’s love for Clary. Simon has loved Clary for over ten years but she has never noticed and only seen him as a friend. Simon’s love for Clary is clear to everyone except her seeing as she is trying to set him up with a girl that may be good for him in the beginning. When Simon gets to the Institute he flirts with Isabelle to try and make Clary jealous and to see if she felt the same way about him as he does for her. Simon tries to lead Clary to the conclusion of him liking her man times but every time she seems to take it not in the way he intended. Only when he finds Clary kissing Jace does he tell her his feelings for her, but she obviously does not feel the same way about him. “ “Because,” he said, so bitterly that it shocked her, “I’ve been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Witch, I guess, you don’t.” ” A second example of unrequited love is Alec’s love for Jace. This is brought up rarely in the book but it does spark Alec initially disliking Clary. The first time it is straight out said is by Clary while fighting with Alec about him wanting her to leave the institute. “You can rant all you want about honor and honesty and how mundanes don’t have any of either, but if you where honest, you’d admit this tantrum is just because you’re in love with him. It doesn’t have anything to do with-”. Both Simon and Alec love their best friend while their best friend doesn’t notice it and falls in love with someone else with them watching.
The least problem cause of the types of love portrayed in City of Bones in family love. There are so many family relations in the book and because of it many of the children are either vengeful or protective. Jace, for example, is vengeful for his father. He loved his father and wishes to avenge his death, but this is solved when it is discovered who Jace’s father really is and that he is still alive and well. Another example is Alec, Alec has a strong bond with his sister Isabelle and care for her a lot causing him to always be looking out for her while they are hunting demons. As well in the beginning you can tell that Clary’s mother loves her a lot and even more so when you find out what Jocelyn did to hide and protect Clary from Valentine, The Clave and the rest of the Shadowhunter world. Clary also has lots of love for her mother, it is show most when she get the phone call from her mother telling her not to return home but she does anyway because she believe her mother is in danger. Her love for her mother is also shown by how much she looks up to Jocelyn, she see so much good and excellent things in Jocelyn such as; her beauty and artistic skills. Without family love half of the occurrences that happened in the book would not be able to play out and keep the readers entrained.
In the end there is one love in the book that baffles everyone. It’s a love so strong shared by two characters that nothing, no matter how strange and complicated seems to end it. This is the love shared by Clary and Jace. In the begging it’s not that complicated, they are just two shadow hunters who can help each other out. On Clary’s sixteenth birthday, Jace maker her picnic in the garden while there they share their first kiss and their second just outside the garden room. Simon walks in on their second kiss causing Jace to get jealous and take it out on Clary. Jace later get over himself and stops punishing Clary for being best friend and defending with someone who is in love with her. When Valentine shows up he announces that Jace and Clary are both his and Jocelyn’s children.
Love is a strong emotion which can bring people to gather; weather it a friend, family member or love interest, or it can create bad blood. Love isn’t perfect, it brings a lot of other emotions with it such as, jealousy, hatred, happiness and confusion. But in the end if all you have is pure love and you make up and apologize for your mistakes then that’s all that matters. It’s not what happens while you’re getting through but how you handle everything after you get through because in the end if you don’t have someone to share things with who can be imperfect with you what the point in having what you got?
City Of Bones 