ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell 144 pp. Penguin Group. £8.99. (Ages 13 and up) ISBN 9780141182704 Rating: ? Stars This book is set in a future when animals are much cleverer than now. And because of their cleverness, the pigs started a revolution against the humans. Pigs could speak fluently in English unlike the other animals, and that gave them the power to be leaders. But, the story that follows only happened a few years after that... Their first leader, Old Major, was kind and fair who knew animals should be equal. But when Napoleon became the leader it was very unpleasant. He made a rule that allowed the pigs to have better food and that forced all of the other animals to work crazily hard every day and night. That wasn’t enough, Napoleon wanted more power. He decided to kill his brother, Snowball, so that he would be the only leader. Snowball was admired because he came up with a clever idea to build windmill. Sn...
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 568
From Goodreads: "Danger and betrayal, secrets and enchantment in the breathtaking conclusion to the Infernal Devices trilogy Tessa Gray should be happy - aren't all brides happy?
Yet as she prepares for her wedding, a net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute.
A new demon appears, one linked by blood and secrecy to Mortmain, the man who plans to use his army of pitiless automatons, the Infernal Devices, to destroy the Shadowhunters. Mortmain needs only one last item to complete his plan. He needs Tessa. And Jem and Will, the boys who lay equal claim to Tessa's heart, will do anything to save her."
***I have tried to be as spoiler-free as possible, however, I realize that I may not been entirely successful at doing so. Proceed with caution.***
Admittedly I wasn't a huge fan of "Clockwork Angel" (my biggest complaint was that I felt like the characters in it were essentially cookie-cutters of those in her "The Mortal Instruments" series), however, "Clockwork Prince" CONVINCED ME (and reaffirmed why I consider Cassie to be my most favourite author of all time). As such, this book was one of my most highly anticipated of 2013.
First, onto the good stuff. Gideon. While I really liked him in "Clockwork Prince" my feelings for him were amplified tenfold in this novel. In fact, I think that my love for him in this nothing might even rival that of my love for Will and Jem. Additionally, my most favourite scene in this novel/ the scene where I felt THE FEELS featured him (after reading the scene in question, I literally couldn't stop giggling for half an hour so, a large smile on my face the entire time and a bubbly feeling in my chest). Furthermore, he is perhaps the most "good" character in the entire series- always putting others before himself, not being concerned with proprietary, channeling Mr. Darcy at times, and so forth.
Another amazing aspect of this novel was Cecily. Thought that Izzy was the most bad-ass chick in the Shadowhunter world? WRONG! Her great (x 5) grandmother was! Everything that Cecily did was just so, so effortless. Shadowhunting legitimately runs through that girl's blood and I have no doubts she can give the boys of TID (if not also the boys of TMI) a run for their money!
Onto the not so nice stuff. I literally loved every second of this book... Until the epilogue (more so the second half of the epilogue than the first). In my opinion, the epilogue was wholly unnecessary. I think that Cassie could have beautifully wrapped up the series with the final chapter. Why am I not a fan of the epilogue? Because (and thanks to Ardo for putting to words what I so struggled to articulate) Cassie gave the readers exactly what they wanted. And that is the problem (EVERYONE WINS! EVERYONE LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER! SPARKLES!). It feels, to me, like a cop-out and it does not fit into my understanding whatsoever of what this series stands for- for every positive there should be a negative and I find that the book is far too imbalanced towards the former.
On that note, there is a MASSIVE reveal in the epilogue and that that is overshadowed by the romance aspect of it. While everyone was FREAKING out about said romance I couldn't help but FREAK OUT about that aspect, namely, how in the world did that come to be? Apparently we will learn how it went down in "City of Heavenly Fire". This irks me to no end because, again, Cassie has always told us that, while the two series are set in the same world, you do not have to read one series in order to understand the other. I do enjoy having cross-over between the two series- it's like a gigantic Easter egg hunt (Tessa's necklace, Izzy's necklace, Church, etc.), however, all of those elements are fairly superficial- THIS is NOT by any stretch of the imagination.
Another problem that I had with this book was the predictability. Whatever you think is going to happen in this book most likely will OR what you think will happen will actually be far, far crazier than what actually does (what actually happens has nothing on all of the theories that I had come up with). There was truly only one time that I was truly taken by surprise by what occurred in the novel (gasping out loud)- the aforementioned bit surrounding Gideon.
Finally... Mortmain. Mortmain, Mortmain, Mortmain. This entire trilogy is based around all of his antics, yet I felt that he barely played a role in this book. And the role that he did play? Pathetic. For books he was made out to be the biggest bad-ass that the Shadowhunters have ever encountered before, yet he was defeated in mere pages? You build him up over three books and hundreds of pages for... That? Furthermore, angels. Why does every series have to end with the interception of angels? Why can't the characters take their own fate into their hands, defeating evil on their own?
All in all, it might appear that I didn't like this book, but not so! I truly did love it- but I'm just going to, personally, pretend that the epilogue doesn't exist. That being said, I know that many others will love it and I love the fact that each of us is able to take something different from the series. I think that this exceeds the first book in this series and the latter three of the TMI series by tenfold. I think that this book will require multiple rereads until I am able to truly come to terms with everything that happened. Furthermore, I am beyond excited to see that Cassie does intend to write another Shadowhunter series set between this series and her TMI series.
Rating: 5/5
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