About the Books
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City of Bones is the first of three books in my young adult urban fantasy trilogy, The Mortal Instruments. City of Bones is about a fifteen-year old girl named Clary Fray, whose search for her missing mother leads her into an alternate New York called Downworld, filled with mysterious faeries, hard-partying warlocks, not-what-they-seem vampires, an army of werewolves, and the demons who want to destroy it all. She also finds herself torn between two boys — her best friend, Simon, for whom she’s developing new feelings, and the mysterious
demon hunter , Jace. She becomes a part of the secret world of the demon hunters, or Nephilim, and as she does she discovers that rescuing her mother might mean putting their whole world injeopardy . City of Bones is followed by the second book, City of Ashes, and the third, City of Glass. You can find all sorts of detailed information about these books, their plots and characters, and release dates, on my Mortal Instrumentswebsite under FAQ: http://www.mortalinstruments.com/mortalfaq.html
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There are going to be six books in the Mortal Instruments series. City of Bones, City of Ashes, and City of Glass are the first three. Coming May 8, 2012, is the fifth book, City of Lost Souls. The entire series will wrap up with City of Heavenly Fire in March, 2014.
The Infernal Devices and the Mortal Instruments series are going to alternate in their publication dates — one ID book, then one TMI book, then one ID book, and so forth! Because the stories overlap and intertwine, it should be fun to read them in publication order — though if you choose not to, that will not affect your comprehension of either series. They complement each other, but each stands alone as a separate story.So for the record, here’s the first publication dates for the next six books, in order (THESE ARE WORLD ENGLISH RELEASE DATES FOR THE UK/USA/CANADA/IRELAND/NZ/AUSTRALIA/SOUTH AFRICA/ETC):
December 6, 2011: The Clockwork Prince
May 8, 2012: City of Lost Souls
Clockwork Princess: March 2013
The Shadowhunter's Codex: November 2013
City of Heavenly Fire: March 2014
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A very slight one. Pandemonium is the name of the capital of Hell — it means "all demons." There isn't anything too plot-significant about the fact that the two clubs have the same name.
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Clockwork Princess: March 2013
City of Heavenly Fire: March 2014
These are the publication dates for the English language versions of the books*. I'm sorry I don't know the publication dates for the books in translation.
(*THESE ARE WORLD ENGLISH RELEASE DATES FOR THE UK/USA/CANADA/IRELAND/NZ/AUSTRALIA/SOUTH AFRICA/ETC)
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Yes. After The Mortal Instruments is over, there will be a companion series called The Dark Artifices. It takes place in Los Angeles, five years after the events of Mortal Instruments, and deals with the "next generation" of young Shadowhunters after Jace, Clary and their friends. You can learn more about it at www.thedarkartifices.com or read the short synopsis here:
Los Angeles, 2012. It’s been five years since the events of the Mortal Instruments when Nephilim stood poised on the brink of oblivion and Shadowhunter Emma Carstairs lost her parents. After the blood and violence she witnessed as a child, Emma has dedicated her life to the eradication of demons and being the best, fastest and deadliest Shadowhunter since Jace Lightwood. Raised in the Los Angeles Institute, Emma is paired as a parabatai with her best friend, Julian. As Emma hunts those who caused the death of her parents, the trail they’re following leads back to those they’ve always been taught to trust. At the same time, Emma is falling in love with Julian — her closest friend and, because he is her parabatai, the one person in the world she’s absolutely forbidden by Shadowhunter Law to love. Set against the glittering backdrop of present-day Los Angeles, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches from the warlock-run nightclubs of the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica.
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I get this question all the time, I think because a lot of people know that Tessa appears briefly in City of Glass. (She is the girl in white Magnus is talking to at the party in the epilogue.) But unfortunately to answer the question any further would involve too many spoilers!
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Yes. Same cat. The necromantic magic practiced on him by the Dark Sisters in Clockwork Angel has made him immortal.
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The next two books of the TMI series will also be embargoed (no advance copies before publication), so I am limited in what I can say. City of Lost Souls begins a few weeks after the end of City of Fallen Angels, with the characters dealing from the fallout of the last events of CoFA. The whole second trilogy is outlined and the plot completed; the books are about the further adventures of Clary, Jace, Simon, Isabelle, Alec, Magnus et. al, and the scale of the challenges they face in these last books is even greater than those they faced in the first. Angels, demons, a war that determines the destruction or salvation of the entire world, and not everyone will survive...
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Why, yes! I have a five-book epic fantasy middle grade (think Percy Jackson, Eragon, Harry Potter - that's epic middle grade), cowritten with Holly Black (author of The Spiderwick Chronicles) coming out from Scholastic Books. The first book, The Iron Trial, is scheduled for publication in 2014. After that there will be four more books, each following a year of protagonist Callum Hunt's life as an apprentice magician. Holly and I also have a deal with Constantin Films to write and produce movies of the books.
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WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST THREE BOOKS AHEAD.
I had indeed initially planned not to write more Mortal Instruments books after City of Glass. Two things happened to change that: One, I had written a plot for a graphic novel about what would happen to Simon after the events of Glass, which is why I left so many threads untied at the end of City of Glass (where was Sebastian’s body, what would happen with Simon’s love life, the Seelie Queen’s threat, etc). When the graphic novel didn’t work out, I was left with this storyline and nothing to do with it — it wasn’t enough for a whole book on its own. However, while I was writing the first book in The Infernal Devices, Clockwork Angel, which deals with Jace, Clary, and the Lightwoods’ ancestors, the way events played out in it gave me the idea for a new villain and conflict that might beset the cast of characters from The Mortal Instruments, and connect up to the plotline from the planned graphic novel. I’ve always liked stories where the distant past comes forward to affect the future, so, without being spoilery, when I realized I could connect the events of Infernal Devices to the few loose ends left at the end of Glass, I realized I wouldn’t want to pass up writing that story, especially considering how much chaos I knew it would bring
to the lives of Jace, Clary, Simon, Alec, Magnus, Isabelle and the rest!
Then, in October of last year, I sat down to start writing the story of City of Fallen Angels. I had a detailed outline based in part on the graphic novel idea I had had, but when it came to expanding the outline and writing the story, it just wasn’t working for me. I was on a writing retreat in Mexico with a number of other writers, and when we sat down to go over the issues I was having, I realized that the story I had thought I was telling was really a much bigger story — that my smaller, Simon-centric story had morphed into something much bigger, much more epic, and deeply involving the whole cast of characters from the first three Mortal Instruments books. I realized that what I had on my hands was not a single book that would wrap up the story begun in The Mortal Instruments, but rather the beginning of a new trilogy about these characters. (The fun part was calling my agent and editor to explain “You know that one book I was going to write? Well, actually, it’s three books!” I like to think I could hear heads hitting desks all through Simon and Schuster. But when I submitted the outlines for the new Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls, and City of Heavenly Fire, they were thrilled with the idea of the new trilogy — and I hope readers will be as well!
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Sometimes minor characters are based on people I know — Simon’s friends Eric, Kirk and Matt are all friends of mine. But I’m not writing a thinly veiled version of my own life. These characters are created to fit the needs of the story and to be very much themselves. Sometimes they incorporate aspects of people I know, or have met, like Simon’s sense of humor or Clary’s artistry. Jace, alas, is definitely not based on anyone real.
As for the places in the books, obviously Idris and environs are entirely made up. Most of the Manhattan locations — the Pandemonium Club, the Institute, Garroway’s Books, The Dumont Hotel,Taki’s, are in real places, but don’t actually exist there. The Marble Cemetary (the City of Bones) does exist in some form http://www.marblecemetery.org/ , and the Renwick Smallpox Hospital is a real place.
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I get this question often. I think it’s an interesting idea, but right now I’m in the middle of writing five new Shadowhunter books — Clockwork Princess, City of Heavenly Fire, and The Dark Artifices trilogy— and I can’t even imagine when I’ll have the free time to think about a new Shadowhunter project. There are also some difficulties inherent in the idea, such as the fact that the interesting things that happened to Luke, Jocelyn and Valentine that people want to read about happened to them when they were adults. There is very little you can’t do in the YA genre — it’s one of the reasons I love it — but one thing you can’t do is a write a book for teenagers that’s about adults. At that point, it no longer really belongs in the teen section, but neither would such a book belong in the adult section, where the only adults interested in reading it would be those who had previously read my young adult books. You see the problem — though it is one of marketing, not creativity, I do have to take these things into account. Add that to the fact that I have whole sheets of projects that I feel a lot more passionately about writing, and I’d say it’s not hopeless, but it’s not something I’ll be working on soon. (Maybe a short story or novella about them, perhaps. In the meantime, there’s Jocelyn’s Story to read.)
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The Infernal Devices are a trilogy of prequels to the Mortal Instruments books, set almost 130 years ago. They deal with the adventures of a Downworlder girl named Tessa in a Victorian London where the Accords have only just been finalized and tensions between Shadowhunters and Downworlders are running high. It’s a romantic adventure centering around the Lightwood, Herondale, Wayland, and other Shadowhunter families you’ll know well fromInstruments; Magnus Bane appears in them, and I generally recommend you read Clockwork Angel before City of Fallen Angels, as the characters from one series connect to the characters in the next (though, as it says here, neither series spoils the other.). You can find out more at: http://www.theinfernaldevices.com/infernalfaq
Jacket copy: “When 16-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London’s Downworld,where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos.
Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organization called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What’s more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa’s power for his own.
Friendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon finds herself fascinated by — and torn between — two best friends: James, whose fragile beauty hides a deadly secret, and blue-eyed Will, whose caustic wit and volatile moods keep everyone in his life at arm’s length . . . everyone, that is, but Tessa. As their search draws them deep into the heart of an arcane plot that threatens to destroy the Shadowhunters, Tessa realizes that she may need to choose between saving her brother and helping her new friends save the world… and that love may be the most dangerous magic of all.”
There are three books in the Devices series. The first is Clockwork Angel, the second,Clockwork Prince, the third, Clockwork Princess.
For those still confused about The Infernal Devices, its relationship to The Mortal Instruments, and which to read first, there is a simplified explanation here.
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I understand that special content may be frustrating — you may already have the paperback but the special content is in the hardcover. There may be different editions of hardcovers that you are forced to choose between. You may live in a country where my books are not published in hardback, so there is no new paperback edition and therefore no special content. Let me take a moment to explain what special content is for.
My publisher(s) produce, or ask me to produce, fun extras for different editions to incentivize bookstores and other outlets (libraries, etc) to get excited about the book. In the case of Magnus’ Vow, the short story is in response to bookstores’ request for special content aimed at those who do not realize the Infernal Devices exist, or do not realize they are connected to the Mortal Instruments.
If you really want to read Magnus’ Vow but already own the hardcover of Clockwork Angel, I would recommend asking the library for a copy. Libraries are generally very good about having popular paperbacks on hand. As for content that comes in the back of hardbacks, I always post it online as soon as the exclusivity period (usually 3-6 months) is up. For instance, you can read the letter that was included in the back of the US hardcover City of Fallen Angels here along with other special content I have written just for online fans. [Unfortunately I can't say the same for Magnus' Vow. Unlike hardbacks, which sellout or stop being produced in the first 12 months of publication, paperbacks are forever. Until S&S decides to stop using the story in the paperback, I can't post it online. I don't have the legal right to do that.]
I’ve been in this position before myself — I’ve bought a hardback from an author I like only to find there was a special new edition, or some extra content in the paperback. I think of it as the difference between seeing a movie onscreen and buying the DVD, which will have extra footage/bloopers/what have you. Yes, the people buying the DVD get extra stuff, but I got to see the movie first, and in my preferred way. For those of you who feel like those who are buying the paperback now are getting a better deal: remember, you got something they didn’t. You got to read the book more than a year before them.
If you’re still really mad, you can write to Simon and Schuster — ultimately the fact that these extras exist and the way they are used is up to them.
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The idea for the Mortal Instruments came to me one afternoon in the East Village. I was with a good friend of mine, who was taking me to see the tattoo shop where she used to work. She wanted to show me that her footprints were on the ceiling in black paint — in fact the footprints of everyone who’d worked there were on the ceiling, crisscrossing each other and making patterns. To me it looked like some fabulous supernatural battle had been fought there by beings who’d left their footprints behind. I started thinking about a magical battle in a New York tattoo shop and the idea of a secret society of demon-hunters whose magic was based on an elaborate system of tattooed runes just sprang into my mind. When I sat down to sketch out the book, I wanted to write something that would combine elements of traditional high fantasy — an epic battle between good and evil, terrible monsters, brave heroes, enchanted swords — and recast it through a modern, urban lens. So you have the Shadowhunters, who are these very classic warriors following their millennia-old traditions, but in these urban, modern spaces: skyscrapers, warehouses, abandoned hotels, rock concerts. In fairy tales, it was the dark and mysterious forest outside the town that held the magic and danger. I wanted to create a world where the city has become the forest — where these urban spaces hold their own enchantments, danger, mysteries and strange beauty. It’s just that only the Shadowhunters can see them as they really are.
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I always had the story plotted out from the beginning. I sold the series as a trilogy. That means I had to submit a detailed outline to the publisher of each book in the series. Your publisher wants to know not just that you know how to start a story but also that you know how to end one, and that nothing too crazy happens. So I had the story plotted out, because it was required. I also always knew it would be a trilogy. It is structured on the hero’s journey to the Underworld — the theme of the first book is descent, thus each epigraph makes reference to descent (“The Descent Beckons”, etc.). The theme of the second is hell or the underworld, and all the epigraphs make reference to hell or the underworld (“the Gates of Hell”). The third book’s theme is ascent or heaven, and all the epigraphs make reference to ascent or heaven: “The Road to Heaven.” As for the second trilogy, the themes are temptation ("Fallen Angels"); the fall ("Lost Souls"); and redemption ("Heavenly Fire."). It took me about two years to write the first book and develop the world: since then it’s taken me about a year per book to write the others.
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Yes. The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices have been sold in over thirty countries.You can find a list of all the countries the books are available in and who publishes them there, plus see some of the foreign editions with their covers here.
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All the people and place names in the books are real names. Even Idris and iratze are real words. You can find out their pronunciation by doing this.
Really, it works, I promise. :) The reason I don’t provide a pronunciation guide to the words in the books is that when I was a kid, I used to read all these fantasy books and just make up how the words sounded in my head. Whenever I found out that the author or someone else pronounced the words differently, I’d be really disappointed. If you want to look up the standard pronunciation of the words (which is what is used in the audiobooks) then you can use the above method. But you should also feel free to pronounce them as you like.
The names in my books come from all over the place. Sometimes they can take a long time to develop. Clary Fray is named after two friends of mine. Her name was originally Valerie Frayre (after the artist who designed the runes), then Valerie Frayne, then (when a friend of mine was also writing a book with a heroine named Valerie) Clary Frayne, then Clary Fray (my editor’s choice) — then when I realized Clary was a nickname, she became Clarice, and finally, Clarissa. (She’s not named after me. She is named after my friend Valerie Frayre, and my friend Clary.) Jace was originally named Will, but Jace is a name I always liked, and it needed to be something that could be short for Jonathan (and now the name Will shows up in Clockwork Angel instead). Max and Isabelle are named for my grandparents. Alec’s name was originally Alex, but Alec is a more interesting version of Alexander, I think. Simon and Maia are named after friends of mine, while Maryse, Robert, Jocelyn and others are simply names I picked out of baby name books and the like. (Luke Garroway I picked because it sounded a bit like loup-garou, which is French for werewolf.)
The names of the angels and seraph blades: Ithuriel, Raziel, Israfiel, etc. come from sources of angel mythology. Paradise Lost, the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, the Enochian magic system, and so forth. They are all, as far as I know, sourceable to specific mythologies. I did not make any of them up, nor did I make up any of the names of the demons, which come from sources of demon mythology like the Lesser Key of Solomon and, of course, the Bible.
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City of Bones: Jace
City of Ashes: Clary
City of Glass: Sebastian *
City of Fallen Angels: Clary and Simon
City of Lost Souls: Clary and Jace
City of Heavenly Fire: ?
Clockwork Angel: Will
Clockwork Prince: Jem
Clockwork Princess: Tessa
* In answer to the often asked question "Why does Sebastian have wings on the cover of City of Glass?" : Because in City of Ashes, when Clary prophetically dreams about him (p. 184 in my hardback American copy of Ashes), he has wings. Black ones, covered in blood. Wings are not a sign of inherent goodness; fallen angels have them too. :)
City of Ashes, p. 184: " It was Jace, all in burning gold with his gold eyes and gold hair, and
white-gold wings sprouted from his back, wider and more thickly feathered than any bird’s.
He smiled like a cat and pointed behind her, and Clary turned to see that a dark-haired boy was standing
there, and wings spread from his back as well, feathered black as midnight, and each feather was
tipped with blood."
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Twelve-year-old Callum Hunt has grown up knowing three rules by heart.
Never trust a magician. Never pass a test a magician gives you. And never let a magician take you to the Magisterium.
Call is about to break all the rules. And when he does, his life will change in ways he can’t possibly imagine.
The Iron Trial is the first book in an epic fantasy series that I'm cowriting with Holly Black. The Iron Trial, will be released in September 2014 by Scholastic Books. Four books will follow, one for year of Call's life from twelve to seventeen, as he comes of age in a world where child apprentices train to be warriors and dark magicians seek to defeat even death. There's not much else I can say about the books yet, as I'm sworn to secrecy, but I've always wanted to write with Holly, and I can definitely say the collaboration has produced characters I love and a story I hope you'll find as funny, dark, adventurous and unexpected as I do.
MTV reports on the new series and the film adaptation here.
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Why indeed?
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I don't! It would be like choosing favorite children.
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Ever wondered about the enigmatic, mysterious warlock Magnus Bane? The only character to appear in every Shadowhunter book, Magnus has a past even more shrouded in mystery than his present. I've teamed up with acclaimed YA writers Maureen Johnson and Sarah Rees Brennan to create the Bane Chronicles, the back (and front) tale of Magnus told in ten linked stories.
Look for short stories like Vampires, Scones and Edmund Herondale; The Rise and Fall of the Hotel Dumort; Saving Raphael Santiago and What To Buy The Shadowhunter Who Has Everything (And Who You're Not Officially Dating Anyway). Each story will be available as an ebook on a monthly basis starting April 16 with the tale of What Happened In Peru. Each story will be released monthly online for the next ten months — and then for those who don't read e-books, the full print collection will be available in bookstores and wherever else books are sold after the Chronicles have been finished. (I know it will be available in Brazil, the UK.AUS/NZ and Italy, but I don't know where else yet. We're just starting!)
More stuff about the Bane Chronicles can be found here:
http://cassandraclare.tumblr.com/tagged/the-bane-chronicles
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*TLH: the series that comes between TID and TMI, that takes place around 1903, that I have stated the acronym for (TLH) but not the full name, that has no deadline or planned publication dates because while I am having lots of fun working on the idea, I don’t want to work to deadline right now so that means it’s a WIP. It features the children of the characters from The Infernal Devices: Jem, Tessa, Will, the Lightwood brothers, etc.
About the Books
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