- miko || 巫女 -

I've just finished up the last of this series of books, and because I read the second and third in short succession due to accidentally getting them out of order and having weird library due dates, it's impossible for me to separate them into individual books now.

So, a little background (but not nearly all there is, apparently, about the author... I'm only going to talk books): This series is set in historical London, and is the sequel series to The Mortal Instruments aka the "City of..." series. That series didn't particularly catch me - it was okay for introductory urban fantasy, but not something I'd reread. The Infernal Devices, to my mind, looked like it was going to be the same but trying to cash in on the steampunk craze of a year ago... but happily, it fared better than that initial impression.

The "romance" is terrible and coloured the main characters to the point where I didn't like them at all and started skipping through any section where the male love interest was thinking (unless it was about his best friend, who had an arc that while it wasn't what I'd wanted, at least didn't make me want to slap him) and any time where the main character and he were in the room together. It was that bad.

That said, if you can get past the romance and the anachronisms (no worse than other steampunk I've seen from the same era, but clearly not historical lit) and read just for the story, the plot of this series is actually kinda interesting (unlike Mortal Instruments, where the plot felt like rehashes of other series). It's just a pity it's so covered up by stupid teen angst, and that even if you cared about the love triangle, the end is such a huge cop out that it feels like the author was overly desperate to satisfy both camps of fans.

(If the character you liked most in Mortal Instruments was the warlock Magnus Bane, you'll be pleased to find that he features throughout these books as well.)