Book 25- "Clockwork Princess" by Cassandra Clare

I was sad to finish this trilogy of books. It started out super weird, because I knew nothing about what the Shadowhunters were about. But I got sucked into it, as I figured I would.

So as I called it, Tessa and Will ended up together. I only wish that they had spent a little more time together before the book ended. But I was glad that they were able to realize that they were meant together, because seriously it's been the whole point of these books.
And like I called it, Jem died. BUT, his death was a little more complicated than that. Jem was dying because he didn't have the drug that he needed, and the author's announcing of his death was very anticlimactic. I even mentioned that to Brandon. "After 2 1/2 books just like that, he's gone?" BUT, later on they say that he underwent a transformation to become a Silent Brother, who is an immortal character that helps the Shadowhunters with birth, death, etc. That one took me totally by surprise. He came back to help them in their last battle with the clockwork army and the Magister, and then spoke to Tessa one more time. He asked her to meet him on the Blackfriar's Bridge every year, so they could spend an hour talking. I don't understand how he was able to do that, since the Silent Brothers were supposed to cast aside everything that kept them close to their mortal life.
The amazing thing that happened was when Tessa was able to transform into the angel that possesses her necklace. She was able to destroy the creator of all the robots that way, which destroyed her necklace. But that was the only way that they were able to survive.

The epilogue of the book made things very confusing. It talks about her life with Will, and how he died while she stayed the same, being immortal. And every year she went to meet up with Jem the Silent Brother, and they were able to talk for an hour. And then over a hundred years later (because being a Silent Brother means you are immortal), she goes to meet up with him. And when he shows up, he is normal Jem again. Not the one she had met up with. Over that last year, he had found out how to break free of his addiction and to become a normal Shadowhunter again. He went to Tessa and asked if they could have a normal life together. She agreed, and that's how it ended. Ok, how did he do it? And his first thought was to see the girl he was supposed to forget about over a hundred years ago? And is he going to grow old and die now too? What about Tessa?
I wish she would have written another book about Tessa and Will's life after they got together, instead of just the epilogue. That would have made the series complete. But I really liked it!

Book 24- "Clockwork Prince" by Cassandra Clare

I loved most of this book, because it explained so many of the unanswered questions in the first book.
Will and Jem are such good friends (which is a mystery because nobody else seems to like Will) because they took part in a ceremony to become "parabatai" with each other, which essentially means blood brothers. They are bound together to always have each others' backs, and to sacrifice themselves for the other person if necessary.
Will is an unpleasant and rude person because of his history. His parents left the Nephilim to lead a normal life. But the Institute can come every 6 years to offer the children of this family the chance to become a Shadowhunter. When Will was 12, he opened a box that contained a demon. The demon cursed him that anyone who loved him would die, and that night his older sister died. So he left his family and went to the Institute and refused to see them, in order to protect them. When he fell in love with Tessa (which I KNEW he did, even though he was so rude to her), he went to a werewolf named Magnus in order to try and find this demon to remove the curse.
There is a family called the Lightwoods who want control of the Institute, and challenge Charlotte for it. They remind me of the Malfoys (crossing universes here), because they are very prideful of their bloodline. They also complain that the Institute is not guarded well enough, and offer their two sons Gideon and Gabriel to train Tessa and Sophie. Gabriel is very much like his dad, but Gideon doesn't seem to approve of his family's ways. Eventually Gideon and Sophie begin seeing each other, and he tells her that his dad is actually in cahoots with the Magister.
In the meantime, they are hunting down the Magister, which leads them to his childhood home in Yorkshire. When they are approaching the house, they see Will's younger sister Cecily. Through the Law he isn't allowed to talk to them, but he tries to chase her down anyway. Then they discover a robot is watching them, and they chase it down and destroy it. They also discover that Jessamine is a (somewhat unwitting) spy for the Magister, and Tessa's brother is killed in the struggle when they blow a robot up. Will almost dies in the process while protecting Tessa.
The one character in the book I can't understand right now is Tessa. There's like 5 days in a row where she kisses Will, then Jem, then Will, then Jem, then Will, then gets engaged to Jem when they think the Institute is closing. Then she has to break Will's heart. She says she loves Jem but I just know that he is going to die by the end.

Book 23- "Clockwork Angel" by Cassandra Clare

I found out about this book series because this author wrote a book series called "the Mortal Instruments", and this is the first of a trilogy of books that comes BEFORE that chronologically. So I decided to check it out. There will be 18 books total when she is done, which I am excited for because I LOVED this first one!

So Tessa Gray is a girl who lives in New York, and receives a letter from her brother in London saying he wants her to come live with him. She comes and is kidnapped by some women who seem to be connected to her brother somehow. She is taught that she has this magical power to "Change", or turn into another person when holding something that is connected to that person. She wants to escape but they said her brother will die, so she continues to do their bidding. Then she is rescued by this handsome boy named Will who has the MOST blue eyes (because you only hear about it 8,000,000 times in that book alone) and is really handsome. She finds out that the women she was with were actually warlocks, or the spawn of a human and a demon. Will is a Shadowhunter, or a Nephilim, which is a race of superhumans who are sent to protect the humans (or "mundanes") from the half breeds in the world (werewolves, warlocks, fairies, etc.).

And so Tessa's journey begins. She learns that the Shadowhunters train at a place called the Institute, where she meets Charlotte who runs the Institute with her husband Henry, the beautiful girl Jessamine, Will's "best friend" named Jem, and the various servants. 

Will, despite his first heroic appearance, is an anomaly. He is rude to everyone, and takes nothing seriously, and looks like he has something to hide. Tessa likes him throughout the book, but can't figure him out. Every time he acts nicely to her, he then finds a way to ruin the moment so perfectly that she can't actually develop feelings for him. He claims he goes out all night drinking and doing other things like that, but Tessa can tell he is never actually drunk. So she isn't sure what exactly he is trying to hide.

Jem is a boy who you discover is half Chinese (which makes sense when you see the next cover), and who has a secret of being addicted to a drug that is made by the demons. He was forced onto it when he was young and will die because he is on it, but will die without it. He is the only one who can stand Will regularly, and he is the perfect gentleman. He OBVIOUSLY likes Tessa, she is just not smart enough to see it apparently. The thing about him that is unique is that his eyes and hair are silver, and his skin is so white it's almost translucent. This is a result of the drugs.

Jessamine is beautiful and vain, and talks about how much she hates the Institute and wants to leave as soon as she turns 18. (Man, that used to seem so old!) She wants nothing more than to live a perfectly "mundane" life without all this witchcraft in it.

Charlotte is only 23, but basically runs the Institute single handedly. She loves all the people there, and even seems to tolerate Will at times. Her husband Henry is an inventor whose head is in the clouds and doesn't seem to be able to focus on the task at hand.

The servant that they focus on the most is Sophie. She is a beautiful girl who has a long scar across her face as the result of her last employers. She is loyal to the Institute and everyone there (except Will, who she hates).
Shadowhunters are able to enhance their abilities by drawing runes on themselves, which can do anything from give more energy to persuasion to directions. They are at war with a man who is only known as "the Magister", that apparently wants Tessa to marry him. He is working on an army of automatons (which I'm assuming are just primitive robots), to be able to overthrow all the Shadowhunters. Tessa changes into a female vampire named Camille (woo woo!) to see if he is at a party Camille was invited to. There she finds her brother and rescues him and brings him back to the Institute. And THIS is where it gets good.

So I won't spoil the whole plot, but there were some twists that I did not see coming. At the end Will is so rude to Tessa that she hates him again, but he goes to a werewolf for help with a mysterious problem.

The only thing I don't like about this book is how many stinking times the author must mention the color of Will's eyes. Yes, now they're the color of the ocean. Now they're the color of the night sky. Yes, now you could swim in them. They are BLUE.

Book 22- "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Another classic down.

I read this book on a free eBook app while I was flying across the country... then I was very sad to find out that it was the very abridged version. I thought it seemed short... but so I skimmed the real version. It was the same as the free eBook version, just with more detail.

Mary Lennox is a British girl who grew up in India to parents who didn't really want her around. She became very spoiled, because the servants didn't want her to upset her parents. Then they all died within a day of cholera, leaving her there alone. She was sent to a few houses, then to Mr. Archibald Craven's in England. He was a miserable old man who had an enormous house that she couldn't explore, and some gardens out back. She slowly began to open up to her new world, and be less unkind to everyone. She made friends with her maid Martha, the gardener Ben, and a little robin. There was a garden that belonged to Mr. Craven's wife, but when she died 10 years before he locked it up and buried the key. Nobody would talk about the garden to her. One day she happened to find the key, and then the door to the garden. She begins tending to it without telling anyone. She finds out that Mr. Craven has a son named Colin who was born about the time his wife died, and he thinks that he is going to die as a hunchback like his father. She befriends him by telling him how spoiled she is (ironic...) and ultimately she and her friend Dickon (Martha's brother) take Colin outside to the garden. When he finds out he is NOT going to die, Colin decides to embrace life and start learning to walk again. Ultimately he surprises his father by walking to him out of the garden.

That is a VERY brief version of the story. It is a sweet and simple story about a girl who learns to grow and mature through some hardships. She never knew how spoiled she was and how hard her life was until she didn't have it anymore, and then she decided to own up to it.

It was kind of hard to keep interested in, which doesn't bode well that I have "A Little Princess" by the same author reserved. However, it was a nice blast from the past since I used to watch the movie a lot as a kid.

Book 21- "Fishers of Men" by Gerald N. Lund

When I was younger, I used to read the "Tennis Shoes among the Nephites" book series. It's a series of like 10 or 11 books about some kids who found a wormhole into Book of Mormon times and went back and forth a few times throughout the years, then their kids found ANOTHER wormhole into Roman times in Jerusalem... and I lost track after that. They had a Roman soldier come back to modern times with them, and the son of Jacob the king of Jacobugath (that really wicked city in the Book of Mormon) come back with them. Anyway, it was a fascinating thing to read when I was in middle school and maybe even high school.
This book reminded me of that for some reason. While nobody time travels, it is a look into the lives of people who were living during Christ's time. It is the story of 3 groups of people- Miriam the daughter of a Sadducee, David and his Zealot family, and Marcus and Sextus the Romans. They all intersect at one point or another, but they have one thing in common- they have all heard of Jesus. Miriam and her servant saw Him when He was cleansing the temple, David's family knew Peter and Andrew and heard of Him that way, and the Romans heard of Him through Miriam. Throughout the book, the Zealot family was convinced of Jesus' power, and so was Miriam, but her father forbade her from seeing Him again.
Through the book all the groups become intertwined within a military attack that was orchestrated by Mordechai (Miriam's father). She ultimately saves the Zealot's lives by betraying the Romans, but at the cost of a few of them.
There was SO much in this book that I hardly began to scratch the surface. Especially with how they intersect. The Zealot family is almost brought into captivity by Marcus the Roman, then their son Simeon is almost killed by Sextus, then Miriam and Mordechai are saved by Simeon and his friends, then Marcus begins spending time with Marcus in the city, etc. etc. While that is very interesting, the best part is reading about the miracles of Jesus as if they are really happening now. At first I thought it was a little bit sacrilegious to be talking about Jesus like that. Him engaging in small talk and discussing things other than deep doctrine, However, He was a man. He had friends and He laughed with them I'm sure. He didn't just have to spend time ministering, So once I realized that, I really enjoyed this book. It ended a little after the miracle of the five loaves and 2 fishes, so I am anxious to see what happens next.