City of Bones

City of Bones
By Cassandra Clare

You have probably already seen advertisements for this book because it has been made into a movie which is coming out this week. I am about to start the second book in this series, The Mortal Instruments. Although much of Clare's plot sounds eerily similar to many teen fantasy books lately, I liked the way she creates this world and manages to have lots of surprises as the plot moves along.

Clary Fray has one friend, Simon, and a close relationship with her mother and adopted uncle. Her mother is an artist and they have lived in New York City for several years. One night, as she and Simon are at a  popular night club, Clary witnesses a murder. However, there is no body and no one else remembers seeing the perpetrators. In a matter of days, Clary's mother disappears and Clary is attacked in her apartment by a creature out of her nightmares. Jace Wayland, who claims to be someone not quite human, inadvertently helps Clary and then provides a shelter and some cryptic answers to her questions. Jace is a Shadowhunter who has been trained all his life to fight demons. He has the ability to be invisible to mortals. Because Clary is able to see him and his friends, they try to figure out how she can and who she really is. The rest of the novel is about Clary's self-discovery, the Shadowhunters and trying to rescue her loved ones.

What did this book have to do with my faith? One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Jace and Clary enter a church to get help to fight a group of their enemies. Clary thinks they are breaking in when Jace utters a statement that unlocks the church door. Then, although he says he is not Christian, he kneels down in front of the altar. However, he is not there to pray but is searching for weapons hidden under the floor. He announces that all faiths do their part to help them (the Shadowhunters) fight the demons. I can't help but draw a correlation between kneeling in prayer and fighting demons and getting actual weapons to go fight demons. How often is prayer a form of warfare? I suppose we don't really think of it as such but the apostle Paul did. In the last chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, Paul compares getting ready to pray with gearing up in armor to fight. Maybe Paul understood our own weaknesses as well as the possible attacks of the Devil. We need to be armed in order to pray. Are you putting on your armor when you go to God in prayer?

I highly recommend this book and I plan to go see the movie. Anyone want to join me?

Happy reading!

Amelia