Review: Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices #3) by Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication date: March 19th 2013
My rating: 3 stars
Audio-Book 

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.

My review for Clockwork Princess won’t be a conventional one.  I’m not going to re-cap a book when you’ve already read a million reviews on it.  If you’re reading this you’ve probably read book one and two and know what’s going on, or mostly anyways.  If you’re like me, the year and four months between books meant a lot of “what the heck?” moments trying to remember details. 

So I guess I’m the odd one out here, because there is a SEA of 5 star reviews for this.  I couldn’t bring myself to rate it above 3 stars.  I almost gave 2 stars after finishing because I was so ruined by the epilogue. 

Let’s start with the positive first:

The puzzle of Mortmain’s intensions and how Tessa fit in was satisfyingly revealed and resolved.  I loved the action and adventure, and all the secondary character stories.  I adored the sweet romance between Gideon and Sophie, and the cute and spunky one between Cecily and Gabriel.  Seeing how these played out was such a treat.  I had several giggles from the scones-under-the-bed scene, to Cecily’s rating of Gabriel:

“Five?” He echoed blankly.

“My rating,” she said, and smiled at him. “Your skill and technique may, perhaps, require work, but the native talent is certainly there. What you require is practice.”

“And you are willing to be my tutor?”

“I should be very insulted if you chose another,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him again.

Bridget surprised me with her kick-ass skills.  She was like a fiery-haired goddess!!:

The automaton went down under Cyril’s assault, as Bridget, a flying menace of red hair and steely blades, sliced her way past Cecily to Charlotte’s side, shearing the arms off two automatons with her sword before whirling about, her back to Charlotte, as if she meant to protect the head of the Institute with her life.

 

*****DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T READ CLOCKWORK PRINCESS. SPOILERS AHEAD*****

I LOVED Tessa and Will finally together.  Their piercingly sweet declarations of love stole my breath and brought tears to my eyes!!  The inscription Will wrote to her in A Tale of Two Cities, oh-my-heart!! Their intimate moments were full of longing desire and love.  I was swooning so hard!!

He kissed the side of her mouth. “I love you. God, I love you. I waited so long to say it.”

  

Now the “not-so-much” for me:

THE LOVE TRIANGLE!!  I DETEST love triangles!  One person flitting about between two others just drives me nuts.  If you can have feelings for someone else, you do not truly love either one of them as deeply as you should.  It’s a heart divided, so you are never being fair to either party.  Neither gets what they deserve: a person who loves them and ONLY THEM. 

With all that said, I have to say I never really truly bought Tessa’s romantic love for Jem.  I never felt it come through, it always IMO, read like a plot device.  Something contrived to keep your attention.  This is the reason I was always Team Will.  Not because I didn’t like Jem, but because I never thought Tessa truly loved him as she did Will.  She only agreed to Jem once she thought her love of Will would never be returned. After they were engaged it seemed like she treated it as a duty, rather than being so very happy.  On a side note, I don’t feel the same for the love-triangle between Adam, Juliette and Warner (From Shatter Me).  I detest it, but I do feel love/lust come through for both Adam and Warner.

I DID NOT CARE FOR THE EPILOGUE ONE BIT!! It basically ruined the romance between Will and Tessa for me.  The book ends with Tessa and Will engaged and meeting his parents, but we don’t see them after that.  We don't get to witness any of their time together, in love over the years. The epilogue begins with Will on his death bed.  Did I want to witness that?  No!!! Then what felt like two seconds later, Tessa is meeting up with Jem and they get together.  She tells him she loved him the whole time she was with Will, loved them both equally at the SAME time!!! What the heck?!! Why can’t you pick one person and be loyal with you WHOLE heart to that ONE person?!!  I don’t buy into this whole, you-weren’t-jealous-of-each-other-because-you-were-parabatai bit, AT ALL!  Will was jealous!! We read about it.  No Tessa, no Cassandra, I DO NOT LIKE how you cheapened what was supposed to be a love of a lifetime.  And Tessa and Jem meeting each other secretly each year did not sit well with me either.  It smacks of an emotional affair to me.  None of this was fair to Will or Jem!!

This is not my only issue with this series.  I didn’t care for the wait in between books, and I know that this may be a little unfair to the overall story.  But it did impact my enjoyment.  There was no re-cap whatsoever, so I felt a detachment to the story because I couldn’t remember half of what happened in the previous books!  Slowly things would come back to me or I would ask a friend (thank you Bethany!) to refresh my memory. 

In the end I mostly enjoyed the story until the epilogue, but I won’t be picking up any more books from The Mortal Instruments series or from The Infernal Devices for a very long time.  At the very least until they’re all published.