NightThinker2002 suggested again that I could do a review on The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare, so here I am.

The Infernal Devices is a prequel trilogy to The Mortal Instruments, set in Victorian London. Our main character is Tessa Gray, an American teenage girl who arrives in England after her aunt's death to find her brother, Nate. It is quite a complicated plot, but I think you need to understand it for the review, so I'll try to explain as best I can if you haven't read them and have no intention of reading them.

THE PLOT, BASICALLY

The plot broken down is this: Tessa lives with her aunt Harriet because her parents died in a coach crash. Her aunt dies in New York after a long illness, so Tessa, having nothing left for her in America, goes to London to live with her older brother Nate, who moved there for work some years before. Upon arrival, she is kidnapped by two women who then hold her captive and force her to change shape, which yeah she discovers she can take the forms of different people. Tessa is then rescued by two dashing young Shadowhunters, parabatai Will Herondale and Jem Carstairs, who take her to the London Institute and thus starts a stupid love triangle between the three of them. There she discovers the warlock sisters who kept her captive worked for a mysterious man they call "The Magistrate" who wanted Tessa for his bride. At first Tessa fears that the Magistrate is keeping Nate captive but over the course of the series we realise that Nate is in fact part of the scheme and is working for the Magistrate, and is in fact not Tessa's biological brother, in fact they're not related by blood at all.

Here is perhaps where it gets pretty complicated. Nate is in fact Harriet's son, adopted by her younger sister Elizabeth and her husband Richard Gray to hide the shame of an unmarried pregnancy. However, Elizabeth Gray wasn't truly Elizabeth Gray but in reality Adele Starkweather, a Shadowhunter child taken and switched with the mundane Elizabeth as a baby by faeries. A shapeshifting demon came to the adult Elizabeth in the form of her husband Richard, making Tessa, who is a shapeshifting warlock and pretty rare because Shadowhunters usually cannot carry warlock children, however Elizabeth could because she did not know she was a Shadowhunter and held no Marks.

Still with me?

Jessamine, a girl at the London Institute, is manipulated and used by Nate to help him and the Magistrate. Eventually Jessamine and Nate are both killed, the Shadowhunters win, and Tessa ends up with Will because Jem is dying and to save his life becomes a Silent Brother, which means he'll be immortal yet has to be hidden away and remain chaste.

PROS

As I was looking over this, I realised that my pros are mostly the characters. But I honestly really did enjoy these characters.

1) Will Herondale

I really really like Will. I feel that he is what Cassandra tried and failed to do with Jace - he's a sarcastic, witty "badboy" who has a reason to act so unfeeling and cruel. Will's sister was killed by a demon when he was a child, and before the demon was banished, it lied and told him it set a curse that anybody he would ever love would die violently, the reason why Will ran away from home and pushes people away. Will is a hilarious character and incredibly interesting and sympathetic.

2) Jem Carstairs

I didn't like Jem as much as Will, but I did like him. He's very gentle and calm, he plays the violin, and he's dying and has to slow the process with opium, which is why his hair has turned snow white.

3) Jessamine Lovelace

A Shadowhunter girl who lives at the Institute, though Jessamine does not want to be a Shadowhunter at all. She only lives there because her parents were murdered, and refuses to be Marked. She betrays the Institute by marrying Nate Gray in secret, though we are sympathetic to her because in reality, all Jessamine craved was a normal family, a loving mundane husband, but sadly she dies knowing that Nate never truly loved her.

4) Henry Branwell and Charlotte Fairchild

A really adorable couple - the head of the London Institute and her husband, who is a genius inventor yet lacks certain social skills and common sense. Most of the Clave are against Charlotte because she's a woman, but she proves herself.

5) The Lightwoods

I just loved these guys, especially old Benedict Lightwood, who is pretty much a dickhead and preaches against Downworlders, but later dies from demon pox, which can only be contracted from sexual relations with demons.

6) Magnus Bane

Ah where would we be without Magnus, the hilarious, glittery, bisexual warlock we all know and love?

7) The Backstory

I really enjoyed the whole backstory to this series. It may seem convenient and unnecessarily complicated to some, I don't know, but I really did find it interesting.

CONS

1) Main Character Woes

As per usual with Cassandra Clare, Tessa is a terrible main character. She's dull, her only personality trait being that she's a bookworm.

This backstory is lavish but Tessa unfortunately is not. She's boring, slightly more interesting than Clary yet still dull.

2) Stupid Love Triangle.

Like I said, Tessa goes to stay at the London Institute and there meets two very different boys, parabatai Will Herondale and Jem Carstairs, and gets caught up in a stupid love triangle that I was not at all interested in.

3) Ridiculous Sex Scenes

As per usual with Cassandra yet again. In the final book Will and Tessa have sex (without being married le gasp) and it's so over the top and stupid.

I really enjoyed this series and often reread it. You may not think it's very good but it's honestly one of my guilty pleasures and I greatly prefer it to TMI. I would give it 4/5.