By The Bel: Cassandra Clare's – “City of Bones” Book vs. Film

Book

I felt like I already knew these characters to a certain extent because we’d reviewed City of Ashes for the Burn Bright Book Club previously. I was pleased to see where their character arcs originated.

City of Bones is essentially about Jace and Clary finding one another and realising that you may not be able to pick your family, but you can certainly pick your friends. 

Cassandra Clare has me enchanted with her use of landmarks around New York, Brooklyn, and the surrounding areas. The unknown has always held some sort of magic to me and to have these places glorified in an enjoyable book makes both things more special.

The interesting bits will be to see how much the film, which is ‘based on’ this book, will be able to bring the chemistry between characters, the plausibility of the supernatural aspects, and the way the setting is allowed to speak for itself and isn’t just left as decoration.

I honestly hope Harald Zwart tries to keep the film as close to the book as he possibly can, though 500 plus pages will be difficult to contain within a standard film-length adventure.

Bring it on!

Paperback, Movie Tie-In, 506 pages

Published July 9th 2013 by Walker Books Ltd (first published 2007)

original title

City of Bones

ISBN13

9781406346428

Film

Consider me blown away. The casting was spot on, the CGI and special effects department were well on top of things, and the fact that Cassandra Clare was part of the script writing process helped beyond measure.

The key plot points were dead on target and the slight changes were forgivable as long as you went into it knowing it’s a film ‘based on’ the book, not a close adaptation. If you are expecting a word for word recreation, you will not enjoy it, though many of the memorable quotes remain in the script.