The Mortal Instruments

I was avoiding this series for so long, because it looked so cheesy and Twilight-esque.  But you know, it wasn’t nearly so bad as I thought it was going to be.  I quite enjoyed them.  The Mortal Instruments was similar to the Twilight series in teen angst and the mythical creatures, but that’s where the similarities ended. 

I pondered for a long time, and I think the difference lies in the characters.  The protagonists, certainly.  Jace may be somewhat Edwardish, in his tortured seductiveness, but Clary is no Bella.  She doesn’t just lie down and take it.  She feels every bit as despairing as Bella, but does she curl up in a ball in the middle of a forest and wait to die? No!  She goes and kills demons!

The secondary characters, I discovered, are just as important.  In Twilight, the only people that matter are Bella, the Cullens, and Jacob.  All of Bella’s human friends fade into scenery because Bella and Edward don’t have time for anyone else.  They are the only two people in the books, and frankly, it terrifies me.  It’s like living in a world populated by characterless cardboard cut-outs, and the only two real live people on the planet are so consumed with each other they don’t even notice.  In The Mortal Instruments, there are plenty of secondary characters who actually have personalities and care about the protagonists, and the protagonists care about them.  And there are tertiary characters with personalities as well, and whatever one calls fourth characters, and whole hosts of characters after that.  This world is populated.