City of Bones
- 512
- Pages
- about 9 h
- Reading time
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Our view
The first Mortal Instruments novel packs a lot into modern New York: angels and demons, vampires, werewolves and fae, plus family ties and a first love. That abundance is the appeal, though some readers who hurry through it come away confused; it rewards a slower pace or a second visit. Over five hundred pages long and the first of six, it suits those ready to commit.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
City of Bones is the first urban fantasy book in author Cassandra Clare's New York Times bestselling series The Mortal Instruments. The novel, first published in 2007, is set in modern-day New York City and has been released in several languages, including Bulgarian, Hebrew, Polish and Japanese. It is the first book in the first trilogy of The Mortal Instruments which includes the books City of Ashes and City of Glass.
Reading order · The Mortal Instruments
Full order & progress →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.3 across 1,979 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 93% of the weight and the score stays at 7.3 — the Romance average of 7.6 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.8 | 95 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 1.9K | 95% |
Frequently asked
What age is City of Bones for?
City of Bones sits on the Young adult shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 13 and up. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 512 pages — shorter than 57% of the ranked books in Romance.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Romance — with scores between 7.3 and 7.8, closest to this book.
