Clockwork Princess (2013) Review // A Solid 3 Stars

Clockwork Princess – Cassandra Clare

Book 3 “The Infernal Devices”

Fantasy, Young Adult

Trigger Warnings: sexual assault (past), death, violence, injury, death of a parent (on page, past), misogyny

Publication Date: March 19th, 2013

Clockwork Angel | ★★★★☆ | review
Clockwork Prince | ★★★☆☆ | review

You can find my reviews for The Mortal Instruments series here.

Character Guide   ⇩

►Tessa Grey → Main character, American, Warlock/Shapeshifter
►Will (William) Herondale → Shadowhunter
►Jem (James) Carstairs → shadowhunter, (mother) Chinese (father) British, Bi-racial
►Nathaniel Grey → Tessa’s brother
►Sophie → maid, has “the sight”
►Henry Branwell → older, inventor, Charlotte’s husband, a bit scatterbrained
►Charlotte Branwell → Henry’s wife, very nice, head of the London institute
►Jessamine Lovelace → vain, soo rude, angry, released from jail,
►Tatiana Blackthorn → widowed, Gideon and Gabriel’s sister, tall, sandy hair
►Gideon Lightwood → In love with Sophie, older sibling, quiet, dry humour
►Gabriel Lightwood → Gideon’s younger sibling, loyal
►Benedict Lightwood → Gabriel, Tatiana and Gideon’s father, demon pox
►Cecily Herondale → 15, Will’s younger sister,
►Magnus Bane → Warlock
►Woodsy Scott → Werewolf, head of Praetor Lupus
►Axel Mortmain → The Magister, Villain
►Aloysius Starkweather → *Spoilers* Tessa is his great grand-daughter

3.5 ⭐

“The Infernal Devices are without pity. The Infernal Devices are without regret. The Infernal Devices are without number. The Infernal Devices never stop coming.”

So… Clockwork Princess… This has been a long time coming and now we’re finally here! Honestly, I’m still getting back into writing full reviews so I@m not sure whre to start, so let’s talk about the audiobook!

If you can avoid it, I recommend reading the book physically or on ebook! I’ve been listening to all of Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter books on audiobook because that’s generally my preferred method of reading but, wow if I could go back and tell past me to read the book physically, I would! This is NOT a good audiobook experience! I am so glad I borrowed the ebook from Libby to follow along with while I listened because I could never tell what was happening! I ended up doing a lot of going back and re-listening as well as catching up with the ebook. VERY confusing! Also, the accents and the narrator’s voices are very bad! The narrator sounds like he’s mumbling all the time and it’s not fun!

I do not recommend the audiobook! The narrator is terrible! Just in general, I recommend avoiding the audiobooks for all of this series, none of them are any good!

I’d also like to mention that I actually understood all the TMI references and connections which felt like a win for me, since that’s the reason I read the books in the order I did!

“Heroes endure because we need them. Not for their own sakes.”

WHAT I ENJOYED

Interestingly, good or bad, I don’t have a lot ot say about this book, which is probably a good thing. It wasn’t amazing and it wasn’t bad by any means, it was a solid 3 stars! But, here are the things that I enjoyed that stood out to me most!

• I really liked the heavy focus on the love triangle. I don’t care about the love aspect of the triangle itself, but I do really enjoy how complex the friendship between WIll and Jem is so I lvoed learning about the two of them! I also LOVED getting a deeper dive into Gideon and Gabriel’s sibling relationship!
• I loved the Gideon and Sophie storyline! I’m low-key mad we’re finished reading about them now! They didn’t get enough page time! Honestly, if I could read about the Lightwoods romances over the Tessa angst, I know what I’d pick! (bye, Tessa!)
• I feel like we finally saw clearly how much Will and Jem care about eachother in this book! Who cares about Tessa I want a book just on their friendship! (I’m not a Tessa hater, I just think she’s boring compared to the side/background characters)
• This book shows how well a narrative can improve when characters understand eachother and communicate well!
• I do genuinely love the scenes between Sophie and Gideon and I loved seeing Gabriel develop as a character as well as the Branwells in the Institute but whenever we’d have to go back to Tessa and the boys I got immediately bored.

“How could three people who cared for one another so much cause one another so much pain?”

THE EH

I actually enjoyed this book for the most part but, there wer e afew things that bugged me about it.

• I really struggled with remembering with which Lightwood is which. Why do both their names have to start with G???
• Tessa rocked up to a demon fight in a wedding dress! I feel like out of context that’s funny but in context it’s unbelievably stupid!
• I know Jessamine isn’t *the best* character but I feel like she deserved a better character arc and I think she was serously deprived of some decent characterisation!
• I don’t think CC writes battles or ending climaxes very well and it honestly bugs me because so many people prasie her for it. Like, at points, random things happen to different characters and we’re expected to remember them even though they’re mentioned in passing once and then not brought up again until the end of the scene/chapters and it’s incredibly frustrating! For example, something happens to Henry in this book which I really felt was a bit of a cop out.
• Yo, there was a villain monologue send help
• I didn’t cry and that probably says more about me than the actual book but, oh well! 🤷‍♀️ I almost cried when something happened to Henry towards the end but I thought I was supposed to cry about Jem lol I have been deceived!
• It’s like CC wrote this book and then forgot she was meant to have a plot so she just chucked in a few chapters at the 70% mark
• god this took ages to end
• Here’s an actual note from while I was reading. I was well over this book but it just wouldn’t end! “oh my god sometimes cc’s writing can really waffle on holy shit i don’t care i just want this to be over”
• There was not nearly enough Sophie and Gideon content!

Have you read Clockwork Princess?
Do you prefer TMI or TID?

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