Review | Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

Tessa Gray should be happy – aren’t all brides happy?
Yet as she prepares for her wedding, a net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute.
A new demon appears, one linked by blood and secrecy to Mortmain, the man who plans to use his army of pitiless automatons, the Infernal Devices, to destroy the Shadowhunters. Mortmain needs only one last item to complete his plan. He needs Tessa. And Jem and Will, the boys who lay equal claim to Tessa’s heart, will do anything to save her.

“Most people never find one great love in their life. You are lucky enough to have found two.”

As the third and final book in the series, I was expecting Clockwork Princess to be filled with high stakes and lots of action, leading to a dramatic showdown with Mortmain and his clockwork army. Instead, despite its 500+ pages, not a lot happened. The plot was once again eschewed in favour of the love triangle and the secondary characters’ own budding love lives. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy any of these scenes – the Lightworm saga was entertaining, and I loved to see a seemingly throwaway comment about demon pox come full-circle – but they were few and far between, making for an onerous read.

To its credit, the Infernal Devices did create a love triangle that was different from any that I had ever read before – instead of being marred by jealousy and pettiness, it was filled with deep love and respect from all parties. Unfortunately, because of this, the nice and neat resolution to the love triangle was underwhelming. I felt that the characters were all cheated by the decisions that led to that ending, no matter how unexpected and emotional the epilogue was. Perhaps subsequent Shadowhunter books, like Chain of Gold, will make me feel a bit better about it.