Review of Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader

Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader

By Cassandra Clare (Editor), Holly Black, Kate Milford, Diana Peterfreund, Sara Ryan, Scott Tracey, Robin Wasserman, Kendare Blake, Gwenda Bond, Sarah Rees Brennan, Rachel Caine, Sarah Cross, Kami Garcia, Michelle Hodkin and Kelly Link

About:
Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, epic urban fantasy set in a richly imagined world of shadowhunters, vampires, werewolves, fairies, and more, has captured the imaginations and loyalty of hundreds of thousands of YA readers. Originally a trilogy (City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass), the series has extended to six titles, plus a prequel trilogy, the Infernal Devices, and a planned sequel series, the Dark Artifices. A feature film is planned for 2013.

Shadowhunters and Downworlders, edited by Clare (who provides an introduction to the book and to each piece), is a collection of YA authors writing about the series and its world.
Source: Goodreads

My rating: 4/5 stars

My Thoughts:

A collection of essays and other pieces of writing written by YA authors on the Mortal Instruments series. I enjoyed reading other perspectives on the series written by Cassandra Clare, and it was interesting how the characters and story lines were interpreted. There was analysis on the 'duckie effect', something I never knew existed until today, and a brilliant essay on why we love Valentine! However, my favourite contribution, was the piece written by Sarah Rees Brennan. I love her writing and loved her energetic flair within this book.

Favourite Quotes:

There is the world you know, the world you have always known; and then you blink, and there is a place you never had any inkling of, and it spreads out across you eyescape. And then, most shockingly of all; There is the realisation that these two places are one and the same. It turns out you never really knew the workd around you at all.

In German, "uncanny" becomes unheimlich, which translates more literally to unhomely. Not like a home.
Dorothy murmurs it like a prayer: There's no place like home, there's no place like home. But if home suddenly becomes not like home, what then?

Then again, I suppose I always assume people hiding parts of themselves from each other. People do that. Perhaps, then, it isn't particularly odd that all the family drama in the books never seems as big a deal to me as the shifting nature of the city, the things it hides and the things it chooses to reveal.

There isn't a portal that can whisk you home if you're already there, so the challenge is to understand and to adapt and to find the homely even in that which is not like home.

Adults lie, they betray, they screw up in every way possible, and the adult Shadow-hunters are no different from their mundane counterparts- except that a Shadowhunter's lies are more likely to get you eaten by a demon.