"City of Bones" may be the most generic urban fantasy ever written. Sure, there are urban fantasy stories that are generic in a specific way... but none manage to gather almost ALL tropes under their umbrella. 
 As a result, the first book of Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series feels a lot like the unholy love child of Joss Whedon, "Twilight," JK Rowling, Sherrilyn Kenyon and.... every single "supernatural world you mortals don't see" series ever created, including vampires, werewolves, faeries and all the other typical stuff. Clare does have a strong writing talent and a knack for writing grotesque monsters and action scenes, but that can't overcome the massive plot holes and obnoxious characters. 
 Teenage Clary Fray's life is becoming very complicated -- she's seeing demon-slaying warriors that no one else can see, and her mother Jocelyn is planning to leave New York for the countryside... right before she vanishes without a trace. And after a nasty close encounter with a Ravener demon, Clary finds herself in the hands of the Shadowhunters, part-angel warriors charged with protecting the ordinary human "mundanes" (despite having nothing but contempt for them). 
 As she falls in love with the perpetually-snarking Jace, Clary continues her quest to find Jocelyn and discover why her mother has been kidnapped. The answer seems to be tied up in a long-ago war between factions of Shadowhunters, and a mysterious artifact called the Mortal Cup -- and as Clary discovers the terrible truth about her mother's past, she finds that the greatest enemy of the Shadowhunters may not be as dead as they assumed. 
 It's not hard to see why "City of Bones" has garnered bestsellerdom -- it's another story about an ordinary girl discovering she is in fact a superior kind of being (or destined to become one), and falling in love with a hot boy while trying to save the world. But unlike "Twilight" and its ilk, it also has plenty of action and suspense -- slaying demons with whips and "seraph blades," knife fights, and the occasional battle between (of course) vampires and werewolves. 
 And let's be fair here: Clare is not a bad writer by any means. Her writing style is robust and nimble, and she has a knack for evoking magical imagery (Portals, the demons, the seraph blades, the runes) and the sometimes-grandiose surroundings of the characters (Clary lives in a regal, decayed brownstone). And she has some clever ideas, even though her worldbuilding is often scattershot (why are the only Shadowhunters in New York a trio of teenagers and a guy who can't leave his home?). 
 However, her writing desperately needed a few more runs through the editor's office, because the overabundance of glitter and sexy clothes gets tiring, and she makes some painfully obvious writing mistakes (Isabelle's "red pendant" is described as "real and precious" -- so it's a real... red item?). And worst of all... the snark. It's abundantly clear that Clare is a big fan of Joss Whedon's writing style, because she tries to insert Whedon-style snarky dialogue all over the book... but it falls as flat as a pancake, and sometimes directly undermines the sense of urgency she's trying to generate. 
 Which brings us to the characters, who often awkwardly mouth that snark. Clary is a completely standard young-adult-fantasy heroine -- she's not very bright, she has a Secret Past/Destiny that she is unaware of, and she's beautiful without knowing it. Sadly, she's also rather self-absorbed and impressionable, since she manages to completely absorb the Shadowhunters' racism after knowing them for only a few days. Yes, the Shadowhunters are very bigoted towards everyone who isn't like them... and this isn't really seen as a bad thing. 
 As for Jace, he has exactly two moods: sneering snark, and emo wangst. He flips between these two at random, attempting to make us pity him while failing to be charmingly witty. Alec is also apparently supposed to elicit sympathy because he's a closeted gay teen, but his violent misogyny and seething jealousy kill any sympathy I might have had for him. The only likable characters end up being Simon and Isabelle, since Simon is one of the few nice, unselfish people in the story, and Isabelle one of the few Shadowhunters who doesn't treat him like garbage. 
 "City of Bones" is graced with some pretty good writing and ideas, but the patchy worldbuilding and obnoxious characters sink the promise that it initially had. As a result, you just get an ambitious but generic fantasy that could have been much more.