Clockwork Angel

About Clockwork Angel

Clockwork Angel is the first book in Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices trilogy and a prequel to her Mortal Instruments series, set in Victorian London's Shadow World - the hidden society of Shadowhunters, Downworlders, and demons that Clare has spent more than a decade building into one of contemporary fantasy's most elaborately constructed universes. Published in 2010, it is widely considered among the finest books Clare has written. The novel follows Tessa Gray, an American girl who arrives in London in 1878 to join her brother, only to be kidnapped and forced to discover she has a rare and unsettling ability: she can transform herself into anyone whose personal object she holds. When she is rescued by the London Institute's Shadowhunters, she is drawn into a mystery involving a mechanical army and the clockwork creatures serving a villain known only as the Magister. What distinguishes The Infernal Devices from the Mortal Instruments is its emotional register. The Victorian setting gives Clare permission to slow down - the pace is more deliberate, the character development more sustained - and the result is a more textured romance and a more genuinely affecting tragedy. Tessa's position as a girl who is neither fully human nor Shadowhunter resonates through the entire trilogy. The love triangle between Tessa, Will Herondale, and Jem Carstairs is one of literature's rare triangles where readers cannot choose a side without grieving. Will is all brilliant surface and concealed devastation, a young man performing cruelty to protect the people he loves. Jem is gentle, dying, and quietly the bravest character Clare has written. Both relationships feel real and equally impossible. Will Herondale in particular has achieved the status of a reader obsession, and Clockwork Angel is where that obsession properly begins. For anyone who has bounced off Clare's more commercially driven series, The Infernal Devices is the place to try again.

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