- Read by: Ed Westwick takes every part in a book with a large ensemble, from Shadowhunters at peace to a vampire who has just been thrown out of home.
- At its heart: Peacetime after a war, a relationship pulling apart without explanation, a friend who loses his home the day his family learns what he is, consequences you started yourself.
- Vibe: Restless and romantic, with a murder plot keeping time underneath.
- Short version: A worthwhile continuation for anybody three books deep, and close to meaningless for anybody who is not.
Does a trilogy get to have a fourth book? That question sits underneath this audiobook and the answer is not obvious from the outside. City of Fallen Angels arrives after The Mortal Instruments had already completed an arc, running twelve hours and thirty-nine minutes, read by Ed Westwick, released by Simon and Schuster Audio in April 2011. Cassandra Clare's answer is to restart the machine with the war won and the couple together, which is a considerably harder trick than starting one from scratch.
Book four opens from a deliberate reset position. The Mortal War is finished. Clary Fray is back home in New York, training as a Shadowhunter and learning to use her particular power. Her mother is marrying the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace. And Jace is finally, officially, her boyfriend. Every problem the first three books ran on has been solved, which is precisely the position a series occupies when it decides to keep going, and the copy says the quiet part out loud: nothing comes without a price.
Restarting that machinery takes three separate moves, and they land more or less at once. Somebody is murdering Shadowhunters, which pushes the new peace back toward a second and bloodier war. Simon cannot help, because his mother has just discovered he is a vampire and he is now homeless. Jace starts pulling away from Clary without explaining himself. And when Clary finally chases the mystery down, it leads back to something she set in motion herself. That last move is the clever one, because it converts a sequel into a consequence rather than an addition.
As records go, this one is clean. Book four of The Mortal Instruments, with both series boxes filled in, which makes it one of the easier pages in this catalog to navigate away from. Simon and Schuster Audio, April 5, 2011. Filed under teen and young adult with a Romance tag, and the tag is doing genuine work, because the relationship carries at least as much weight in the description as the killings do. Anybody arriving for urban fantasy should read that tag as a warning label rather than as decoration.
What Makes City of Fallen Angels Worth Hearing
Written in German, the most interesting assessment on this page arrives already suspicious. That reader admits to anticipating the book while bracing for disappointment, on the grounds that three volumes had been planned, that those three ranked among their favorites in young adult fiction, and that a fourth looked like a successful series being stretched for money. The response concedes the commercial motive is obviously real, then reports that the book exceeded expectations by a wide margin. Skepticism followed by a change of mind is worth far more than enthusiasm.
Understanding that turnaround takes nothing more than a look at the premise. A series continuing past its own ending has to justify the extension with something the first arc could not deliver, and this one picks the aftermath: what becomes of people who won, once winning stops being the point. Clary gets a boyfriend and a peacetime, and both start going wrong immediately. Simon gets outed to his own mother and loses his home for it. That is a genuinely different book from the three before it, and the difference is the whole argument.
Things to Know Before Starting City of Fallen Angels
Casting is the thing to test here before you buy. Ed Westwick reads the entire recording, and the book belongs almost completely to Clary: her training, her mother's wedding, her boyfriend, her mystery. One male voice carrying a sixteen-year-old girl's viewpoint for more than twelve hours is a real choice rather than a neutral one, and it can work beautifully or grate badly depending on how it handles the interior register and the other young women in the cast. This page will not settle that. Four minutes of sample will.
Some of the responses here are not grading a recording at all. One describes opening a package, holding the book, and finding it noticeably small, roughly a quarter shorter than City of Glass, a disappointment measured in physical thickness before a word was read. Another, filed from Sweden, awards a single star because the edition that arrived did not match the picture and did not feel like an original copy. Neither has anything to do with the audio, and both have been folded into the rating this page displays.
Then notice what the most prominent written response actually contains. It opens with the words inside cover and reproduces the jacket copy at length, arriving at the same promise the description above it has already made. Nothing dishonest is happening, and that reader plainly loved the book. It does mean somebody scrolling for an independent opinion is reading the publisher's own sentences a second time, and that the visible enthusiasm at the head of this column is thinner than it first appears.
Who Cassandra Clare Is Writing For
Three books deep is the realistic audience in full, and for those readers this is an easy recommendation. One account describes tearing through the series during a read-a-thon, finishing this volume the morning after the event ended, and spending the hours away from the book thinking about it. That is exactly the condition a fourth volume is built for. Add listeners who want their fantasy romance weighted toward the romance, since the tag on this page is honest about where the hours go.
Coming in cold at book four is the mistake to avoid, since the copy assumes you already know what the Mortal War was and why peace between Shadowhunters and Downworlders counts as remarkable. Readers who wanted the trilogy to remain a trilogy should accept plainly that this volume exists because the first three sold, whatever else it also turns out to be. That is not a reason to avoid it, but it is the frame it was built inside. And anybody buying on the rating should remember what has been pooled underneath it, since part of it grades cardboard rather than a recording.
Before You Listen
How long is the City of Fallen Angels audiobook, and is it really the fourth Mortal Instruments book?
Twelve hours and thirty-nine minutes, and yes. The series fields put it at position four, with Simon and Schuster Audio issuing it on April 5, 2011. Since the copy opens by announcing that the Mortal War is already over, the previous three volumes count as required listening.
Who narrates the City of Fallen Angels audiobook?
Ed Westwick alone, with no second voice credited anywhere on the record. The book follows Clary Fray closely, so one voice carries a sixteen-year-old girl's perspective across the entire runtime. That is a deliberate production decision, and a sample is the quickest way to learn whether it suits you.
Why does a trilogy have a fourth book?
Because the first three sold and the publisher extended the line. What the writing does with that is turn the aftermath into the plot: peace arrives, the couple finally gets together, and both promptly begin to fail. Whether the extension earns itself is the question every returning reader carries in.
