City of Ashes: Setting

For my next blog post, I will be talking about the setting of City of Ashes.  The author, Cassandra Clare, describes each new scene so the reader can imagine what is happening easily in their head.  An example of this is “The first time Clary had ever seen the Institute, it had looked like a dilapidated church, its roof broken in, stained yellow police tape holding the door closed.  Now she didn't have to concentrate to dispel the illusion.  Even from across the street she could see it exactly as it was, a towering Gothic cathedral whose spires seemed to pierce the dark blue sky like knives.” (Clare, 52).  Here Clare is describing one of the main settings, the Institute, and what it would look like to normal humans, or mundanes, as the characters in the book call them.  She relates what the Institute looks like to things that almost everyone has seen before, so that they can picture it in their minds.