City of Heavenly Fire

The Mortal Instruments, Book 6

By: Cassandra Clare

Narrated by: Jason Dohring, Sophie Turner

Length: 20 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

Darkness has descended on the Shadowhunter world. Chaos and destruction overwhelm the Nephilim as Clary, Jace, Simon, and their friends band together to fight the greatest evil they have ever faced: Clary's own brother. Nothing in this world can defeat Sebastian - but if they journey to the realm of demons, they just might have a chance....

Lives will be lost, love sacrificed, and the whole world will change. Who will survive the explosive sixth and final installment of the Mortal Instruments series?

©2014 Cassandra Clare (P)2014 Simon & Schuster Audio

Great Wrap Up

Its The Mortal Instruments book, of course it's awesome!

The story is wrapped up well, some things I did not like but as a whole it was good. Not great, good. They've introduced a few characters that we will see down the road no doubt in a spin off of these books. Like how the Clockwork books were kinda of a prequel, these new characters will be the main characters of the books following Instruments.

Looking forward to it Cassandra.

Again, good!

Great listen for a first time re-read. It was almost like the first time.

I REALLY don't like how they changed narrators nearly book. Seriously jarring to do a full-series binge listen.

Still, enjoyable. Even if not as enjoyable as my first read. Maybe it was the narrator switching, but it was only a great listen, not an epic one.

I love These books

I love the whole book set and I wish there were more books like this!

Narrators could have done better.

I love this series, but there was no emotion in the narration. Especially when it comes down to the moment everyone waited for between specific characters and the emotion was absent. Molly Quinn did an absolutely fantastic job in book 5. It was such a disappointment that it was read through so quickly and emotionally devoid of the love, lust, beauty and specialness it should have had. The long awaited journey could have been narrated much more beautifully. So disappointed. 😢

Loved the story

I know a lot of listeners complain about Jason Dohring. But I like his voice so it made up for a lot of flat reading on his part. And he really tried. Some people are just better at certain things then others. Misfire Turner did a fine job though. And the story, as all the other books, was just great.

Not the best

Jason was not a good choice and jarred me every time he took over but Sophie did great

Perfect ending to the series

I absolutely loved this book! The characters were perfect written and am so glad I took the time to read all the books. As for the narration it wasn’t good but it wasn’t nearly as bad as book 4. I really wish that they would have kept the narrator from book 1. I felt like every time I would get used to a narrator they would change them to an even worse one! I absolutely loved the story though.

Great story, bad narration

Just because someone is an actor does not mean they can narrate a book properly. I wish the series had stuck with the original narrator who was great. I wasn't a fan of the narrators from books 4 and 5, but I got used to the, This one gets more tolerable the more you listen, but as others have said Jason Dohring is pretty monotone. He has a specific pattern of speech fluctuations no matter what is going on. Turner was better at acting out the story, but her accent got in the way for me. The worst part was switching between these two since their styles are so different it accentuated the issue. With that in mind, the story is great and I would recommend, but maybe consider getting the written version instead of audio. When I started listening to it I had wished I had gotten the e-book. Too bad.

Good book; iffy narration

The final Mortal Instruments book...ahh, bittersweet. I'm a grown woman and I really liked this series, so I was both excited and sad to finish this audiobook.

As a finale to the series, City of Heavenly Fire was very good. It wasn't as good as Clockwork Princess (the final book in Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices trilogy), but it ticked all the boxes and closed the series properly. If I have a minor complaint about the story itself, it would be that the author spent too much time setting up her next series, The Dark Artifices (the Los Angeles/Emma/Jules story line), which dragged this book out longer than it needed to be. Other than that, I was pleased with the story and the way it wrapped up.

The narration, on the other hand, could have used some direction. I don't know what it is about this series as a whole, but nearly every book had mediocre (at best) or terrible (at worst) narration.

Sophie Turner had the potential to be very good, but she spoke much too fast at times. I would rate her 3 stars (3.5 or 4, had she spoken a little slower). Jason Dohring was just wrong for this book, completely. His monotone voice was nearly expressionless and it was clear that he is a story-READER rather than a story-TELLER. I would rate his performance 2 stars, although he did improve towards the end (or maybe I just became accustomed to his voice). I don't think that having dual narrators added anything to this book.

Fans of the series should also be aware that the narration is obviously based on the performances from the (terrible) City of Bones movie, as every Shadowhunter now has an English accent, despite the fact that they had American accents in all of the other audiobooks, which is annoying at first, but easy to overlook.

Now it seems as if I didn't like the book, but I did...I really did! It was a credit well spent and I will definitely listen to the audiobook again, less-than-perfect narration notwithstanding. Guest appearances by Jem and Tessa from The Infernal Devices were an extra-special treat. Cassandra Clare writes great books for young adults (and grown women, like me, who like to pretend we're still young adults), and I can't wait for her next series to start.

Horrid NARRATORS

The male narrator completely destroyed the story! His voice is awful. Had to buy the actual book to get through.