Have I mentioned yet that nearly every description in this book is a simile?  Most of them hold up decently on their own, but there’s just so many of them.  It’s like nothing is allowed to just look like itself, it always has to be something else first.  And that doesn’t even get into the particularly egregious times when a person looks like a shadow or a bird looks like a hunchback.  This book really has something against simple, evocative descriptions.  It’s mind-boggling. 

Just for a demonstration, at the end of this chapter, I’m going to list every single simile I had to read through today.

They go up to the greenhouse on the roof and there’s a bunch of night-blooming flowers there.

“What kind of flowers are these?”

Jace shrugged and sat down, carefully, next to a glossy green shrub dotted all over with tightly closed flower buds. “No idea. You think I pay attention in botany class? I’m not going to be an archivist. I don’t need to know about that stuff.”

“You just need to know how to kill things?”

Hey, guess what can kill things?  Poisonous plants!  Double points for magical poisonous plants.  By the way, Clary mentions moonflowers (can mean one of several species), angel’s trumpets (also known as ‘moonflowers’), and four-o-clocks (also known as mirabilis jalapa.)  Guess what?  ALL OF THOSE FLOWERS ARE POISONOUS TO HUMANS.  But hey, Jace is just so super awesome and cool for not knowing that.

They sit around and talk about their respective emo childhoods.  They get around to talking about Luke, and Jace is just about to point out to her that Luke isn’t a horrible person or abandoning her, but then they get distracted by pretty flowers.  Yeah, because that’s really what’s important right now.  Praising the author for making glow-in-the-dark flowers.

Then Jace gives her a glow-in-the-dark stone for a birthday present, and they talk more about their childhoods.  Mostly pointless little details that are cute, but…let’s be honest, nothing but filler.

Also, Jace and Isabelle never bumped uglies in the past.  Because that’s so important.  I mean, you can only bump uglies with one other person ever, so if they’d done it, then Clary and Simon would be shit out of luck.  It’s not like people can actually have flings that end and then move on to have other relationships after that, nope.  You only get one.  That’s why teenagers are perfectly justified in bawling emo tears of ultimate sadness when they break up, because they’ll never have another love again, ever!

“She hates me,” observed Clary.

“No, she doesn’t,” he said, to her surprise. “You just make her nervous, because she’s always been the only girl in a crowd of adoring boys, and now she isn’t anymore.”

Uhg, this ‘all girls are in competition’ thing again.  For the record, her ‘group of admiring guys’ are 1) her brother, 2) a middle aged man, 3) Jace, who she’s not interested in.  But heaven forbid another girl come in and take her attention away!  It’s not like it’s possible for girls to like other girls, be friends with other girls, or not give a shit if people she’s not interested in aren’t interested back.  If I were Isabelle, I would be starved for new contacts, of either gender.  Can you imagine only hanging out with our own family and two other guys, every day, your whole life?

And if she has other friends, friends we haven’t seen yet, then those friends haven’t been introduced to Clary, and that would make Jace’s entire statement nonsense.

You know, maybe Isabelle just hates Clary for being antagonistic to her right off the bat?

And then there’s kissing.  We’re a little more than halfway through the book now so, yup, right on time.

They go downstairs, and there’s more kissing.  Then they kiss next to Clary’s room, and Simon comes out to catch them, and you know what?  I really don’t give a fuck about this drama.  At least the text focuses on Simon being sad, not on anyone implying Clary is a whore for having one boy in her bed and one boy kissing her. 

Jace makes some rude comments because he’s Jace and then walks off, leaving Clary and Simon to have a fight.

So what if Jace is a jerk sometimes? You’re not my brother, you’re not my dad, you don’t have to like him. I’ve never liked any of your girlfriends, but at least I’ve had the decency to keep it to myself.“

“This,” said Simon, between his teeth, “is different.”

“How? How is it different?”

“Because I see the way you look at him!” he shouted. “And I never looked at any of those girls like that! It was just something to do, a way to practice, until—”

“Until what?”

Wow.  Simon, how many ways can you make me hate you in one scene?  So you toy with the affections of other girls for ‘practice,’ and that’s okay, but Clary’s now the bad guy for actually liking someone else without it being a manipulation?

I mean, he really can’t be any more blantant about saying it.  Guys are allowed to screw around all they want and that’s fine, but women are wrong for having just one honest relationship, unless it’s him.  And she’s supposed to just magically know this, despite him not ever saying anything.

Granted, the text says Simon is wrong here, but that doesn’t keep Simon from being a horrible person.

Oh, and he only flirted with Isabelle to make Clary jealous.  Poor, poor Isabelle.  She’s getting treated like crap by everyone.

“I’ve been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess, you don’t.”

Because Lord knows saying anything would have been too much trouble.

Simon then leaves in a hissy fit, and good riddance.  After he goes, Clary sits and emos for a while about how he called her ‘stupid’ for not realizing that he was in love with her. 

AND THEN CLARY COMES TO THE CONCLUSION THAT HE’S RIGHT!

No.  No, girls, no.  It is not your responsibility to magically know when a boy likes you.  Especially teenage girls, since their social skills are still forming.  Boy might make mistakes and not say anything and then get mad at how things go – again, teenagers = bad social skills – but this doesn’t make the girls stupid, or at fault. 

And yet—for those brief moments, up on the roof with Jace, she’d forgotten her mother.

Hah.  When has she ever remembered her mother?

Maybe this, she thought, losing Simon, maybe this is my punishment for the selfishness of being happy, even for just a moment, when my mother is still missing.

No.  No, wanting to be happy is never a selfish thing.  People should want to be happy and shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting that.  What she should feel guilty for is doing jack squat to find her mother, not for being happy that a cute boy kissed her.  What the fuck is wrong with this book?

So Clary grabs her sketchbook again, and notices that some wings she drew on Jace feel like feathers.  Seems she also drew some runes on the page, as well.  So she experiments by drawing a very detailed coffee mug, then the runes again.

Driven by some instinct she didn’t quite understand, she reached for the cup and set it down on top of the paper.

Oh, wait, my mistake.  She didn’t see something odd and then decide on her own, using her human brain and reasoning skills, to see if the effect could be replicated.  No, she’s ‘driven’ by ‘instinct,’ because what female actually uses her brain instead of her emotions to make decisions?  That would be just silly. 

Fuck this book.

Similes:

·         big empty rooms they passed through on their way to the roof looked as deserted as stage sets

·         the white-draped furniture looming up out of the dimness like icebergs through fog

·         the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat’s paw

·         she could see the lights of Manhattan burning like cold jewels

·         He looked like a fair-haired angel from a Rembrandt painting, except for that devilish mouth.

·         They were dusted with pale gold pollen as light as talcum.

·         They drifted toward the floor, glimmering like slivers of starlight.