Clary asks Luke about the military guy that she thought was her father.  Turns out he was the son of an old neighbor, and Jocelyn just told Clary he was her father.  (But he actually did die in a car crash, and he was in the Army.)  Clary’s father is Valentine, but I don’t give a fuck, because it doesn’t matter.  Seriously, unless this world involves some sort of hereditary magic, it doesn’t matter and I’m rather sick of books trying to tell me it does.

I will grant you that Clary can feel shocked by this news, as it’s something to deal with, but I’m still sick of seeing it in stories. 

“Oh, I beg to differ. I think he was clearly evil. All that stuff he was spouting about keeping the human race pure and the importance of untainted blood—he was like one of those creepy white power guys. And you two totally fell for it.”

Eh?  All I remember him saying is that there were fewer and fewer Magic Special Hunters, not that demons were de-purifying the human race. 

Readers, I am terribly sorry, I misled you.  Robert was not a mundane.  Maryse’s brother married a mundane, not Maryse.  This book is so awful that I was skimming to get through it faster, and I misread a line.  However, back when they first suspected Clary had Special Magic Angel Blood like them, everyone agreed that it was either her mother or her father that gave it to her, rather both of them, so I think my ‘fuck across Europe’ plan still holds up.

Back to the point.  Valentine didn’t have anything against fairies (at least, not in anything we’ve been told) until one of them killed his dad.  At no point so far as he ‘gone on’ about purity, but rather about fairies being dangerous since they kill people and shit.  In fact, it was Alec and Jace who originally brought up the whole ‘demon blood is icky’ bit.

“I wasn’t the one talking about ‘slimy’ Downworlders just minutes ago,” Luke said quietly. “Or about how they couldn’t be trusted.”

“That’s not the same thing!” Clary could hear the tears in her voice. “I had a brother,” she went on, her voice catching. “Grandparents, too. They’re dead?”

Really?  Because it sounds like the same thing to me.  Oh, you’re just going to move on and not explain yourself or examine your own actions or come to grips with the consequences of them?  You’re not going to grow at all as a character, because your author thinks you’re already perfect as-is?  *sigh*  Alright, moving on to the dead grandparents, I guess.

Gretel comes in.

“That’s a good girl,” said the wolf-woman, dipping a cloth into one of the bowls and lifting it to Clary’s face. Gently she cleaned away the dried blood.

Oh, book.  How many ways can I hate you?  First, it’s highly suspect that the only female shapeshifter we’ve seen so far is being called a “wolf-woman,” thereby reducing her to an animal while all the men get to remain fully human.  (The men, in fact, get to keep their names, too.)  Second, why do we have yet another woman in a healer/caretaker role?  Luke is right there, he supposedly cares about her like family, and he has every reason in the world to gentle her and care for her.  But instead of giving him a bowl of water, instead it has to be this complete stranger.  Why?  Because she’s a woman?  You’re not giving me any other reason to work with, book, so I don’t have much a choice but to draw the obvious conclusion.

Getel is in this scene to do nothing except nursemaid these two and play fetch and carry.  Really, that’s it.  She gives no input, thoughts, or advice, and she barely says a word at all.  She may as well not be there.  I guess she’s just around because it would be…bad? if Luke knew how to clean up blood and put a bandage on a wound?  Uhg.  This woman is supposed to be his second or third in command.  She should have a point when she’s in a scene.  She should be advising and planning, not cleaning.

Clary decides that Valentine must be in New York (no, really, just decides this after hearing that it’s ‘possible,’ even though she has no evidence to think this) and that he’s at a place called Renwick’s because that’s the only other magic portal door in NYC since Dorthea’s got destroyed.  Luke sends Gretel to get a phonebook, because…what, are his legs broken?  Why can’t he get one himself?  Hey, Gretel, why not make him a sandwich while you’re in there?  It’s not like this can get much worse.

“If we catch Valentine,” she asked abruptly, “can we kill him?”

Luke nearly dropped the bandages. “What?”

She fiddled with a stray thread poking out of the pocket of her jeans. “He killed my older brother. He killed my grandparents. Didn’t he?”

Luke set the bandages on the table and pulled his shirt down. “And you think killing him will what? Erase those things?”

Who the fuck said that it would?  Kill the shit out of that mutherfucker because obviously if you don’t he’s going to continue his murder-spree, not because it’ll magically erase the past.  Besides that, it’s such a weak argument.  Who ever thinks that killing a murderer will bring victims back to life?  No one.  People kill out of revenge because they think it’ll make them feel better, not because they think it’ll be a magic bandaide.  Even if she admits that he’s right, is that really going to do anything to keep her from a murder-revenge-quest?  (Assuming this author can stand to let her precious character actually do anything, of course.)

On top of that, some people do feel better after a revenge killing.  No, really.  There have been plenty of revenge-murderers who say they regret nothing and are glad they did it.  That doesn’t make it the right thing to do, but then again, it’s hard to talk to someone with a dead family about philosophical rights and wrongs.

Moving on.  Even though Gretel had to go get a phonebook (and then a phone), they don’t use the book.  They don’t even open it.  Clary jumps right into calling Simon, and Simon looks up Renwick’s on the internet.  Turns out it’s an old abandoned insane asylum.  Yeah, a door that sends people anywhere won’t fuck with the minds of insane people at all.  I bet the workers there just had a blast with it.

He cut her off with a gesture. “That’s what Roosevelt Island used to be called. Blackwell’s. It was owned by an old Shadowhunter family. I should have guessed.”

What the fuck, book?  It really did used to be known as Blackwell’s Island, because there really was a family named Blackwell that owned it.  They were very rich and produced a few political figures.  So are you telling me that this old, real-world family was really part of your super-special-hunters group?  What about the Dudley’s?  The Winthrop’s?  The Roosevelt’s?  Were they all hunters, too?  Is it the common practice of super-special-magic people to get involved in mundane politics?  Do they fight in wars where one side is full of demons?

Furthermore…what, are your Blackwells still there?  Do they just not care that the City of New York bought the island in 1828?  Why not call it what it’s currently called?  Why keep calling it by a 200 year old name as if it’s served a different purpose for you than it did for the rest of the world?

I don’t know why this is pissing me off as much as it does.  I’ve seen it a few times, and it always produces the same reaction.  I don’t know, maybe it’s because of the continuous insistence that these fictional people are so much better than everyone else.  It’s like taking someone real and going “oh, all that shit you did?  Yeah, that was too cool for you, you must have had angel blood.”  I wouldn’t be nearly so upset, I think, if these hunters were just better trained and informed, rather than Genetically Superior To You.  When you start going down that road, then co-opt real world stuff into your fantastical racism, it’s bound to get dicey.

Luke gathers up the wolves and they all head out.

His pickup was the first in a line of vans, motorcycles Jeeps, and even a wrecked-looking old school bus. The vehicles stretched in a line down the block and around the corner. A convoy of werewolves. Clary wondered how they’d begged, borrowed, stolen, or commandeered so many vehicles on such short notice.

They live here.  They have lives that don’t revolve around you.  They have other stuff they do that requires getting around town, and they probably do that stuff as a group, since they’re big enough on command structure to have a second and a third in command.  There’s no reason to assume they didn’t already have these vehicles before you showed up.

Gretel gives Luke a sack lunch, because this book thinks I don’t hate it enough already.

Clary and Luke talk more in the truck.  Luke acts all iffy when he hears that Jace’s father was Wayland, so yeah, I’m going to go ahead and guess that wasn’t his real dad.  Because, you know, that’s just so relevant and all.

Turns out these shapeshifters can control their stuff, and only the full­-full moon will force a change on them.  So, back at the vampire hotel, when it was a full-full moon and that guy changed anyway…?  Also, Luke has only been leader of this pack for a week.  He killed the last leader just to get the pack, and no one blinks an eye about the dead guy that Luke callously murdered.  From the sound of things, he didn’t even come up and say “hey, I really need your guys’ help to stop a crazy dude that would happily see you all murdered.”  Nope, he just jumped straight into the killing, and no one cares because that other guy wasn’t a real person.  Not like Luke, who is more human than human.  (By the by, I bet the talking thing would have worked even better if Luke had introduced himself to them when he first moved to New York.  I mean, we know nothing about the shapeshifter culture, but the two we’ve seen so far have been ridiculously nice.  Heck, one of them just laughed off being stabbed.  Who’s to say that Luke couldn’t have said “Hey, I don’t want to be in your pack, but I’m living here now, we cool?”  He’s a wolf, too, one would think he’d want to be part of a community of those who understood his unique problems.  But I guess that would only work in a book that isn’t so deeply mired in racism.)

“It’s a wreck,” she heard herself say softly, a flicker of apprehension in her voice. “I don’t see how Valentine could possibly be hiding here.”

Luke glanced past her at the hospital. “It’s a strong glamour,” he said. “Try to look past the lights.”

Why, book?  Why?  Why can’t Valentine be hiding in a run-down building that’s actually run-down?  He’s pretending to be dead and on the run from everyone in the world because they all want to kill him.  Why can’t he hide in a dilapidated building?  Why is nothing in this book allowed to be ugly, even when it’s perfectly reasonable for said thing to be ugly?

If she’d seen them all together in a group somewhere, she might have thought they knew each other somehow—there was a certain nonphysical resemblance, a bluntness to their gazes, a forcefulness to their expressions. She might have thought they were farmers, since they looked more sunburned, lean, and rawboned than your average citydweller, or maybe she would have taken them for a biker gang. But they looked nothing like monsters.

Maybe because they are people and not monsters you moron.  Maybe you should stop buying into the idea that only ‘pure’ humans count, and therefore it’s okay to murder the last pack leader without blinking.  Maybe when you condemn Valentine for being a racist, you should step back and see if you’re doing the same thing.  Maybe you’re just a terrible person and I hate you.

As it usually did, thinking of how she would draw it helped.

‘Usually,’ huh?  Gee, sure would have been nice to see this any other time she tried to look through a glamour.  In fact, Clary doesn’t think in artist terms very much, just whenever the author wants to remind us she draws.

They go in the gate and the other wolves go and battle some Foresaken while Clary and Luke hang back and just let them.

I really feel sorry for these wolves.  I mean, Luke just basically took them over.  He killed their leader, said “you’re mine now,” and sent them into battle to get injured and killed.  That’s literally all we know about the situation.  Since we don’t know much about shapeshifter culture, we can’t really tell how bad this is. If maybe they have an option of leaving the pack while under a new leader, or if they voluntarily are following Luke.  But if that is the case, then why did he need to murder his way into position?  I can’t help the feeling that Luke is basically using these poor people as slave/canon-fodder, to be thrown into dangerous situations just because he said so and he wants them to.  And no one has any problems with any of this, because the book expects us to see these people as nothing more than wolves.  That’s why it treated it like some big shock that they don’t ‘look like monsters.’  It doesn’t view them as people, just as animals. 

And then Gretel dies, because that’s all women are good for in this book.  Cook, nursemaid, clean, be blamed for shit, and die.  Except for Clary, who does all of jack-shit-nothing.

Luke looked at her curiously. “She was only a Downworlder,” he said.

Clary’s eyes burned. “Don’t say that.”

It’s shit like this right here that makes me more convinced than ever that the book doesn’t realize how full of racism it is.  We’re supposed to think Clary is a good person for caring that Gretel died, but she didn’t give a shit about the previous pack leader, or the unnamed wolves that are dying, or spare a thought to wonder if they’re being forced into this fight or not.  Hell, she’s surprised that they don’t look like monsters when they’re human.  But apparently none of that counts?

Luke and Clary go inside, leaving all of the wolves outside to keep fighting on their behalf.

Clary removed the smooth rune-stone Jace had given her for her birthday, and raised it high. Light burst between her fingers, as if she’d cracked a seed of darkness, letting out the illumination trapped inside.

The…seed of darkness…as light inside it?  Bweh?

They start looking through all the rooms in the house, because apparently even though there’s a fucking battle going on outside, no one inside the house came out to investigate.  In one room, they find Jocelyn!  Yay, after a whole book of doing fuck-all-nothing to find her, they finally found her!  That’s one more point for pure authorial contrivance.

Silver manacles closed around Jocelyn’s wrists and feet, the ends of their chains sunk deep into the stone floor on either side of the bed. The table beside the bed was covered in a weird array of tubes and bottles, glass jars and long, wickedly tipped instruments glinting with surgical steel. A rubberized tube ran from one of the glass jars to a vein in Jocelyn’s left arm.

If they’re on the bed, they’re doing nothing for her.  Unless Valentine is using magic to counteract the laws of gravity, and if he is, what a waste. 

Then Blackwell shows up, one of the two guys that were at Luke’s house way back when.

“Can’t break yourself of the habit of getting Downworlders to do your dirty work? Valentine’s troops are busy strewing pieces of them all over the lawn, and you’re up here safe with your girlfriends.”

I hate when books accidently make me agree with the villains.  It would be one thing if they did it on purpose, but here…

Luke completely ignores all their mocking about how he uses his pack like they are nothing better than stuffed animals.  Instead, Luke and the two peons (the other one finally showed up) banter for a little while.  They fight, and Clary goes running off.  She finds a weapons room (yay, finally, showing some initiative!) but none of the weapons come free for her.

There was magic in this room, and not runic magic either: something wild and strange, something dark.

God damnit, book, I hate your magic system.  It’s like the book keeps realizing there’s something wrong with it, and then instead of editing it, just patches over the plot hole.  So now runes aren’t demon magic, there’s some other kind of magic?  Even though we’ve had no hint before now that there’s more than one kind of magic and we were left to assume that all magic was just magic?

She backed out of the room. There was nothing on this floor that could help her.

I guess she’s only allowed to do stuff when it won’t amount to anything.  That doesn’t count.

She runs into an ornate dining room with the table all set and finds Jace there.

Jace is looking very well put together and says to call off the wolves because there’s been a misunderstanding.

He smiled at her with a weary affection. “If I told you the truth, you’d say I was crazy,” he said.

She felt her heart flutter hard against the inside of her chest, like a hummingbird’s rapid wing beat. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“My father gave me these clothes,” he said.

The flutter became a rapid pounding. “Jace,” she said carefully, “your father is dead.”

Yeah, because the clothes are the really important part of this scene, right?  Why not open up with “by the way, Valentine is my father.”  Really, what does this book have against people just saying things?  There’s no reason for this, no reason to have them drag this out.  Normal people don’t talk like this.  Normal people will mention the most important thing first, not intentionally draw shit out to make fake drama. 

They dance around the issue for a full page more, then Valentine comes in, and then Jace says “this is my daddy.”  Because…because fuck this book, that’s why.