To get through bad books without stopping to rant at someone, I use sticky notes.  As I go through, I put stickies on every line that makes me want to rage.  So when I sat down to read City of Ashes, I opened up a brand new pack of my favorite stickies and got to reading.  

I ran out of stickies before I ran out of book.

The first thing I noticed in this book was a downshift in the quality of the writing.  The first book was bad, but it was at least an edited bad.  This book seems to have said “Well, the author made it to the bestseller list, so I guess anything else by her will sell, too.”  There’s awkward lines and wrong words and poor syntax all over the place, as well as about twice the number of similes and metaphors.  I thought they were bad in the first book, but in this one?  Uhg.

We open up the book finding out that Alec, Isabelle, and Jace have been hanging out alone at the Institute since the end of the last book.  They’ve been demon hunting and just got home, and that brings me to my first major problem with this book.  Here, we get a lot more information about the Shadowhunters/Clave.  Not one single, solitary little bit of it makes sense.  It’s just random lines flung at the reader without any structure to tie it together.  What does the Clave do?  Uh, fight demons.  Wait, no, I mean uphold the Law!  Unless they don’t feel like it.  Or unless there’s Downworlders involved.  Even though…they are supposed to be upholding the Law as it applies to Downworlders.  But, wait, no, they don’t do that, unless they feel like it?  Or…yeah, no one knows what the fuck these guys do, least of all the author.

And how did three teenagers alone in a church find out there was a demon to hunt, anyway?  Is there some system for keeping an eye on things?  Do they have little alarm spells all through the city to tell them when a demon shows up, or do they have informers to tell them where to go?  Or do they do patrols and just look for anything demonic showing up?  Yeah, the book doesn’t think that’s important information, either.

Oh, jeeze, if I don’t start letting the little things go, I’ll never get through this book in one post.

So, Maryse, Robert, and Max Lightwood show up again.  Maryse is now in charge of the Institute, and following in fine YA fashion, she’s a woman in charge so she immediately turns bitchy and cruel.  See, she’s having some issues with finding out that Jace is Valentine’s son, and not the real Michael Wayland’s son.  They go on and on for a whole chapter, and all it really does is highlight the plothole that was there to begin with: why did no one pick up on this earlier?  Jace says there were no photos of the Circle, so how was he supposed to know that his father didn’t look like the pictures of old!Michael, yet…no, there very clearly were pictures, because we saw one of them in the last book.  Hodge had one, and he showed it to Clary.

Maryse kicks Jace out of the Institute because she’s afraid he’s working with Valentine as a spy.  Well, that’s not true.  In the chapter, she says it’s because Jace has basically been brainwashed by his father and never defies the man.  So if Valentine were to show up and say “hey, stab Alec in the face” or “hey, hand over some super-secret-powerful thing you guys have,” then Jace would do it.  He doesn’t have to be in cahoots with the man right now; he’ll still be a liability in the future.  HOWEVER, after this is brought up once, it’s dropped for the rest of the book.  Everyone goes back to angsting about how Jace might be working with Valentine.  Also, I’m not really sure how kicking him out would help things.  That just gives him ample opportunity to run off and, you know, join up with Valentine.

He doesn’t, though.  He goes to a werewolf bar and acts like such a raging jackass that they all get in a fight with him.  He really wants to see Luke, but does he show up and say “Hey, is Luke here?”  No, of course not, he just acts all smarmy and superior and like the wereworlves are bugs to be crushed.  He’s actively insulting, in the worst possible way.  During the encounter the group finds a murdered werewolf teenager and he mocks everyone in the bar for being sad.  I don’t care if he wants a fight to take the edge off, there’s simply no excuse for that kind of shit.  None.  This isn’t a character who wants to fight, this is a character wants to cause pain.  There’s a difference. 

In this section, we also meet Maia, a werewolf girl.  She’s awesome.  She has a tortured past, but she doesn’t dwell on it or angst about it or let it turn her into a jackass.  She’s affected by it, but she does her best to work around that, and she’s overall a quite pleasant person and good to her friends.  She’s active, and she kicks ass, and just in every conceivable way she’s a better protagonist than the actual protagonist.  (Because, just like in the last book, Clary’s presence is useless.  She’s actually been in the book a few times at this point, it just hasn’t been worth mentioning yet.)

Luke comes in and breaks up the fight, then drags Jace off to cool down in an office.  Jace explains how he got kicked out of the Institute and now his life sucks just extra hard you guys.  You don’t understand!  You’re all werewolves who aren’t protected by the law that I supposedly uphold, and I can beat you up whenever I feel like it, BUT PITY ME GODDAMNIT. 

“I can’t go back.  Maryse wants me to say I hate Valentine.  And I can’t do that.”

Really?  Because you said it just now.  You are perfectly capable of saying the words.  You don’t have to mean them.  You’re able to lie.  Actually, this is a running theme in this book, that no one lies.  It’s taken as a matter of course, that just as long as someone says a thing, that thing has to be true.  In fact, only Valentine and Alec tell any lies, and the book gives Valentine high praise for being ‘clever’ enough to fucking tell a bold-faced lie.

Anyway, Luke says Jace can live with him, but he really should go back to the Institute and clear the air, rather than just storm off mad.  Jace asks Luke to come along as well.

Oh, yeah, Clary and Simon were present for all of this.  Clary didn’t say anything useful; Luke did all the talking.  Simon waited outside and met Maia. 

Back at the Institute, Maryse is…sort of doing some actual investigating.  Seems the dead werewolf teen from before is the third dead Downworlder kid in the past few days.  Maryse talks to Raphael about it.

“If you say the NIght Children aren’t involved in these killings, then I’ll take you at your word.  I’m required to, unless other evidence comes to light.”

You guys suck at police work.

From this it seems that they really are so sort of police force, but they’re barely ever held to any sort of duty.  They only do stuff when it affects their own little group of super-special shadowhunters, except in this case.  So, basically, Maryse is the only one that cares about the people they are ostensibly there to protect.

Maybe?  Are they protecting Downworlders, or are they protecting mundanes from Downworlders, or is all this Law shit just a pretense so they can punch demons or…?  Really, I want to know, WHAT THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE DO?

“You’re not a Shadowhunter,” said Maryse to Luke, as if Jace hadnt spoken.  “You haven’t lived by the Law of the Clave in a long, long time.”

And for that matter, what makes a Shadowhunter a Shadowhunter in the first place?  There’s a few places where it’s said you have to be born into it, they say that the Marks make them, they say that you just are one by birth, and here they say you have to live by the customs to be considered one…  So what’s the answer?  Are they a race or a culture or a group?  This book doesn’t give a flying fuck!

In this section, we get introduce to the Soul-Sword (also called the Mortal Sword at random and for no reason) and the Inquisitor.  The Inquisitor is coming to investigate ‘everyone,’ but through the entire book, she will focus solely on Jace.  I guess the question of whether or not he knew Valentine was Valentine (instead of Michael) is of that much importance.  Apparently just knowing the guy’s real name is a crime?  Because, honestly, JACE HASN’T DONE ANYTHING.  They say that Jace can be put in jail, but they don’t say what he could be jailed for.  He hasn’t committed any crimes.  (Well, according to them.)  Maryse thinks he might commit some in the future, but that doesn’t change the present.  It’s honestly mind-boggling how up in arms everyone gets over this, over the fact that Jace might have known his father’s real identity growing up, instead of just finding out about it a few weeks ago. 

And that’s really the crux of the matter to these guys.  No one suggests investigating his past actions to see if he’s been subtly sabotaging anything.  No one things to look into his connections and see if he’s got a shady underground network of spies to send information back to Valentine.  Nothing.  The whole drama hinges on whether or not he knew the guy’s name back when he was all of ten years old.

Back to another point.  Jace offers to go to ‘trial by the Sword’ because the Soul-Sword can force people to tell the truth.  (Yeesh, you guys don’t have a spell for that?)

Clary is living with Luke, by the way.  They go home, and Luke gives her Jocelyn’s stele (rune-writing device) so she can have one of her very own. 

Enough of the main character, though, let’s get back to Jace.  He meets the Inquisitor and, in typical Jace fashion, immediately says the cruelest things imaginable to her.  He makes no effort whatsoever to be diplomatic or even just civil to the woman, instead spouting off hateful shit that would make a rock lose its temper.  They can’t get on with a proper interrogation because Jace is too busy being an utter jackass, so the Inquisitor sends him to a prison cell overnight.  I approve.  Everyone else is horrified.  Eh, from the sound of it (and from what we see later) he just has to spend the night alone in an underground cell.  Not pleasant, but it’s one fucking night and meant just to teach him to stop being a dumbass. 

They make a big deal about how these particular cells are meant to be for the “worst of the worst” of criminals, but when we see them they’re pretty much just ordinary cells.  So…do the Shadowhunters torture their prisoners?  Is that why everyone is freaked out?  Because that’s pretty fucking sick.

Over with Clary.  By the way, she and Simon are dating.  They never agreed to it, but they kissed once, and then after that Simon started introducing her to everyone as “my girlfriend.”  No discussion, no agreement, no nothing.  And on top of that, Clary just rolls right along with it.  “What?  Girlfriend.  Eh, okay, I guess that’s what I am now.”  Because that’s how little personality she has.  She doesn’t even think about the fact that Simon is claiming she’s his girlfriend, much less have an opinion on the matter.  Alec and Isabelle contact Clary and tell her about the prison thing, and all three of them vow to break Jace out…even though he’s only set to be in there for one night and he’ll be free in the morning.  And also breaking him out would just cause more trouble all around for everyone.  But, oh no, Jace is our precious little anti-hero and he can’t be in jail for even one second and so we have to go break him out!  Or some shit.  Really, it makes no sense.

While they plot on how to break the law and just in general make everything worse in every possible way, Jace sits in his cell.  That’s it.  It’s totally dark in his cell, but no one is bothering him, and he can just sit there in the silence and think about what a dumbass he did.  Nothing to be so freaked out about.  Well, you know, until a giant demon comes up and kills all the Silent Brothers (the mindreaders from the last book), but that’s an unusual event and not part of his prison sentence.  Turns out it’s Valentine, there to steal the Soul-Sword.  (Why was such a thing in New York, anyway?  If it’s a Big Important Artifact, why wasn’t it in their invisible country?)  Valentine and Jace have a little chat about nothing, and then Valentine leaves him in his cell.

Isabelle, Alec, and Clary show up afterward and see all the destruction, wandering through the place with Clary leading the way, since she was there last book.  Everything’s all fucked up and bloody, so they go find Jace.  Clary uses magic to open his cell door, and it works extra-super-well.  Jace is all beat up and bloody because he went crazy trying to get out of the cell back when the demon was fucking stuff up, so they help him walk back up the surface.  There, they find Maryse and a bunch of other Shadowhunters who were there to respond to, you know, demon that fucked shit up.

Where are these other hunters normally?  This is the first time we see anyone other than the people who live at the Institute, the first time we even hear about anyone, and they just pop right the fuck out of nowhere with no explanation. 

The Inquisitor is there, and she doesn’t like that Jace doesn’t know anything.  She thinks it’s highly suspicious that he was there while Valentine was killing people, and yet he doesn’t have anything to do with that.  From the outside…yeah, that would be pretty fucking suspicious.  Especially since Jace pretty much did everything in his power to get sent there in the first place, what with how he was mouthing off during the first interrogation.  I’m on the Inquisitor’s side here.  I mean, she’s rude and illogical, and her stated reasons for doing things are different from what I think they should be, but I’m wholly on board with the end result.

Anyway, Jace is too injured for anything to be done, so Magnus pops out of nowhere (seriously, he was apparently just skulking around the graveyard) and offers to take Jace in.  He’ll be healer/jailor and keep Jace under wraps until he’s well enough to be put to trial.  (What he’s on trial for is still unclear.)

Clary has a dream about her mother.  In it, her mother draws a rune on her arm, and when Clary wakes up the rune is still there.  I’m going to bring this up again later.

Clary and Simon and Alec go to see Jace.  It’s been a while, and Jace is perfectly fine now, but he’s still living at Magnus’s house because…reasons.  While there, they find out that a fairy child has been murdered and drained of blood, which makes Magnus muse on about blood.  Then he quite suddenly announces that he knows what Valentine’s plan is.  If he does this ritual that requires the blood of a warlock, werewolf, vampire, and fairy child, he’ll change the Sword from angelic to demonic.  Since the only power we know the Sword possesses is forcing people to tell the truth, that doesn’t sound very impressive.  They go on and on about how it’ll make him have control over all demons, but…what does an uncorrupted Sword do?  Give him power over all angels?  If the ritual is just about inverting the Swords powers, not giving it new ones, then I’m terribly confused.  And I will remain confused through the rest of the book, because none of this makes sense.

And also, somehow an uncorrupted Mortal Cup gives him power over demons, too, because that was letting him control the demon from back in the Silent City.  Somehow.  So…cup that turns people into Shadowhunters = ability to control demons?

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE STUPID POWERS?  WHY ARE THEY NEVER DEFINED?  WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Oh, and Magnus is perfectly correct in his random guess, of course.  That’s really the biggest problem with these books.  So many points aren’t plot holes, but only by virtue of the characters guessing perfectly.  There’s tons of other options that simply get ignored, which makes me bang my head on a wall, but doesn’t quite fit the definition of ‘plot hole.’

Isabelle calls to tell them she scored a meeting with the Fairy Queen so they can tell her about Valentine’s plan with the Sword and maybe keep her from losing her shit over the dead fairy child.  …even though Isabelle wasn’t in the room when they realized what Valentine was planning.  That is a plot hole.

Jace and Simon and Clary go (after arguing forever, since Jace is jealous of Simon/Clary) and Alec stays behind for reasons too stupid to give proper space to.  They spend way too many pages explaining how to get into the Court and what it looks like, then they and Isabelle meet with the Queen.  For…no reason.  They tell the Queen about what’s going on, and she doesn’t give a flying rat’s ass.  So why are they there?

For incest!  Yeah, I’m serious.  The Queen tricks Clary into eating something, so she’s stuck there unless she kisses Jace.  It’s the stupidest setup imaginable.  First, she says she wants to keep Clary because Valentine did “experiments” on her and Jace (she was born after her mother ran away from him, so I’m a bit confused on when these “experiments” happened) and then after delivering that bit of exposition, she says the only way she can leave is if Clary kisses her One True Love.  They banter on and on about this as if brothers never kiss sisters.  I kiss mine all the time.

…okay, well, not like that.  Then again, the Queen never said it had to be a full on teenaged makeout.  Which is what they end up doing, complete with stupid metaphors and weak knees. 

And then everyone leaves, rendering the whole trip pointless.  The only thing it did was make Simon freak out over the kiss and run off alone.  Everyone else goes back to the Institute and Clary and Jace have more incest angst.  I’m more than a little sick of the incest angst.

We finally get a break from that when Rapheal shows up with a dying Simon.  Seems Simon came back to the vampire hotel because he was feeling all vamp-ish after he bit Raph in the last book.  Then when he returned, the other vamps all…ate him?  Because I guess they just automatically rip to shreds anyone who comes by?  It’s not clear, since this is all told to us in summary, why the vamps killed Simon. 

Simon has to be buried and dig his way out in order to be reborn, otherwise he’ll just stay in a dead-coma-hybrid-state.  I think.  That’s not very clear, either.  But, anyway, they all trek out to a Jewish cemetery to bury him, and his rebirth goes off without a hitch, but that doesn’t keep the book from droning on and on while describing it in the most angsty way possible.

A couple days later Simon and Clary are angsting some more at Luke’s house.  Maia shows up, chased by demons, and Luke takes one of them out with his truck.  But the demons hurt her, so they have to call in Magnus to do a healing again.  Magnus lampshades the fact that they only ever call him, even though a lesser warlock would do just as well.  (Oh, Magnus, you are too good for this book.)

While that (and more angst) is going on, more demons show up!  Jace, who came with Magns, Clary, and Simon all go out to help Luke fight them off.  Clary’s rune that she got in a dream scares one of the demons off, while Jace beats up a second one, and Simon does shit-all except stand there.

Also, Luke got injured.  It seems that’s all this middle section is.  People get hurt, then healed, then someone new gets hurt, then they get healed, then there’s more incest angst.  Bleh.

While everyone else sleeps that night, Jace goes off and finds a giant black boat in the middle of the river.  The writing is so bland and terrible that I had no idea why Jace was there.  He just sort of…goes.  We don’t get a hint of motivation or feeling behind it, and we have no reason to think he knew the boat was there.  He did know, but really, that should have been clear from the start.  If not the ‘how’ of him knowing, then at least the fact that he knew where he was going, rather than just that he went there because the author said so.

He meets up with Valentine and learns his plan: to use the Sword to gather an army of demons and wipe out the Clave.  And…uh, he’s already started on that plan, even though the Sword hasn’t been turned yet.  How?  Psh, what book have you been reading if you really expect an answer?

Valentine says if Jace joins him, all his loved ones will be protect.  Jace tells him to fuck off and goes back to Luke’s house.

Now it’s time for the next bit of Clary is a Mary Sue!  While everyone is talking about the fight last night, she mentions that her new rune scared off the demon, and it’s one no one has seen before.  Then they surmise that Clary is super powerful and can make new runes out of nothing.  Even though no one ever has invented new runes.  They use the ones out of a book that some angel gave them.  They are right, of course, but I still feel like pointing out the other option they could have guessed:

Clary got the rune in a dream, during which her mom drew it.  Clary’s also had other prophetic dreams through this series.  (All of them being pointless.)  Why is there no one guessing “Hm, I wonder if she has prophetic dreams and her mom really gave her the rune,” instead of deciding that she made it herself?  There’s far more evidence for that theory than for the idea that she can invent new ones, but no one in this book is ever allowed to draw an incorrect conclusion, so we’re moving on.

Clary invents a new rune for ‘fearless’ as an experiment and tries it on Alec.  Conveniently, right then, his parents show up and Alec almost tells them he’s dating Magnus.  (Oh, yeah, by the way, he’s dating Magnus.)  I would like to argue that that was more ‘stupid’ than ‘fearless,’ but whatever.

The Inquisitor is with them and she knows that Jace visited Valentine last night, so everyone’s all up in arms about that.  She decides that she’s going to take Jace back to Idris to stand trial there.  Still without telling us what his crime is.  At this point, all he’s really guilty of is running off from Magnus.

Clary angsts that they can’t let Jace go to Idris AND I DON’T KNOW WHY.  No part of this plot makes sense.  Why is he in trouble?  Don’t know.  Why is it so terrible that he go to trial? Reasons.  Why can’t he go to jail for one fucking night?  Um…because he’s pretty, that’s why.

While all this angst is going down, Maia gets the right idea and decides to run off for some peace and sanity.  Unfortunately, Valentine catches her instead.  Later, Valentine also catches Simon while Simon is on the phone with Clary.

The Inquisitor takes Jace back to the Institute and locks him up in a super-special forcefield, then taunts him.  She’s going to try and trade him to Valentine for the Mortal Instruments, convinced that Valentine wouldn’t hurt his only son.  Jace tells her it’ll never work, but the Inquisitor clearly has son-issues since her own kid is dead.  Later, Alec comes into the room to help him break out and they figure out that Jace can fly.  I’m not even shitting you.  He can jump 30 feet into the air and leap off buildings without getting hurt.  For some reason they didn’t figure this out until just now, and Jace leaps out the top of his forcefield cage.

Jace gets Luke and Clary to come get him.  No, sorry, Jace snarks at Isabelle for several pages and acts like an ass, then calls for his ride.  When he learns of Simon and Maia, they all put it together than Valentine needs them as the last two victims for his ritual.  (Even though the first two were drained of blood immediately, since the blood is the only needed part.  But he’s keeping these two alive for a while first because…reasons.)  They call Magnus to meet them by the river.

Jace has Clary put the ‘fearless’ rune on him, because one of Valentine’s demons is “THE fear demon,” so it sure is convenient that Clary made up that new rune.  While they wait for Magnus, Luke tells them the story of the Inquisitor’s son.  Seems Stephen was in Valentine’s circle, he married one of Valentine’s other cronies, and then he and his wife both died.  His wife was eight months pregnant at the time.  So…that baby didn’t die and will be important later won’t it?

…It’ll be Jace, won’t it?  So that he and Clary can go be lovers instead of siblings?  Your foreshadowing sucks, book.

Well, enough of that, Magnus shows up and makes the truck drive on water.  They go out to find the ship, but before they quite get there, they are attacked by demons.  One of them picks up Clary and runs off with her. 

And then there’s fifty fucking pages of fighting.  It’s Luke and Jace fighting a hoard of demons on the ship, and after that Luke and Jace and a bunch of other Shadowhunters that the Lightwoods called up.  For fifty fucking pages.  Like level-grinding in a dungeon before meeting the Big Boss: nothing is really accomplished in this time.

Near the end of it, the Inquisitor shows up and talks to Jace in the middle of a fight.  She sees a scar Jace has and goes all wibbly over it, then throws herself in front of a demon that was about to stab him.  So…yeah, Jace is her grandchild.  Real subtle there, book.

Clary meets up with Valentine and learns that he’s already drained Simon’s blood.  Then, guess what guys?  THERE’S MORE FUCKING INCEST ANGST.  Valentine taunts Clary for being in love with Jace, as if that’s really important right now. 

Valentine attempts to explain away his racism by saying that, unlike people who hate based on ethnicity or religion, he hates based on the fact that demons want to eat people.  I’m not really sure what this is supposed to get at, since the worst racism we see in this book is from Clary and her group. Yeah, he’s wrong and so is his logic, but…he’s the bad guy.  Of course he’s wrong.  And by disagreeing with him and saying that genocide is bad, Clary isn’t exactly breaking new ground here.

But she had begin to see what Luke meant when he’d said you couldn’t argue with Valentine.  Somehow he’d made it impossible for her to disagree with him without feeling as if she were standing up for demons who bit children in half.

Well, Clary, that makes you pretty shit at debate, then.  It does not, however, make Valentine good at the same.  It’s pretty easy to just say “Demons should be subjected to laws if they want to live here, laws that keep them from hurting people.  Punish people based on lawbreaking and not on their species.  And fuck off with the halfbreed genocie while you’re at it.”

Cut over to Jace, who falls into the insides of the ship and meets up with the fear demon.  Which…he kills really easily.  Wow, anticlimactic.  He goes on, and eventually he finds Simon, who looks dead.  But Simon is just barely alive.  He can’t heal without any blood, so Jace cuts his own arm open and lets Simon eat that.  Simon gets a little greedy, but he stops before Jace dies, and then…um, yeah, both of them are perfectly fine after that.  I guess vamps don’t really need all that much blood.  Or maybe Shadowhunters don’t.  …Either way, that’s one body’s worth of blood split between two people: they should both be wrecks right now.

Both of them go and find Clary, who is still being taunted by Valentine.  We get yet another heavy-handed hint that Jace isn’t really Valentine’s son, but that won’t stop the incest-angst!  Uhg.  Valentine implies that Simon will be uber-special because he drank Jace’s blood, but he doesn’t explain why or how.  Somehow, they end up talking a lot about the matter anyway.  I’m consistently surprised by how much these people can talk while saying jack shit.

Jace gives Clary her stele back, and Clary uses it to draw on the walls and make the ship break apart.  …Really?  Clary, you couldn’t make a rune for “kill the genocidal fucker over there”?  God damnit, why can’t you do something useful with your Mary Sue powers?

Clary passes out and wakes up in the truck.  Everyone is fine, except for a couple of name-only characters that were killed by demons.  Valentine got away with his cup and his sword.  Then the sun comes up and they realize that it won’t kill Simon anymore. 

Great.  We finally get a power that we can attribute to hunter blood, and it’s to make vampires more special. 

The epilogue is pretty dull.  Just a bunch of people talking about what happened during the book.  *yawn*  Oh, and Clary and Simon aren’t dating anymore.  If you ask me, they never started.

“Only mundanes say they’re sorry when what they really mean is ‘I share your grief,” Jace observed.

I’m sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine.  “I share your grief” is part of the definition.  It’s the correct use of the phrase “I’m sorry.”  There is absolutely nothing incorrect about that usage.  Everyone uses it that way, unless they don’t speak English, and then it’s not about abstract concepts, it’s a matter of language. 

Come on, author, you get paid to use words correctly!  Learn what they mean!

There’s time to work in a smidge more incest angst, and then at the very end some random woman who only showed up once before arrives.  She tells Clary that she knows how to get Jocelyn to wake up, and that’s our cliffhanger ending.  Dun, dun, dun.

Did I say I’d put these out three days in a row?  Uhg, I’ll post again on Wednesday and Friday and start City of Lost Souls next Monday.  I’m drained.