This one is bad enough that I ran out of stickies twice.  My library book is a rainbow of fail.

We open on Clary getting ready to go to Idris.  Jace is not happy that she’s going, though his reasons keep shifting.  He tells Clary that it’s because Valentine will be shifting his focus there now that he’s got two of the Mortal Instruments, but then he tells everyone else that it’s because the Clave will find out about her super-rune-powers and want to use her.

*Gasp* really?  You mean the people who are currently facing a full-on war with demons might want to use someone who can make super-magic?  You don’t say!  Wow, what an evil bunch of jackasses for…uh, wanting to use every method at their disposal to win a war for survival…

He doesn’t say in here that they would force Clary into doing anything, or even that they would use her in some damaging way.  He doesn’t tell Clary that they would ‘use’ her or give her a chance to volunteer or reject the idea on her own.  We have no idea why this ‘use’ is bad or what Clary would think about it, because Jace has just arbitrarily decided that it would be terrible.  And this is really a lot of the problem I have with this book.  It goes on quite a lot about how the Clave is corrupted, but we’re never given a chance to see it corrupted and come to that conclusion ourselves.  We’ve not once yet seen them act in any governmental aspect; it’s always been individuals acting in relation to other individuals.  All we’re given is someone just insisting that they’re bad without telling us what they’re actually doing that’s so awful.

Anyway, the Lightwoods and Jace are going to Idris for some big meeting, leaving the Institute in the hands of…?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!  Yeah, the book doesn’t fucking care.  Jace lied to Clary about when they’re leaving so she’s not there on time.  I’m not sure how, though, since earlier it was stated that they weren’t talking after their fight and she was making all her arrangements through Alec and Isabelle.  Anyway, Jace asks Simon to come instead and bullies him into lying and saying Clary didn’t want to go to Idris after all. 

It didn’t look anything like it had the first time he had ever seen it, disguised as a run-down ruin, but then glamours didn’t work on Downworlders.

Then what is the point of having them?  Really, I don’t understand this.  Is it really so important to hide from mudanes, but not from the people that you fight on a constant basis?  Really?

Well, while they’re all getting ready to go through a portal to Idris, they’re attacked by a bunch of Foresaken.  Simon gets stabbed, so they drag him through the portal with them rather than leave him behind to die. 

Clary shows up hours later and finds out what happened from Magnus.  (He was there to open the portal.)  Magnus explains that he can’t open anther portal into the city because of wards and such, and then Luke says that the nearest airport is in a different country and traveling overland would be dangerous.  …then why not open a portal outside the city, but close enough to walk?

You know, exactly like what eventually happens.  Clary gets all mopey and then “finds herself” drawing a new portal.  She doesn’t decide to do it or set out to intentionally try it, it just kind of happens without her willing it at all.  Puppetstrings. 

She squeezed her eyelids shut and, against the darkness behind them, began to draw with her mind in curing lines of light.  Lines that spoke to her of doorways, of being carried on whirling air, of travel and faraway places.

Uhg, even her super-special-rune power is lazy.  She doesn’t have to do anything, she just closes her eyes and stuff “comes” to her, all without any effort or intent on her part.  She’s not a character, she’s just a lifeless tool for things to happen to.

She and Luke both jump through (Luke because he was following her) and they basically bounce off the city and land in a lake a few miles outside it.  (If they’d done this intentionally, since it was the obvious answer, I bet they could have avoided getting soaked.)  They land in Lake Lyn, where the angel first appeared, and the lake shows up in a lot of shadowhunter iconography, with the angel rising out of it and holding a cup and a sword.  My very first, immediate thought was “oh, so the lake is the mirror.”  Guess how long it takes everyone else to figure out the same thing?  And that’s compounded by the number of times the narration describes the lake as “smooth,” “reflective,” and “glass-like.”  Really, guys?  A thousand years later and you can’t figure out that the lake is a mirror?

Oh, yeah, and the lake also makes shadowhunters have visions and delusions and fever and then kills them if they drink the water.  That…makes a lot of sense?  Your most holy place is something that kills you?  Weird.  Anyway, they start walking to the city and hope that they get there before Clary goes nuts and dies.  I, however, am of the opinion that this wouldn’t change much.

Back with Simon, who is all better and hanging out in some fancy house with the others.  Alec says that the Clave wants to send him home.  He’s not supposed to be there, and they figure the cleanest option is just to put him back and pretend it never happened. 

Oh, but not before we get a shitload more fantastical racism, first.  Simon’s even internalized it now and believes himself to be lower than the shadowhunters.  Because this book just really, really wants me to hate it, I guess.  When he gets up to the Clave, the new Inquisitor starts interrogating him about how he can walk in the daylight, and when Simon claims he doesn’t know why (he hides the fact that he ate Jace), he gets thrown in jail instead of sent home.  The jail cell’s been specially marked with Jewish icons to burn him if he tries to get out.  So…uh…what?  Every other anti-vampire method has been Christian, and they specifically had to make the cell Jewish just for Simon.  This leaves the unfortunate implication that the book assumes everyone else is a Christian.  That God-fearing is just the default state, and Simon is such an anomaly.  Do atheist vampires just not exist in this world?  Which is kind of strange, seeing as nobody else in this book has any religious beliefs. 

Uhg, that’s a headache that I don’t have time to give proper rage to.  Luke and Clary get to the city and then just walk in.  Seriously.  Luke mentions that there’s wards all around the city and only one gate, but they don’t have the paperwork to get in the gate.  So they just walk in between two houses.  What the fuck are those wards supposed to do, since they clearly aren’t there to keep unauthorized people out?  They run through the city as Clary starts to go loco until they finally find Luke’s sister’s house.  Her name is Amatis and she lets Clary in to heal her and such. 

Oh, by the way, there’s no technology in the city.  No guns, either.  Magic interferes with it.  Why?  …fuck all if I know.  I’m so sick of seeing that trope and I want it to die.  It’s fucking magic, it’s not real, it doesn’t have rules, you can do whatever you want with it.  So why use it for nothing more than to force a pseudo-historical feel on your story and make everyone fight with bows and arrows?  Why use it to do no more than copy every other story that came before you?  And for that matter, if you do want to take out modern tech…YOU HAVE FUCKING MAGIC.  Why not make something better than guns, instead of saying “oops, gunpowder no workie, I guess we’ll shoot arrows now.”  Same thing for cars.  Why not have flying buses or teleport pads or super-fast moving sidewalks or…you know, something magical to replace cars with, instead of fucking horses.  What a waste of a good opportunity. 

Seems the Inquisitor wants to keep Simon around so he can blame the whole mess that happened in New York on the Lightwoods.  He wants Simon to lie and say he’s a servant of the Lightwoods, and the Lightwoods are still working with Valentine.  The Inquisitor wants this because…um…he’s an idiot.  Seems the Clave is divided (about what I have no idea) and a common enemy would unite them so they could work efficiently again.  But that’s ridiculous.  They have a common enemy.  They’ve accepted that Valentine is back again, so there, that’s your common enemy.  We’re not even given a real clear issue on what they’re so ‘divided’ over, or what the opposing sides are.  And if they’re this divisive and confrontational, blaming the Lightwoods for one incident would just be a bandaide and it would be a matter of time before they fall apart over some completely new issue. 

For all the Inquisitor is an idiot, he is right about one thing.  The evidence would support the idea that the Lightwoods are working for Valentine.  There’s tons of suspicious things they’ve done, and from the outside, it really does look like they’ve helped things go to shit.  Simon claims there’s a million holes in the story, but those holes are only obvious if you’ve read the books and know everything that’s been going on in the character’s heads.  Which…not everyone else knows, because the characters aren’t reading their own books, obviously.

Clary wakes up the next morning and meets Amatis properly.  She’s not only Luke’s sister, but she was Stephen Herondale’s (Jace’s real daddy) first wife.  She was in the Circle, too, but dropped out after Stephen divorced her.  Because, apparently, she was only in it for her husband and as soon as that went away she had no reason to stay.  Really, the same could be said for most of the women in this book.  They do things based on men all over the place and no one says anything about it, leaving the implication that of course that’s just how it’s supposed to be.  There’s no comment on how if Amatis left the Circle she probably wasn’t committed to its ideals in the first place; it’s more of a *shrug* and a “well, that makes sense.”  Because…women don’t have convictions or motivations of their own?  In this book, they don’t.

Amatis says Luke went to go see his old werewolf buddies, and she should stay in the house.  Clary sulks for a bit, then sneaks out a window.  She goes to the house where Isabelle and Jace are staying.  Isabelle is freaked out because she’s in the city without permission.  But…no she’s not.  She was planning to go with the Lightwoods when they arrived.  So obviously someone had to get her permission for that trip.  She’s merely a few hours behind schedule, that’s all.  Why is Isabelle freaking out about it and crying about how Clary broke the law in coming?  Well, she’s also freaking out because Jace is upstairs making out with their host’s daughter, which Clary walks in on.  You know what this means, right?  MORE INCEST ANGST. 

Jace yells at Clary and calls her stupid and says she messes everything up.  He tells her to go home.

All her plans evaporated – her half-formed hopes of rushing after Fell, saving her mother, even finding Luke – nothing mattered, no words came.

And…it works.  Clary completely loses what little motivation she had simply because a pretty boy yelled at her.  Our heroine, ladies and gents. 

Simon sits in his jail cell and chats with his neighbor about shadowhunter stuff.  Then he says he won’t betray the Lightwoods.  Why?  Because of Clary.  No, I’m serious, he straight up says he won’t do it because it would make Clary sad.  Not because he has some moral issue with throwing an innocent family under the bus, not because he has any sort of conviction or beliefs about right and wrong, not even for a pragmatic reason about how it would only ultimately weaken the Clave and make them more vulnerable to Valentine.  Nope, it’s all about fucking Clary. 

You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this in a book, and it never fails to piss me off.  Do books really think that it’s more noble to do good things for selfish reasons, instead of altruistic reasons?  Do they really think we’re not going to respect a character who acts according to a moral compass instead of according to his dick?  Or does the author just think that her main character is so fucking special that the world needs to revolve around her that fucking much?

Well, after Clary leaves, Alec tells Jace that Simon is in jail instead of back in New York.  He doesn’t tell Clary this because….because Clary isn’t really a character with her own agency and story, she’s just a set-piece for Jace’s story.  Anyway, Jace gets so mad he punches a window.  Oooo, angsty.  Or not.

Clary starts walking home while being mopey, and Sebastian offers to guide her.  (He’s a guest at the same house Jace and the others are staying, and of course Clary has an instant deeper connection with him, because he’s her real brother.  Damnit heavy-handed-hints.  I didn’t even need google to figure that one out.)  Sebastian walks her home and asks why she’s in Idris.  Clary tells him that her reasons are a secret and no one can know.  Then she tells him she’s looking for Ragnor Fell.  (A warlock that can help her mom.)  So…great job keeping that secret?  It comes right the fuck up out of nowhere.  She says she can’t tell him and then does a spontaneous 180.  Why?  So that Sebastian can do the legwork and find Fell for her.  Because heaven forbid that Clary do anything proactive. 

There’s a hell of a lot of POV shifting in this book, and it’s starting to really piss me off.  That scene with Clary and Sebastian?  Was really three scenes that got intercut with Jace and the others talking about Simon.  There was no rhyme or reason for the cuts, it just happened at random before either scene was actually finished.  And the quality of the writing in general is just taking a nose-dive in this book.

Jace shows up at prison to break Simon out, but Simon refuses.  He says that if he disappears, it’ll just make the Lightwoods look more guilty.  Yay, someone is reacting in a rational manner!  This is so much better than last book’s “oh, no, he can’t stay in jail for on frikkin night” debacle.  …wow, considering all the stupidity that went into putting Simon in jail in the first place, my standards have sunk pretty low to be praising this.  Anyway, they agree to sneak Simon blood so he doesn’t starve while they figure out a better long-term plan. 

“The Clave is insane.  Who knows what they’d do to [Clary] if they knew what she could do.”

Uh…no one knows!  Really, we have no basis for this.  We haven’t seen the Clave.  We’ve seen one guy, the new Inquisitor, and he’s slightly cracked.  But that’s one fucking guy, not the whole Clave, and we don’t get to see the Clave act as a government.  We have no idea what they’re like; all we know is what individual people are like.  So we don’t have a clue how they’d react if they knew about Clary’s runes.  They’re creating drama over a boogieman that we know nothing about, and that makes it less about legitimate tension and more about the boys here being fucking morons who can’t be bothered to collect some real information before making their judgments. 

The next morning, Sebastian shows up to tell Clary he’s found Ragnor Fell and he’ll take her to see the guy.  So, once again, Clary gets exactly what she wants without having to put in any effort to get it.  They take a horse out of the city, but I’ve already ranted about how little magic actually gets used in this place.  The book doesn’t seem to understand horses and how they work, though, because they have Sebastian taking the horse at a full gallop for most of the trip.  There’s no reason to gallop a horse at any point on a long distance journey.  That’s for when you’re being chased or in a race or charging into battle.  Galloping takes a lot out of a horse.  They can only keep it up for a few minutes, and afterwards they’re exhausted and have to rest.  If you’re just going out into the countryside, then let the horse walk.

When they get there, they find Magnus Bane.  He freezes Sebastian in place so he can talk to Clary without giving away his real identity.  Turns out he knew Fell all this time…and knew that Clary was looking for the guy…and didn’t say “Oh, I’ll send him a message and set up a meeting for you two.”  Instead we got pages and pages of Clary wondering how she was going to find the guy.  (And how did Sebastian find the guy?)

Anyway, the real Fell is dead, but conveniently enough he managed to write a note before he died and tell everyone what happened.  He was killed by ‘servants of Valentine’ using some sort of demonic energy something or another.  The antidote to Jocelyn’s self-induced coma is in a book that she hid at Wayland Manor.  It’s the Book of the White, which is some spell book that Jocelyn had.  Then Magnus says that the book rightfully belongs with a warlock and he wants it.  So…how do inheritance laws work in this world?  Why did Jocelyn have it to begin with?  Why is it not Clary’s now?  Or is it Clary’s, but just Magnus really, really wants it and thinks he should have it?  Either way, he says that if Clary finds the book and gives it to him, he’ll make the antidote for her mother. 

They go back to Sebastian and unfreeze him.  Then Sebastian takes her to “Fairchild Manor.”  You know, this really, really shows the author’s Harry Potter origins.  Real houses like that weren’t named for the family that lived there.  They might be named for the original builder, or for a local landmark, or just given a name that the owner thought sounded nifty.  From what little I could look up, it seems being named after locations is the most popular.  So this habit of naming everything as “Lastname Manor” sticks out painfully and harkens back to “Malfoy Manor” and the fandom’s habit of giving every single pureblood family a similar home.  (Uhg, I still remember “Snape Manor” in one fic…)  Anyway, Clary’s old home is all burned down and sad looking. 

Then Sebastian kisses her.  Once again, Clary doesn’t at any point agree to the kissing, she just realizes it’s about to happen and then goes along with it.  She has no thoughts or desires before it happens, just “oh, a kiss now?  Whelp, looks like this is a thing that’s happening.”  There’s no ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ just a ‘eh.’  It’s really, really creepy.  The only reaction Clary has is mid-kiss, when she thinks it feels all “wrong.” 

I’m not sure if the wrongness is because of Sebastian’s monsterfication or if it’s the now-real incest.  If it’s the incest, fail on the part of the author.  It’s not uncommon for siblings who meet as adults for the first time to become sexually attracted to each other, since the “wrong” feelings surrounding incest are generally associated with being raised together, not anything genetic.  (Which make’s Alec’s crush more incest-y than anything else going on in this story.)

Anway, then Sebastian tells her about Simon still being in town.  Speaking of Simon, Raphael shows up in his cell as a “projection.”  He tells Simon that Simon broke a vampire rule by leaving without telling his “boss,” but…Simon has been a vamp for about two weeks at this point and Raph hasn’t made any effort to contact him or tell him any of the rules of being a vampire or offer any sort of assistance.  You are a sucky leader, Raph.  There’s some other wall-banging over how Raph can touch religious artifacts because he doesn’t believe in god.  So why don’t all vamps just become atheists?  In fact…Simon never expresses any sort of religious beliefs, he just says he’s Jewish as if it’s a matter of ethnicity.  Is that what the book is assuming?  That everyone is born into their religion?  Look, Judaism is a bit of a special case in that regard.   You can be an ‘ethnic Jew’ and not follow any of the religious aspects.  But that’s a bit of a special case.  It doesn’t apply to other religions.  It’s…just so confusing that I can’t even properly get upset over it.  I have no idea what this book is trying to say about religion/vampires.  It’s that fucking cracked.  Well, moving on, Raph threatens to kill Simon if he finds him, because he’s not happy about Simon being able to survive sunlight. 

Clary gets home and find’s Jace there.  She yells at him (ineffectually) about Simon, and then they talk about what’s been going on in the book so far.  You know, just in case you were reading this while asleep.  Jace knows where her book of white is, so Clary makes a portal to go to his old house.  They get inside and Jace mopes a bit about his past, then they find the book with no problems. 

(Another inheritance headscratcher: the place is abandoned because Wayland had no relatives…but until a few weeks ago, everyone thought Jace was his son.  So why didn’t Jace inherit the place?) 

After they get the book they decide to destroy the place in a fit of teenagerness.  They accidently open up a secret staircase and go down to find Valentine’s Lair of Evil.  There’s an angel chained down there.  The angel gives them visions, showing them that Valentine was trying to torture information about the mirror out of him.  (It’s the lake, you idiots, THE FUCKING LAKE.)  He also took blood from a demon to give to a pregnant lady and then took blood from the angel to do the same.  We also get textual confirmation (through Valentine’s ranting) that the only thing shadowhunters have that makes them special is the ability to survive runes.  So…yeah, not that fucking special after all.  After the angel is done mindmelding with them, Clary lets him out of his pentagram-cage and the angel stabs himself in the heart.  This…somehow makes the entire manor collapse.  Why was the manor ‘tied’ to the angel?  Who the fuck knows.  It’s not like a fucking house couldn’t stand up perfectly fine on its own, no, it had to be ‘tied’ to the supernatural creature in the basement.  Because…reasons.

They get outside and Jace angsts because he thinks he’s got demon blood in him.  (Good lord, don’t you remember anything ever told to you?  When the Fairy Queen was taunting you two about being ‘experiments’ she said that Jace had “the power of the angel himself.”  Clearly Jace got the angel blood.)  Anyway, Jace thinks that being part demon is why he wants to make out with Clary all the time.  Then they make out. 

“I should want to protect you…protect you from the sort of boys who want to do with you exactly what I want to do.”

So…does Jace want to do abusive things to her, or is the book going with the idea that sex itself is dirty and bad?  I’m not sure if I should hate Jace or the author for this line.  Either way, this whole extended make-out session is just annoying and angst-filled and I don’t really care.

It’s almost impressive how little I care.  I mean, they just found out they’ve been given supernatural powers by their moms drinking angel/demon blood.  That’s some legit angst.  But there’s been so much angst so far in this book, and they bring it around to INCEST ANGST once again, that I’ve become desensitized. 

When they finally stop making out and go back to town, they find it’s all on fire.   We skip over to Isabelle to find out why.  She’s at home with all the other teens when suddenly Aline gets pulled out a window by a demon.  Isabelle runs outside to help and fights the demon with her whip.  It doesn’t do much good, because apparently this author doesn’t understand what a whip is.  It’s a blunt-force weapon that, if it’s crafted for that purpose, can break fucking bones.  It’s not a cutting weapon to leave slash marks on the skin, it’s not a weapon made to wrap around stuff and throw it here and there.  It’s a blunt-force striking weapon.  It was invented to crush shit by hitting that shit really, really hard.  Except in fictionland, where whips don’t do anything, but Aline can kill the demon with a dainty little dagger. 

They go on to find out the whole city is full of demons, and there’s only children, teens, and the elderly to fight back.  Oh, right, because I forgot to mention this before.  The whole fucking city is up at the Clave meeting.  Seriously, everyone in the city except for a few stragglers.  Because apparently this author doesn’t realize what a city is, either, or how big they are, or the utter idiocy of trying to let everyone in a city participate in that city’s government.  We have enough problems with 535 people in our own Congress all unable to get along; how much worse is it going to be with the population of an entire city in there?  (There’s no hard-and-fast rules for how many people you need before you get called a city, but judging by the bits of it we see, the hints we have at the size, and the claims of it being the “only city” and the seat of shadowhunter culture, it’s got to be a few thousand at least.)

So, there’s demons in the city and everyone is fighting.  Except for Isabelle, because for all we’re told that she’s a super-awesome fighter and all, her brother keeps trying to push her to the side, and she gets knocked unconscious/injured in every fight she’s allowed to get in.  In this case, Sebastian knocks her out after Alec leaves.  Oh, and the book compares the fight to a Bosch painting again.  Third time in as many books that it’s made that comparison.  It was old the first time.

Suddenly, werewolves!  Yeah, Luke brings in a fuck-ton of werewolves to help out in the fight.  Seems he was preparing for this ever since arriving, gathering forces and such, even though he had no reason to think that Valentine would attack the city.  Other characters in the book were warned about this, but not Luke, since he ran off as soon as he’d arrived there.  I guess…he’s just that smart?   Can see the future?  The author said so?  Yeah, let’s go with that last one.

Blah, blah, more fighting, all the named characters meet up again, and then they go off to rescue Simon after realizing he’s still stuck in his jail cell.  They talk so much before they go do this, though.  Bantering with Sebastian about mindless nothing.  Just go do stuff already.

When they finally get around to it, they get Simon out without problems.  The get out his prison-buddy as well, and then *gasp* it’s really Hodge!  There is much angst to be had as everyone gets all angsty about the things that happened in the first book.  They yell at Hodge and Hodge looks all abashed and cowers and just I promise you guys, there is so much angst.  Hodge tells them all that the lake is the mirror, and somehow he was the only person in a thousand years to figure this out. 

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: when you have to make the whole universe stupid in order to prop up your characters, you’re doing it wrong.

Hodge is about to tell them what Valentine wants with the mirror/lake, but Sebastian pops up out of nowhere and shoots him first.  Then he mocks everyone for not figuring out that he’s evil and…yeah, I’m right there with them.  They all have a collective fight and run Sebastian off.

Suddenly all the demon’s run off, and also we find out Max died.  Because Sebastian was alone in the house with Max and Isabelle, but he only killed Max.  And he killed Max because…reasons?  Really, the part about this that just pisses me off the most is that it’s pointless.  Yeah, I know war is hell and people die pointlessly all the time.  Believe me, I know.  More than this author ever will.  But, well…war is hell and small children dying is a serious tragedy.  It’s a terrible, awful thing and shouldn’t be shoved into your book just so you can show off how “dark” you fucking think you are.  And that’s the only reason the death of a child is in this book: to make the tone darker.  Like the demons weren’t doing that well enough, no, we’ve got to kill off a nine-year-old kid.  As an aside.  And then all but ignore it for the rest of the book.  Like it’s just a footnote in there going “lol, I’m so dark!”

Children die in war and it’s a horrible, horrible thing.  If you’re going to write about, then fucking write about it.  Don’t drag up this awful pain and horror just to use it as a set drop, as a point on the “how to write srs bzns” checklist.  Don’t ever drag up that kind of pain just to show off.  Treat it with the weight it deserves or don’t fucking include it.

The fact that Max (the useless side character) died when Isabelle (the semi-main character) survived, apparently at random, makes it all the more obvious that the author did this just for the sake of tone and nothing else.

There’s also a line where Clary magically “knows” that the bodies on the ground are dead people, because there’s just a “spark of life” that isn’t there, and that’s how you can tell from a distance that they aren’t just unconscious.  And this is as personal as I’m willing to get on the subject, but…no, that’s not true at all.  Just…just…it’s not.  Don’t write that much detail about dead bodies unless you’ve talked to someone who’s seen one.  Because, to me, that line is another cheap trick, just a way to show off that there’s dead people without Clary having to get her hands dirty by actually touching someone or, heaven forbid, go through the trauma of trying to give first aide to a corpse before realizing that it is, indeed, a corpse.  Or even just have the common decency and motivation to go check and see if they’re alive.

Uhg, let’s fucking move on from this section before I lose it.  Oh, gay bashing, what a…distraction. *sigh*

She wondered why she’d ever thought trusting someone who wore that much eyeliner was a good idea.

Considering the fact that the book uses Magnus’s make-up as a shorthand for his sexuality…this line is highly suspect. 

They find out Sebastian wasn’t really Sebastian.  Oh, and also Simon is free and the Inquisitor has to be nice to him, because being mean might jeopardize “any alliance the Clave might want to have with Downworlders in the future.”  Because…the Accords weren’t already an alliance?  No, really, this is an important point for me.  What are the Accords if not an agreement/treaty between the two groups?  Is it just “hey, we promise not to kill you if you do what we say”?  Is the idea here that it’s just an armistice and not a real treaty?  Because everyone’s freaking out about whether or not they should allign with the downworlders to fight off Valentine without realizing that they’ve already got an agreement with those people.

They’re all gathered in a big hall talking (not that we know who ‘all’ is.  the whole city population again?  Just a subset of them?  Some smaller governmental body?  …Something else?   Fuck it, this book doesn’t care.) and an illusion of Valentine comes strolling in.  He mocks them for not believing that there would be a war…when he’s the one that created this war…  You know, really, Valentine’s whole speach here is just really fucking confusing.  “Haha, the thing I warned you would happen has happened!  Because I did it!  I told you demons would attack you, and I had to jump through hoops to make it happen, but do you see now how right I was and how wrong you were!  Even though if I’d just calmed the fuck down…you would have been right…ah, who needs logic, I’M EVIL, HAHA!”

Valentine says they have to surrender to him and make him Supreme Ruler of All the Angel People or else he’ll kill them all.  *sigh*  You know, for once I’d like to see this character type done straight.  Where he really just wants to burn out the corruption and make a better world, instead of using that rhetoric as a cover for megalomania.  It’s not like you can’t do plenty of evil with altruistic motives…  And, really, it would be nice if someone would point out that you can do plenty of evil with altruistic motives.

Then there’s more angst, and Simon and Isabelle make out and…maybe have sex?  It’s not clear.  Then there’s more angst.  Then there’s INCEST ANGST as Clary and Jace go all “I don’t care that it’s icky, I love you.”  It’s the totally-pure-eternal love that all teenagers get, naturally.

Then thank god we move over to Luke, who is doing actually useful stuff and trying to get the downworlders and the shadowhunters to get along.  He wants the Clave to give over four seats to representatives of the downworlder races.  Um…four seats out of the hundreds/thousands that are already there?  Yeah, like that’s going to do any good.  Everyone’s up in arms about four whole seats, and…fuck it, give them the seats.  You can out-vote four people, it’s not that big a deal.

Jace shows up to tell Luke that he’s off to go kill Valentine.  He’s got some of Sebastian’s blood and he’s going to do a tracking spell on it.  Because…because just fuck this magic system.  It’s so nonsensical that I can’t even make sense of how little sense it makes.  It’s like getting puzzle parts to six different puzzles and trying to make a whole.  You can’t hold up one piece or another and say “this is the problem” because all the pieces are the problem.

“If your father weren’t who he is,” [Luke] said, “he’d be proud of you.”

What a strange line to say.  What, are only fathers allowed to be proud of sons?  Why not say that Jocelyn would be proud, or that the Lightwoods would be proud, or even that Luke himself is proud.  Why all the disproportionate importance placed on fathers?

Speaking of Jocelyn, she shows up the next morning!  Magnus got the white book from Clary and went home to heal her.  (And also there’s more incest angst.  Guys, there is so much incest angst.)

And now there’s mother angst, as well, because Clary has spontaneously decided that she’s mad at her mother and runs off in a huff.  Also, notice how little Clary had to do to wake up her mother.  Every part of this solution was handed to her.  Madeline offered the information about Ragnor Fell out of the blue.  Fell knew about the book and pointed her to it with minimal complications.  She didn’t even have to find Fell, someone else found him for her.  And then Magnus did the actual curing.  Clary could have been replaced with a postal service and gotten the job done just as well.  The closest thing she’s had to an internal motivation in three books and it got solved by other people.

As Clary is moping on a hill, she realizes the answer to everything is in a rune that the chained-up angel showed her, so she races down to the hall to tell everyone. 

And boy is it a doozy.  She runs into the hall and tells everyone that she can bind them, rather intimately, to a downworlder using her new rune.  Then they’ll share the supernatural powers that the downworlder’s have and be able to fight better. 

So the argument is:

“We don’t want to be allied with those dirty-blooded Downworlders!”

“Well, I can make you extra-extra tied to them.”

“Okay!”

???

But, whatever, somehow this works.  Clary shows everyone how to pick a battle buddy and do the super-special new rune she made for them. Except, the thing is, Clary mentions a couple of times that it’s really two runes, one for each partner.  But when she passes out a copy so everyone can learn to draw it, she only shows them one of the runes.  So…where’s the other one needed to make a pair?  The whole process is just fairly confusing, really. 

While everyone’s getting all set for battle, we have an entire fucking chapter where Jocelyn sits down and tells her story about how she fell in love with Valentine and married him and then left him.  Once again, she tells it as if it’s a written story instead of a spoken story, because clearly this author doesn’t know the difference.  Also, it’s a whole chapter, but we learn nothing new.  Except that at the very end, she tells us Jace isn’t her son, “Sebastian” is.  But, again, to anyone who was paying attention that’s still nothing new. 

“Mundanes would call what I had depression, but Shadowhunters don’t have those kinds of terms.”

If you don’t have a word for depression, it’s still depression.  Just because your culture ignores a thing doesn’t make it go away.  Also, considering the amount of death and fighting these hunters go through, ignoring depression sounds like a great way to spike up the suicide rates. 

Jace tracks Sebastian and Valentine to a cave and find out their evil plan.  They’re going to release a bunch of demons at midnight to do the fighting, while Valentine goes off to the lake to summon the angel Raziel.  He’s going to ask Raz to strip all the shadowhunters of their power, which would make the marks they have on them turn them into Foresaken.  Except for his own special followers, of course. 

Back with Clary’s group.  Rapheal shows up and says the vampires won’t fight with them unless they give up Simon.  Uh…Raph is only in charge of one hotel’s worth of vamps.  How is he suddenly speaking for every vamp in the world here?  And also, everyone acts like without the vamps on their side it’s hopeless.  I don’t see why.  Sure, it would nice to have the extra bodies, but no one has any idea how big the other side’s army is, so it’s rather pointless to make the claim that the vampires would make or break the battle. 

Luke gives him the YA version of “fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” but…not for the reasons I just gave.  Apparently they really do think the vampires are necessary, but they don’t want to “sacrifice an innocent life.”  Sometimes I have to descend into the illogical world of the bad book to properly mock it.

Look, if the vampires really are necessary, then don’t dismiss giving over Simon.  Yeah, he’s innocent.  So is every other person going into this battle.  None of them caused this.  None of them are to be blamed for this particular battle.  In as much as anyone can be called innocent, they are all as innocent as Simon.  I refuse to go along with the presumption that Simon is more special than everyone else.  Yeah, handing him over to be killed would be awful.  But how is it different than sending thousands of others into a battle to be killed, knowing you could have prevented many of those deaths?  How is “Simon, go get stabbed by the vampires” any different than “Random hunter dude, go get stabbed by the demons”?  At the very least, let Simon know so he can decide on his own.

Simon eavesdrops on the whole matter and agrees with me, so he volunteers to go.  But he makes Clary give him a special rune first. 

Back with Jace, he and Sebastian fight.  There’s a lot more words to it, as they both taunt each other and Jace eventually realizes he’s not Valentine’s son, but…yeah, that’s basically it.  They get in a brawl.  Isabelle shows up at random to help out, but her contribution is limited to getting in one good hit on Sebastian, healing Jace, and then curling up on the ground and crying as Sebastian kicks her ass.  Whereas Jace gets his ass kicked six ways from Sunday and still stands up again and kicks back.  Because fuck feminism, that’s why. 

Simon goes to meet up with the vampires, and they agree that the deal is complete so they’ll fight.  As Raph is about to kill Simon, Simon reveals that Clary gave him the “mark of Cain.”  Anyone that harms him will get the same back sevenfold.  So now the vamps don’t want to kill him anymore, out of a sense of self-preservation.  Simon also gets the curse of Cain, which…isn’t very clear.  It seems to be the curse of “being a wanderer.”  Then everyone goes off to fight the demons, because it’s midnight.  Thankfully, we don’t spend that long mired down in battle scenes.  They have a fight, it’s fight-y, moving on. 

Clary is moping around alone in the hall when she overhears one of Valentine’s spies talking to him about his plans.  She figures out he’s at the lake and portals there again.  Like an idiot, she ends up in the middle of the water instead of on the land.  Valentine fishes her out while she’s unconscious and ties her up with magic.  Clary then proceeds to spend the entire climax tied up and gagged in the dirt.  You know, author, if you tie up your protagonist to keep her from doing stuff, it’s still writing a story where she doesn’t do anything.  You didn’t have to craft the story so that she was tied up for this part.  You could have had it go some other way that wouldn’t have forced her to be even less active than usual. 

Valentine needs blood to do his angel-summoning, and he was going to use Clary, but then Jace shows up out of the blue.  They fight, and once again, there is so much talking.  Seriously, the talking to fighting ratio is like 3:1.  And all the talking is just rehashing the personal drama that we spent the whole book dwelling on. 

In fact, they talk so much that Jace could have stabbed Valentine, but he had to stop and talk some more so he got stabbed instead.  Valentine gets all sad that he killed Jace, but he still uses his blood to do the ritual. 

She couldn’t help but imagine the way he’d look at her now if he saw her trying to lie down and die on the sane beside him.  He wouldn’t be touched, wouldn’t think it was a beautiful gesture.

NO, YA THINK?  GOSH, HOW SURPRISING THAT SOMEONE WOULDN’T THINK THAT GIVING UP AND DYING ISN’T “BEAUTIFUL.”  Seriously, this is failure squared.  She wants to die because Jace died, but the only reason she doesn’t is because Jace would be disappointed.  Even her will to live is dependent on a man.

Because fuck feminism, that’s why.

So instead Clary crawls around and changes one of the runes in Valentine’s spell. 

Raz shows up and Valentine tries to impress him with all he’s done, while Raz’s response is basically “Really?  Nah, bro, you fucked this shit all up.  Why did you think we’d like this?”  Oh, and least we forget:

Glory?  The Angel sounded faintly curious, as if the word were strange to him.  Glory belongs to God alone.

So, all that other claptrap the author tried to put in about other religions?  It was just a smokescreen.  This is an Abrahamic angel, the servant of the Abrahamic God, which in this book is a confirmed real deity who has tangible power.  Anything else she’s tried to include to cover up the fact that she’s basically shoving religion on her story?  Just a distraction that was dropped right after.

Again, this wouldn’t piss me off near so much if someone would just acknowledge that this is happening.  It’s just such a…blasé thing, just a an offhand “oh, of course that God is real, he’s the one true God!”  The fact that it goes assumed instead of being played with feels like she’s trying to sneak religion in there, or else as if she doesn’t realize that not everyone shares this religion.  It’s not a conscious addition to the story, not something deliberately crafted to be played with and explored, it’s just an “of course.”  Religion should never be an “of course.”  Just like dead kids should never be a set piece. 

Anyway, since Clary changed the runes from Valentine’s name to her name, Valentine can’t demand a favor, only Clary can.  Raz spits fire at Valentine and kills him.  After he lets Clary out of her magic chains, he says she can ask for anything.

Clary hesitated – only for a moment, but the moment stretched out as long as any moment ever had.  She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything – an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth.  But then again, perhaps these things weren’t in the power of angels to grant, or they would already have been granted.  And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.

It didn’t matter, anyway.  There was only one thing she could ask for, in the end, only one real choice.

“Jace,” she said.

SDK;FGJSDF;GHSDKLFGHE;RIGKDSFHGKJAHDF;JASD;FLKJASDL;FASG

ADFGADF

GADFGHADFJKF

ADSKHGAJ;DFHG

AKDJG’LDHFG’LKADJFGJAS

DFGJKAFD;GHA’FLKGJ

ADFJKGFSDF

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

The angel said to ask for “anything.”  ANYTHING.  If world peace isn’t in his power to grant, ask for it anyway, he’ll tell you whether or not he can do it.  Can’t to world peace?  Okay, go for something lighter.  Maybe ask him to show up on the six o’clock news and tell everyone what the bible/Quran really thinks about blowing up people we disagree with.  Maybe ask for all WMDs to spontaneously disappear.  Maybe ask for all the people Valentine killed to come back, instead of just the one guy you want to fuck.

And maybe don’t make it clear that, even if you had these options, you would ignore them anyway, because the only thing that matters in the whole fucking world to you is sweet, sweet Jace sex.

GOD DAMNIT, YOU COULD HAVE BROUGHT MAX BACK.

Fuck it, after that idiocy, there’s fifty fucking pages of epilogue.  FIFTY FUCKING PAGES.  It’s just people talking about everything we’ve already talked about all through this train wreak of a book.  Oh, and also Luke and Jocelyn are totally in love now. 

But what the fuck ever, I don’t care, I’m still unbelievably pissed off at Clary for her “I only care about Jace and everyone else can burn in hell” attitude. 

Fuck this book.