We open this chapter with Clary and her mother walking down the street, then immediately flashback to everything that happened since the end of last chapter.  No reason for the jumping around, the book just…enjoys using the past perfect tense?  Even though writing several pages in past perfect is both clunky and really hard to keep consistent?  Whatever, there’s bigger problems here than this book’s love affair with flashbacks.  They took Luke to the pack instead of a hospital, on account of the werewolfness, and he’s stable there but not all better yet, and also Clary emos a lot. 

Hey, isn’t Luke a member of that Council thing since the end of City of Glass?  Why can’t they take him to the Institute, where they have magic herbs that magically erase three day’s worth of dehydration and starvation?  I mean, it would be easy enough to say that the Institute doesn’t carry werewolf healing magic plants because they’ve been focused on killing werewolves until now, but…well, you still have to say it.  From the sounds of things, the werewolf headquarters only has a first aid kit.

“But we can’t lead Jace and Jonathan here either. It’s not safe for the pack, or Luke. And this is the first place Jace will look for you.”

And therefore they can’t stay there.  Wait, what?  This makes no sense.  They’re already at the station.  If they were going to lead the JJ boys there, it would have already happened.  You aren’t at further risk of someone following you home if you stay at home.  You have to be out and about where they can see you and pick up your trail and then lead them back.  Also, if Jace is going to look for her there, then he’s going to look for her there.  He’s not going to knock politely on the door, ask if she’s home, and go away when told she’s not.  Is the point to keep her away from Jace or Jace away from the werewolves?

We spend about two pages emoing about how they’re rushing down the street in the dark and in the snow.  Clary repeatedly compares it to Jocelyn fleeing from Idris, because…yeah, there’s nothing similar about the circumstances except it being cold.  But this book loves imagery, and it doesn’t give a fuck if it’s appropriate or not.  It’s just going to hammer it’s chosen imagery into you several times in a row.

They go to Magnus’s house and Magnus lets them in without even a “what do you want” first.  Just “oh, people, well, take a spare bedroom.”  I’m pretty sure we’re no longer in the realm of “things you’re supposed to do for the friends of your boyfriend” and now in the realm of “stop pretending, Magnus is just a plot-hole-stopper.  Always has been, always will be, and no there won’t ever be a good explanation.”

Clary goes to “her” room to change clothes and stare in the mirror for a bit.  Because it’s just vital that we know what she look like right now.  We can’t fully understand her pathos in this scene without knowing that her hair is limp.  (Really, stuff like this doesn’t add to the character’s situation for me; it just makes me think that they’re incredibly vain to care about what they look like right now.)

She goes back out where Jocelyn and Magnus are talking about Luke.  Jocelyn says the pack “stabilized” Luke, but that part of the knife broke off inside him and is…well…

“When they tried to dig it out, it burrowed into the bone and nearly snapped it,” Jocelyn said. “He’s a werewolf, he heals fast, but it’s in there gashing up his internal organs, keeping the wound from closing.”

So, now I’m confused.  1)  Does the pack have a surgery theater?  Otherwise, how the frik did they go about “stabilizing” him?  2) Does the thing move only when someone goes after it, or does it just constantly fly around his insides?  Because I don’t care how fast Luke heals, after a certain point, there’s no “stabilizing” that.  Unless the knife is being super polite and only going after his intestines and such.  To be fair, you can live a long time without your colon and kidneys and a few other organs, but if that thing tears up his diaphragm?  His heart?  His spine?  Pretty much any major artery?  And then stays around to keep tearing those things up?  He’s dead.  End of story.  (Please, please, end of story…)

Magnus says sounds like demon metal instead of silver and he can’t help, but the Praetor dudes can.  Naw, ya think?  The super ancient order of ultra smart werewolf guys might know how to heal an injured werewolf?  Magnus, you have just blown my mind.  Eh, I shouldn’t blame Magnus.  After all, Clary and Jocelyn couldn’t figure it out…  Which, if you think about, just goes to show how much of a crutch Magnus has become for all these guys.  Their first thought was not “let’s go to the werewolf group to heal a werewolf” but “let’s go to Magnus, because we always go to Magnus.”

Magnus goes to call Jordan, since he’s the closest Praetor member and could pass along an SOS.

“It was at Jonathan.” She would never call him Sebastian, Clary knew.

BECAUSE THAT’S NOT HIS NAME.  Really, why is this such a hard concept?

Clary and her mom argue about…um, several topics at once, since this book never met a tangent it didn’t fall in love with.  But the main point is Jocelyn trying to convince Clary that Jace might have to die, even though he is really, really pretty.  You know, on account of him being/being tied to a homicidal crazy person.

He was visibly upset. His hands were trembling, his broad shoulders tightly set.

This isn’t show AND tell, book.  You don’t have to tell us that he’s upset and then repeat the fact by showing.  Just show.  We’ll put 2 and 2 together, I promise.

And if we can’t, then we’ll learn.  Because that’s what books should do.  Push us to use our brains and learn.  Learning that someone with shaking hands and tense shoulders is upset should not be a strain on our brains hard enough to make the book unenjoyable.  Anyone who says that it is probably needs to step back and take stock of a few things.

Alec comes home and asks about how Jace seemed.

I reminded him that Sebastian killed Max, and he didn’t even seem to care.”

Hm, let’s look back at last chapter…

He flinched, and for a moment of wild hope she thought she’d broken through to him—but his expression smoothed over like a wrinkled sheet pulled tight.

Clary, why do you insist on not remembering things you already recognized?  He did care, he pretty clearly cared, and then he (or something else) forced that reaction down from the surface.  This isn’t rocket science.

Maybe this is why the author thinks we can’t tell that shaking hands=upset?  Because she expects us to all be as unobservant as her main character?

“Did he say anything about me? Or Izzy? Did he ask about us?”

Clary shook her head, hardly able to stand the look on Alec’s face. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Magnus watching Alec too, his face almost blank with sadness. She wondered if he was jealous of Jace still, or just hurt on Alec’s behalf.

I’m not entirely sure what the answer is either.  On the one hand, come on, his best friend is missing and possibly evil.  Magnus would have to be pretty low to be jealous in this case.  On the other hand, the book never did treat Alec’s crush on Jace with any amount of grace, and it does run about 75% on romance tropes.  So I wouldn’t put it past the book to do this.

“[Magnus]’s been up all night every night trying to decipher those runes.”

“Is the Clave employing him?” Jocelyn wanted to know.

“No,” Alec said slowly. “He’s doing it for me. Because of what Jace means to me.”

…yeah, any time there’s two options and one of them is “romantic angst,” we should probably just run with that one.  Because it’s not like this book ever recognizes that people can do stuff without their boyfriend being the motive.  Magnus can’t possibly just be an obsessive personality who has to pick apart puzzles, nor can he want to save Jace for his own sake, nor can he simply be a person who hates to see innocent (or semi-innocent) teenagers suffer at the hands of demons.  Nope, all of that is not a possibility, it has to be because he’s dating Alec.

Does the book think I would think less of Magnus if he acted for non-selfish reasons?  Because, let’s face it, doing stuff solely in the hopes that it will make your boyfriend love you more is selfish.  It has a positive outcome, and I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t do good things just because they can’t be altruistic at the same time.  A good thing is a good thing regardless of why you do it.  But from a meta standpoint, I don’t understand why so many authors think shit like this is the epitome of good characterization.

They all sit around and talk for a while and determine that Jonathan is traveling using some sort of dimensional magic, and that’s how they can appear out of nowhere and can’t be tracked.  Then out of nowhere, one of the Silent Brothers shows up, Brother Zach.

If the chance comes before me to save the last of the Herondale bloodline, I consider thatof higher importance than the fealty I render the Clave.

So now we’ve taken away everything that makes Jace a person and put all his importance on his ancestry.  He’s not worth saving because he’s another person who has been dragged tragically into the clutches of an evil half-demon.  No, he’s only worth saving so that he’ll some day pop out babies with his magic blood.  This places all of his worth, all of his value, on blood that isn’t any different from anyone else’s blood.  It’s just blood.  There isn’t anything great about it being Herondale blood, as if their blood can cure cancer or what not.  It’s not more important than the fact that Jace is a person and relatively innocent at that.  (A huge shitwad and misogynist ass, definitely not a good person, but still innocent in a wider sense.)

Brother Zach comes in and conveniently explains all about how Jonathan came back from the dead, because figuring out stuff is hard and exposition bunnies are easy.  Zach explains how the ritual from last book worked and all about how the JJ boys are so linked now that it even affects Jace’s brain and memories.  He brain just bends and twists around all the bad stuff that Jonathan has done so that it doesn’t stick to his reasoning.

Clary thought of what had happened when she had reminded Jace that Sebastian had killed Max, how his face had temporarily furrowed in thought, then smoothed out as if he had forgotten what she had said as quickly as she’d said it.

So, that wasn’t a plot hole created by the writing, Clary really is just that stupid.

Man, they are really dragging this explanation out.  The JJ Twins are now linked, it messes with Jace’s brain, can’t stab one without the other.  It’s nice that you made all these extra bullshit details, author, but they don’t seem terribly relevant.  You tell us that they’re the Wonder Twins because of magic and shit, okay, we’ll believe you.  We don’t really need further justification than “magic and shit,” unless that “and shit” is going to have a point.  A point other than angsting about how Jace is so good and mighty and it’s just so terrible that he’s tainted now.  That’s just annoying.

I know what ‘a greater cause’ means. It means torturing the innocent, brutal murder, turning your back on your former friends, all in the name of something that you believe is bigger than yourself but is no more than greed and childishness dressed up in fanciful language.”

It can.  You know what, though, I bet Mother Theresa and MLK Jr thought they were serving a “greater cause” as well.  So can we not lay all the blame at the feet of ambition and instead just plain old call it greed and bigotry?  Those things are bad enough, we don’t need to call them something else. 

Anyway, since no weapon known to Brother Zach can kill Jonathan without killing Jace, too, they decide to go see if the Iron Sisters know of anything that can get the job done.

They were not fighters—they were creators, the hands who shaped the weapons, the steles, the seraph blades that kept the Shadowhunters alive.

Because that’s pretty much the extent that women are allowed to participate in combat in these books.  They’re allowed to make weapons, but not to use them.  And when they’re done making the weapons, they have to give them away to someone else.  Because that’s a woman’s true role: to serve others.  To sacrifice their time and efforts to others.  Others in general, but really, mostly to men.

Isn’t feminism fun!

Only ladies are allowed to go, and Jocelyn doesn’t want Clary out and about where Jace can nab her, so she’ll take Isabelle instead.  Clary thinks that isn’t fair, and then Jocelyn points out that Clary’s been in danger for four books now and that danger usually involves Jace causing the pain, or at least making it worse.  Jocelyn tries to make Clary see that they weren’t meant to be together, which I really hate as a reasoning.  It implies an approval of the idea that anyone can be ‘meant’ to go together.  The stronger argument is that there is no fate, no ‘meant,’ there’s just reality, and the reality is that Jace is an ass and also causes pain to everyone around him. 

Not that it would stop Clary from going on about how the heavens and earth have moved so they can share their perfect love together, but Clary’s a teenager.  Jocelyn should know better.

Skip over to Simon, who is meeting Raphael on some hotel roof.  Raph wants Simon to be his bodyguard, because he’s afraid Camille is going to hunt him down and kill him.

The Shadowhunters are entirely caught up with this stupid business with Valentine’s son and will not be bothered to track her down.

Damnit, book.  Wasn’t all the drama at the start of this all about how the Clave wasn’t looking for Jace anymore?

Anyway, Simon says “lol, nope, you tried to kill me, remember?”  Raph says that there’s some “great darkness” coming that only the vamps will survive, and Simon isn’t acting like a real vamp, so he’ll be dead soon. 

So, obviously Simon runs back to the Clave and tells them that Raph knows what the Wonder Twins are up to and why that around-the-world ward was broken and they all go storm the hotel and bring Raph in for questioning and- Oh, wait, nope.  That would be too smart for this book.  Instead there’s another scene change.

There’s a scene change for all of one page.  Seriously, one page.  Clary makes a portal so she can sneak out of Magnus’s house.  Because when your daughter can make portals on a whim, it totally makes sense to let her keep her stele when sending her to her room.

Jordan wakes up to someone knocking at the door.

If this was a bunch of drunk college kids amusing themselves by knocking on all the doors in the building, they were about to get a faceful of angry werewolf.

Uh, wasn’t the whole justification behind Jordan/Maia the idea that he, you know, wouldn’t lose control again.  Seems like nothing’s changed, just the text decided that being a pretty boy counts for more than ripping throats out.

It’s Isabelle.

Izzy was gorgeous, there was no denying that. She was also a little terrifying. He wondered how unassuming Simon managed to handle her at all.

SHE’S A PERSON.  She doesn’t need to be ‘handled.’  She’s not a wild animal that someone needs to tame.  There is no ‘handling’ going on, unless your mind is in a gutter, but that’s different.  Simon does not need to handle her, change her, or do anything except enjoy her company.

Simon’s not home, so Isabelle and Jordan sit around and drink tequila.

“Where’d you learn to drink like that?” He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or frightened.

“The drinking age in Idris is fifteen. Not that anyone pays attention. I’ve been drinking wine mixed with water along with my parents since I was a kid.” Isabelle shrugged.

At fifteen your body is still undergoing some major development, especially your brain.  Killing brain cells at that stage is not recommended.  Now, a cocktail every now and then won’t do damage, but drinking to the point where you’re “learning how” to knock back several shots in a row?  Yeah, not a good idea.  Author, please stop sending kids the message that all the rules that adults make are just because adults are poopieheads.

Now that Isabelle is drunk, it’s time for long, drawn out moping.

“Clary saved a Lightwood. I owe her my life. If I can’t give her that—and I don’t see how she has any use for it—I can give her whatever will make her less unhappy.”

“You can’t give her Simon. Simon’s a person, Isabelle. He goes where he wants.”

So, you’ll admit that Simon is an independent agent just a breath after saying that Isabelle’s life is basically worthless?

Fuck feminism, that’s why.

Isabelle gets pretty forward and flirty, then stops herself and admits she wasn’t being serious about wanting to jump him.  She only wants Simon now, doesn’t even feel a desire for Jordan, even though he’s a pretty boy.  On the whole, I’m okay with this discussion.  It’s actually pretty sweet.  I just wish it hadn’t been inserted in the middle of a million other more interesting plot lines that are going on in this book.  The narrative has been ground to a halt all so we can spend time talking about how much Isabelle is love with Simon.  It just doesn’t have a place here.  That, and it just drags on forever.  If you took out every instance of people repeating themselves, this book would only be half as long.