We finally get to see that demon battle between Team Evil and the snake!  It’s disappointingly short.  Lasts all of a paragraph and then Jace cuts its head off.  Aw, I wanted to see fighting.  Even the way this book is written, the fighting is still better than the romance and the angst.

Ah, here we go, there’s more snake demons to fight.  Not sure where they came from, Jonathan just suddenly says “there’s more of them” and, lo and behold, there are.  Clary is also somehow suddenly an excellent fighter.  She started her training in CoFA, so she’s had…what, a few weeks?  At most?  And she’s whirling around like a top and sticking knives and flag poles in demons like it ain’t no big thang.

Now, I’m happy that she’s gained at least some amount of kickassery.  But does it have to be this nonsensical?  She can be a fighter without being an instaultracool fighter.

A surge of something went through Clary—a sense of buzzing elation. Both Jace and Isabelle had spoken to her of the high of battle

It’s called adrenaline, and reports of its awesomeness are greatly overrated.

Oh, okay, fine, that’s a highly variable statement and I’m sure it’s perfectly possible that Clary (and Jace and Isabelle) actually think of it as untainted elation.  But I’d like to see some variety that lands between “woe and all the angst” and “WHEEE THIS IS FUN.”

Somewhere in the range of “this is super fucking intense” without making that intensity either fun or horrifying.  Personally, I’d like to see the aftereffect of that “battle-high,” the leftover sense that nothing you ever can or will do will ever get you to that point of intensity again.  It’s a drug.  It may not be healthy or even pleasant, it may destroy your body and mind, but you chase it anyway, even though nothing short of actually being in a life-or-death fight can even compare, and because it can’t compare, the whole rest of your life just seems slightly duller, slightly less real.  So chasing that dragon is less about a sense of euphoria and more about trying to just make sense, period.

*ahem*  Um.  Moving on.

Clary is now a laughing-while-killing murder machine for no reason, and she kills the demon they went to see and takes his chunk of adamas. 

Over with Team Good, which now includes Maia and Jordan, and they’re all staring at the glowing pentagram.  Apparently Azezal has a tornado inside it that writes notes to them, and thus they communicate without having to summon him again.  For some reason, having a demon communicate with them means…you guess it, TIME FOR MORE BANTER.  Who needs a serious conversation about weighty subjects like “is Azazel contained or not” when you can instead make jokes about magic eight balls?

Azazel gets bored of the banter, too, because he forms in full in the pentagram and asks what they think about his deal.  They say “no and go away.”  Azazel says “haha, fuck you, I’m staying put,” and nothing Magnus does to banish him works.

Magnus’s cat comes out to get the plot moving again.  It randomly runs into the pentagram, and Simon steps to get it back, meaning Simon is now no longer protected and the demon can grab him.  Azazel tries to do just that, but Simon has Mark of Cain still.  Azazel even calls him “wanderer” when he realizes what’s up, but…has Simon wandered yet?  He’s in the exact same situation he was in before getting his mark, plus now he’s had vampire sex with his hot girlfriend and has a new bestest-friend room mate.  The only effect this mark has had on him is to make him so indestructible that even a prince of hell can’t hurt him.

For a book with this much angst, there is a distinct lack of cursiness.

And then Azazel just bows out.  Just says they’re all crazy and leaves.  We had the promise of some real conflict, an ultra-powerful demon that refused to leave, something to actually contend with and worry about…and he just leaves.

What’s the matter, book?  Afraid having actual issues will get in the way of squishy kissy times?

Speaking of kissy times, Jace and Clary are in the bathroom getting shirtless.  Ostensibly for the purposes of “healing” each other after their fight with the snakes.  For all that they are injured, that still doesn’t keep the text from waxing poetical over how hot Jace is.  Again.

Then Jonathan shows up with a slinky black dress that he “found” for her, and it seems that after this they’ll be going to a club.  There’s more banter, more going on about how special and pretty everyone is, until finally Jonathan gets fed up and says what’s on everyone’s mind.

 “Your verbal foreplay is boring and annoying,”

Thank you, Jonathan.  I still hate you, but at least you’ve done something useful finally.

Wasn’t that riveting?  Back to Team Good, now.  Simon and Magnus talk while everyone else cleans.  Simon thinks that because he’s indestructible, he should be able to summon an angel without getting smote.  For some reason, Magnus keeps getting Simon’s name wrong in this scene, even though he hasn’t done that with anyone else, or at any other point.

Magnus also says that he’s had a dream of the world ending, but unless Magnus now has prophetic dreams and forgot to inform us of that fact, I don’t really care.  Last night I had a dream about talking cheese.  Dreams are weird, then we wake up and the world moves on.  Oh, yeah, and Magnus also says that the only reason he sticks around is because he loves Alec so much, but I still am not impressed by that.  The book can harp on the whole “doing stuff because of your boyfriend” idea like it’s so noble, but it’s hardly something to gush over when it’s the sole motivation of every single person in this book.

Apparently personal morals don’t exist in the MI world.

she found the icy air cutting into the buzzing hum in her veins, muting the leftover high from the battle. She bought a cup of hot wine to keep the buzz going,

Your battle-buzz is adrenaline.  Alcohol will kill that faster than cold air.  You are stupid and so is this book.

Anyway, Team Evil goes to a club called The Bone Chandelier, which is the name of the chapter.  Jonathan pulls Clary onto the dance floor, and I just can’t give a fuck because in a book about demons rising up to take over the world, somehow high school has taken over the plot.  This isn’t magical and fantastical, this is a teenager’s view of what night clubs look like.  This is…like, Gossip Girl or something.  This is just neon lights and booze and some child’s view of “rebellion” and cool-kid-parties.  Frankly, I’d rather read about the Fairy Queen and Azazel having tea while they plot to take over the world than this shit right here.

Oh, yeah, all the club patrons are werewolves and vampires, but that hardly makes them any more interesting than your average club-goer.  I mean, they aren’t exactly doing anything besides dancing here.

And back to Team Good.  I’m getting dizzy with all the scene changes.  Simon and Isabelle argue about whether or not he should do it, and again, all his arguments are in relation to other people.  He has to save Jace because Jace saved his life, he has to save Jace or else Clary will be sad.  You know what’s astoundingly missing from all this?  Then finally at the end of the interminable argument, he brings up the point that, hey, Jonathan is probably trying to end the world, and he is probably keeping Jace around for a purpose.  Even if he isn’t, Jace is still handy, and breaking that bond would do some good towards the “stop the end of the world” part of the plan.

Remember that plan?  It’s okay if you don’t.  The book barely remembers it.  To the point where “end of the world” is considered only after they cover “Clary would be sad if Jace dies.”

Clary and Jace dance at the club and Jace is still hot.  Just in case you were wondering.  Apparently the confetti at the club can make you high.  And so…they both get high.  And for some reason the book endorses this. 

Because if we can shove in sex as a relationship fixer, returning to abusive boyfriends, and a whores/sluts divide, then why not include drugs in a night club as well.

I get the uncomfortable feeling that the book thinks it’s okay because it’s fairy drugs, but it hardly makes a difference here.  It’s not really working as any drug I can think of, but the basic idea of “take something to make you high and have a good time” is still there.

I’m a bit on the fence about drugs.  Personally, I think our distinctions between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” drugs are made on shady and shaky grounds.  However, dear readers, don’t ever take drugs that just fall out of the ceiling at a night club.  Or that just get passed around at a night club and have no clear origin, since that’s a closer analogy.  And don’t do drugs if you’re with people that you aren’t sure if you can trust them or not.  Frankly, I’m not even sure you should do drugs while out in a crowded public setting, because there’s just too many variables that could go wrong and you’ll be in too altered a state to react properly.  Basically, don’t do strange drugs in a club. 

The fact that the book has no condemnation of this, that Clary doesn’t think about anything except the fact that Jace looks hot and after eating the confetti he looks happy, that it all just flows as if this is just how things go your first time getting high, no thought, no decision making, no hesitation, no nothing, it’s just disturbing.  If this was a book, or even a scene, about drugs and how seductive they can be, the disturbing feel would be appropriate, but that’s not what’s going on here.  The book just straight-up celebrates the mind-altering confetti. 

I guess a bit of the saving grace is that when Clary runs into Jonathan again, she’s too fucked up to resist going with him, but it’s not like she’s ever resisted doing what she’s told when sober.  And, really, it’s just one line saying she can’t get the word ‘no’ out, after which she’s perfectly fine with following along.  No fear, no confusion, no sense of being off-balance, just normal Clary.

Clary and Jonathan have an almost-incest moment where he gets all “we’re tots the same!” and Clary brushes him off, then Jace shows up.  He takes her back to the dance floor, where they dance and make out.  It gets really hot and heavy, and really disturbing. 

It was as if they wanted to cut each other apart, she thought, to climb inside each other’s bodies and share their heartbeats, even if it killed them both.

*shudder*

Oh, and then there’s a line to top that.

His smile was wicked. “You can tell me to stop whenever you want,” he said. “But you won’t.”

…

Brief interlude while Jonathan talks to Meliorn.  All we find out is that Jonathan is allied with the Fairy Queen, and also their fight in the apothecary was noisy enough to draw shadowhunter attention.

So, back to Clary getting sexually assaulted.  She’s under the influence of a mind-altering drug, which Jace knows, and Jace also knows she would say no if she could, but since she can’t he sees it as an opportunity to press forward.  He’s straight-up sexually assaulting her.  He’s using her inability to turn him down and misconstruing it to “count” as permission.

And…the book doesn’t bother to recognize this.  Instead it lingers on how hot the make-out is, as if the fact that he’s good at kissing has any bearing on the previous paragraph of ranting.

I don’t care if he’s good at kissing.  Frankly, I don’t even care if she’s having fun.  She’s high and incapable of consent and he knows this.  In fact, it’s the reason he’s doing this.  Nothing else matters.  Everything else is overshadowed by the fact that she’s stoned out of her skull and can’t say “stop.”  From Jace’s comments, he fully intends to get into her pants, not just kiss her.

And I’m really supposed to take the rape that happens later seriously?  Already the author has proven she has no fucking clue what she’s doing.  She might as well stand up and say “Yeah, it only counts if you don’t like the guy doing it to you.”

Fuck that.  Ladies (and gents), you can be sexually assaulted and raped by someone you like.  By someone you love.  By someone who you’ve had consensual sex with before.  Anyone can rape you.  No one, ever, has any kind of “right” to your body, no matter how much you like each other, and no matter how good they are at the physical part.  You have a right to be an autonomous person and say “no” at any god damn time you please.  And anyone who ignores, or in this case celebrates, the fact that you are drunk/high/otherwise altered, is a horrible person who has done a bad, bad, very bad thing.

They’re interrupted by the fact that the whole place turns into a haunted house, with bodies hanging from the ceiling and blood in the fountains and all the dancers are dead.  It’s quite sudden and over the top, so I’m placing my bet on this being a drug-induced illusion.  But we’ll have to wait until next time to find out.