Clary subjects us all to some very melodramatic passages about how she’s in so much pain and also Jonathan has big, strong, manly arms.  And more ice similes.  This book has some strange obsession with ice.  Then, when Jonathan heals her and she wakes up, we’re treated to an entire paragraph of what he looks like today.  Because this guy is our resident baddie and we all know what’s going to happen eventually, but we still need to be reminded that he is, in fact, pretty.

So, what do these two do right after she nearly dies and he has to fight off demons and carry her out of the pits of apartment-building-hell?  FUCKING BANTER!  It’s like the book has no idea that different scenes and different situations produce different emotions, because every single person reacts to every single action in EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING WAY.  WITH BANTER!

Clary wants to know why he’s dealing with demons.  Sebastian says that he believes a great war with demons is coming, and he’s tricking the demons into trusting him by making promises.  Oh, and there’s some shit in there about Valentine that I think is supposed to be misleading, but it mostly comes off as a plot hole.  Valentine’s past actions, plans, and motivations seem to change with every single book, even after he’s dead.  In this one, Jonathan clearly gets things wrong and says that Lilith told him what “really” happened, so we know he’s supposed to be wrong, but Clary can’t seem to remain consistent either.  For all we know, maybe Lilith is right.  Maybe Lilith is some reality-altering demon and her version is now the “real” one.  Who can tell with books like these?

Raziel was angered because Valentine had forgotten the mission of all Shadowhunters.”

“Which is?”

“To kill demons. That is our mandate.

Yeah, about that.  All we ever see these people do is kill demons.  Well, fine, we see Jace and his group kill demons, but then again, those are the only people we see, period.  If the Clave is doing something else, it’s not like we’ll ever find out.  Which is a shame, because I’d really rather see what they’re up to than read about how hot all the various boys are.

Jonathan claims his end-game is to lure the Greater Demons to earth and then start a war that will end with the demons dying, which would make earth safer.  He also claims that just not luring in Greater Demons wouldn’t work, because they’d come in anyway, so he wants to do it on his terms instead of theirs.  Clary is still suspicious about all this (and curiously free of any side-effects from almost dying; I guess that wasn’t really anything more than a convenient way to  change the scene), so Jonathan says he can prove it.

“You’re cold. Put it on.”

Clary wound it around her neck. “Thanks,” she said reflexively, and winced.

There. She had thanked Sebastian. She waited for a bolt of lightning to shoot out of the clouds and strike her dead. But nothing happened.

And this is why I have such a hard time taking anything seriously in this book.  I know in the opeing she was delirious and near-death…but then again, if she’s going to pitch a fit over the oh-so-dramatic act of saying ‘thank you,’ maybe she just had a minor head-cold before.  When everything is treated with so much weight, it’s hard to tell what we really need to be concerned over and what’s just Clary being a teenager.

So they walk along through Paris, Clary once again informs us that Jonathan is pretty, and then we get some random infodumping about Valentine’s ancestry.

“Shadowhunter names are compounded,” said Sebastian slowly

Yeah, hon, we noticed.  It’s really fucking annoying, too.  It’s thrown in there like it’s supposed to be part of the culture/worldbuilding, but it’s completely without context.  We have no idea why the names are like that, just that they are.  We don’t know if…say, the original shadowhunters picked their last names when they drank angel blood, to differentiate themselves from their former families, or even why they decided that compound-word-names were the way to go.

BTW, Valenine’s family is from Switzerland and they have no relatives because they all died fighting demons and such.  I’m sure this will all be just so relevant to the plot. 

I miss you, plot. 😦

“But Jace,” Clary said. “Valentine taught him more than just fighting. He taught him languages, and how to play the piano—”

“That was Jocelyn’s influence.” Sebastian said her name unwillingly, as if he hated the sound of it. “She thought Valentine ought to be able to talk about books, art, music—not just killing things. He passed that on to Jace.”

So, yeah, that’s actually a pretty old idea and not something held by peace-loving hippies and angelic-pure protagonists.  In fact, the idea of a gentleman warrior would fit in very nicely with Valentine, who was all about surrounding himself with signs of class and prettiness.  The idea behind it was to say “hey, world, I’m not an uncivilized barbarian savage because when I finish chopping people’s heads off for having a different religion, I compose poetry about it afterward.”  It was a way to separate one’s self from those “other” groups, to prove a well-rounded superiority.  It fits in just fine with a villain, and it makes more sense than saying that Valentine was a bloodthirsty, single-minded killing machine…oh and also pretty things?

Jonathan, instead of taking her to his “proof” like he promised, takes her to get hot chocolate because we need more padding.  There’s also several hundred words dedicated to trying to confuse us over the fact that Jonathan likes a particular neighborhood because it’s “peaceful.” 

Book, stop trying to confuse us.  All this shit you’re giving us about Jonathan?  Would only be confusing if you buy into the idea that villains are one-note plot devices instead of people.  No, I’m not “shocked” by the idea of a guy who enjoys a peaceful cafe and also at the same time is completely moronic about how to win a demon war.  The two don’t actually conflict, and you aren’t breaking any ground here.

God, this padding goes on forever.  Now it’s all Jonathan having angst over being a “changed man” and wanting forgiveness, but it’s all pretty sleazy because he keeps harping on the “you and I are just alike, please say we’re just alike” line.

Then they attempt to have some angst over Clary killing Valentine and having no remorse over it.  Ah, bullshit, an angel spit death at him.  An angel that he summoned.  Clary had absolutely nothing to do with Valentine’s death.  If Clary hadn’t been there, the angel still would have said “nah, brah, you fucked up.  Die now, because heaven hates you,” and then killed him.  The only thing that changed with Clary being there was that she got to have a wish at the end of it.

Blah, blah, angst, blah, blah, Clary’s middle name is Adele, blah, blah, more bullshit.

“Before I met the Nephilim, I would have said it was impossible to die of grief.”

Sebastian chuckled dryly. “We don’t form attachments like mundanes do,” he said.

Because the magic angel people are better than you, at everything.

Oh, good lord, finally, they go see some woman named Magdalena.  She’s a disgraced Iron Sister who used to be part of the Circle.  Jonathan gives her the adamas that they stole in a previous chapter and…

yeah, that’s it for them until tomorrow.  They took up most of the chapter and it was, like, 95% just bullshit talking and angst.  The padding in this book is just plain painful.

—

Team Good (minus Maia and Jordan) sit around and talk about angels and how to summon one.  There’s a bunch of small world-building details in this section, but they’re all about angels and their powers/size/how to summon them.  Several pages on angel sizes, but still no clue what the Clave is up to these days.  Priorities, book.  Priorities.

Simon finds out that he can’t talk to Clary anymore, then he suggests that they do the summoning on Luke’s farm.  Remember that farm?  The one that Jocelyn was going to go hide in back in the first book?  Seems it’s finally going to get some use.  They have to do it somewhere out in nowhere, because Raziel is 60ft tall.

Magnus declares that he’s too tired to go off angel-summoning right now and needs a few hours sleep first, which means we get more fucking padding in the meantime.  Oh…joy.