Well, we’ve finally made it to the last chapter.  At least there’s some promise of an actual climax, unlike City of Bones, where all we had left to deal with was family drama.

Clary thought of the night she’d stayed up watching Jace’s chest rise and fall, thinking how she could end all this with a single knife blow. But all this hadn’t had a face, a voice, a plan. Now that it wore Luke’s sister’s face, now that Clary knew the plan, it was too late.

What’s that?  You mean when they told you they were going to summon demons and start a war, you didn’t realize that people would be hurt?  You were actually unable to process the fact that bad guys doing bad shit would…actually be bad until you saw it happening in front of you?

I’m trying to imagine how you could get any more self-centered and I’m coming up with nothing.

Jonathan forces Amatis to drink from the cup, and after she does there’s a lot of screaming and jerking around and such.  After she recovers, she’s calm and refers to Jonathan as “master.”  So…what?  They said that this demonic cup was exactly the same as the old cup, just, you know, demonic.  So when people drink from the angel cup, do they get mind-controlled, too?

Also, it’s supposed to be the same as the angelic cup, but in the first book they stated that that cup would kill anyone who wasn’t a very young child.  Amatis is a middle aged woman.

Either “alliances” need to be explained better, or this book should never have claimed the two cups operated the same way.

Jonathan wants her to fight Cartwright in order to show off her new powers. 

“Come, Cartwright, she is a woman, and older than you are. Are you afraid?”

All of my hate, book.  All of my hate.

Amatis manages to kick his ass in a purely physical brawl.  So…demon blood turns you into Jackie Chan?

Seriously, army of ninjas, guys.  All you really want is an army of ninjas, so just go hire the Foot Clan and skip the demon-summoning.

“And there you see it,” said Sebastian. “Even a Shadowhunter of no particular skill or strength—your pardon, Amatis—can become stronger, swifter, than their seraphically allied counterparts.” He slammed one fist into the opposite palm. “Power. Real power. Who is ready for it?”

The cups are in no way equal and in this book demons are more powerful than angels.  Yup. 

Amatis sees Clary and smiles evily at her.  Because demon blood makes you mind-controlled evil, but angel blood makes you…really boring?

It was not Amatis’s smile. It was not Amatis at all. Amatis was gone.

And we’re back to mind controlled people not being real people. 

He had tried to turn himself over to the Clave, and she hadn’t let him. She hadn’t listened to what he’d wanted. She had made the choice for him—in a moment of flight and panic, but she had made it—not realizing that her Jace would rather die than be like this, and that she’d been not so much saving his life as damning him to an existence he would despise.

Hey, she finally realizes she’s been an idiot.  Although, it sure would be nice if she’d take a fraction of that angst and apply it to, you know, THE WORLD ENDING.  Or Amatis being turned evil.  Or basically anything other than Jace.  He’s not the only thing that counts in this world, brat.

Then the werewolves show up, along with a handful of other shadowhunters, because I guess Maryse decided they really shouldn’t tell the Clave or some such. 

Simon is carrying the angel sword, so they decide that they’re going to break through the line of dark hunters in order to get Simon to Jonathan.  Um…does Simon have any practice at wielding a sword?  Is there some reason Simon has to be the one to do this?

They were still some distance from the line of the opposing army—he didn’t know how else to think of them

There’s 40 of them.  I think “group” will work just as well.

Also, the dark group can’t use seraph blades anymore, which is bullshit, because Jonathan has more demon blood than any of them and he can use said blades just fine. 

It’s really hard to imagine what’s going on here.  Apparently the other group is all organized in a line…and Simon’s group is just standing there…and…werewolves?  Yeah, I’m not really sure.  I think everyone is just standing and talking and the werewolves got eaten by a plot hole.  And then one of the dark guys gets shot, so Simon’s group goes down the hill to fight them. 

Simon, by the way, does not use the angel sword on any of them.  It’s said that the sword will burn the evil out of people but only kill them if they were more evil than good.  So, really, wouldn’t it work to burn the evil out of these dark hunters and turn them…well, if not good, then at least less powerful?  And if that’s not the case…why not at least try it?  The worst that could happen is the other guy dies, and that’s going to happen anyway.

Then Amatis shows up and attacks Simon, but Magnus gets in the way so she fights Magnus instead.   She ends up stabbing him pretty good.

Clary tries to get away from Jace, who’s holding onto her.

The three of them were a few feet behind the line of battle

So…they really are just standing in a line and letting people come at them?  This isn’t a battle, this is a game of Red Rover.  Unless the 40-person-strong army is stacked a few rows deep, that’s a very shitty form of defense.  Not only is the “wall” broken if just one person goes down, but you have to move around to fight.  You can’t just stay all on a row, not without being at a serious disadvantage, at least.

Jonathan decides they need to escape, but they can’t do it with Clary fighting the whole way, so he wants her to drink from the cup.  She kicks him and breaks free, heading straight into the battle instead.  Which…now isn’t neatly lined up?

Whatever, Alec shoots Amatis before she can stab Magnus a second time.  Isabelle, once again, is taken out of the fight by needing to provide medical help to Magnus.  Because heaven forbid we have just one fighting fight in any of these books were Isabelle actually participates all the way until the end of it.  She has to be shoved into either victim or healer role, whichever one the plot calls for in that moment.

Jocelyn was sword to sword with a snarling man whose free arm dripped blood

Hey, you know what’s awesome?  Ranged weapons.  Hell, Alec has one and he killed a guy from a nice safe distance.  Why don’t they just all have swords and all shoot the 40-person-strong “army”?  No close quarter combat required.

Guys, if any of you ever want to write about battles and wars and such, keep this in mind: ranged weapons are superior to hand-held ones and always will be.

Alec, still atop the tomb; his face was a stony mask, and he was firing off arrows with machinelike precision,

See?  Alec is out of the fight, out of the reach of any danger or retaliation and he’s still able to kill plenty of bad guys.

Clary finds Simon and demands that he give her the sword, so he does.  Clary gets it and starts looking for Jonathan, but Jace gets in her way.  And then…good lord, girl, you’re in the middle of a battle.  Must you really take out three whole pages to give us an angsty summary of your relationship thus far?  Yes, we remember when Jace died and you figured that meant it was suicide time.  Move on with some new idiocy.

Then Clary…quite randomly stabs Jace with the sword.  She decides that since he died once and was brought back, that means he’s cheated death and he needs to die for real.  Um…really, a whole book of “fuck the world, I want my pretty boy” for this?  I mean, it would be interesting if the book had bothered to build up to it.  If Clary had spend any amount of time worrying that she might have to kill him, rather than steadfastly refusing to consider it.  But here we’ve got just a total, unprompted 180 shift in attitudes.

So, Jace gets stabbed and Jonathan screams, and then Jace catches on fire.

Alec goes to see Magnus, because apparently that’s what’s really important in the middle of this fight.  Or some shit.  Magnus is stabbed, but in the gut, so he’s relatively fine.

The problem is that the blood loss is sapping my energy and my ability to heal myself.

So Magnus can heal himself…unless he gets hurt.  Well that’s kind of useless.

Whatever, he takes some of Alec’s strength so he can do magic and get better.

So, Jace is burning and stuff, but it’s not real fire, so after a while it goes out and he collapses.  Clary crawls over to him and tries to see if he’s still alive.  Considering there’s blood all over the place and she stabbed him in the chest…  I mean, sure, the sword is supposed to “burn out evil” and all that.  But it also got shoved into his chest.  She could have stabbed him in the leg or something. 

Everyone gathers around, because I guess the battle ended and the author just forgot to mention that.  Jonathan got away.  Everyone assumes Jace died and tries to get Clary to leave him alone, but at the very last minute, turns out he’s still alive.  Was anyone ever really in doubt?