Clary, Jocelyn, and Luke all settle into Amatis’s abandoned house.  Luke is, of course, distraught at all the reminders of his missing sister, and Jocelyn comforts him.

It was more comforting than in any way romantic, but Clary still felt as if she had stumbled on a private moment.

I feel like this is everything you need to know about the book in a nutshell.  The ‘surprise’ than intimacy can mean more than just romance and the need to point out that hugging someone isn’t a precursor to boning, like they’re so focused on romance that anything non-romance comes a shock, the need to take even things that aren’t romantic and remind us that romance is still around…  This passage just really pisses me off.  Like, why can’t you just let a quiet moment be a quiet moment?

Any time you pause the narration to bring specific attention to a subject, you’re saying that it’s worth special attention.  The notion that comfort =/= romance is not one that should hit pause on your story.

The spare room hadn’t changed. Small; the walls painted white; the windows, like portholes, circular—there was the window Jace had crawled through one night—and the same colorful quilt on the bed.

I…I need something to drink.

\~/

My god, it’s like she realized halfway through that the sentence was a Frankenstein mess and just threw every punctuation in the book at it rather than refigure it.

Clary decides to paw through Amatis’s old clothes.

Mourning clothes […] with silver mourning runes worked into the material

Dafuq do mourning runes do?  Make you sadder?

You keep using that word, book.  I don’t think it means what you think it means.

Clary goes to bed, but prophetic dreams wake her up, so she goes downstairs and overhears Luke and Jocelyn talking.  They found Jonathan’s baby box (the one with mementos that Jocelyn would cry over every year) in one of the cupboards.  Since it was last in Jonathan’s possession, they figure it being in the house is important or a message.

Honestly, after listening to the wangst from the youngsters, this scene with Jocelyn and Luke is really refreshing.  They’re both emotional and on-edge (with Jocelyn even crying over how she should have killed her son as a baby), but at the same time they hold together pretty well, talk seriously, and all in all it’s a fairly quiet moment of grief.  Maybe because it’s a short scene and we only see it from an outside viewpoint, but I really like it.

The next morning they go…downtown, for lack of a better word, to attend a meeting.  An entire page is devoted to describing the gate.

Along the way, Clary meets up with Jace and tells him about the box.  They spend an absurd about of time talking about it…and come to exactly the same conclusion as above.  It’s probably a personalized ‘fuck you’ message.

Every files into some big meeting/council room, and they spend loads of time talking about the events of the book so far.  And previous books.  Because…padding.

They talk for a while about the Silent Brothers and some other people are looking for a cure, then bring out Emma and the other kids that survived in the prologue.

Mourning runes existed, but only to honor the dead, in the same way that love runes existed, like wedding rings, to symbolize the bond of love. You couldn’t make someone love you with a rune, and you couldn’t assuage grief with it either.

So…basically what you’re saying is that they’re not fucking runes.

If runes do magic and those are just for decoration, then they’re not runes.  Like, that’s how words work.

Authors are supposed to know how words work.  It’s supposed to be part of the job description.

They make Julian hold the magic truth-telling sword and tell them the events of the prologue.  Even though the sword is apparently extremely painful, even when you don’t lie.  That seems needlessly angsty…

“He’s the oldest of the children who escaped the Los Angeles Institute,” Jace said under his breath. “They don’t have a choice.”

[…]

“Can you tell us who is on the stage here with you today?”

Um, something tells me they could have held off with the Masochist Sword for this part.

Emma gets sick of the masochism show and runs up saying that she should be the one going through it, then grabs the sword and tells her side of the story.

You know, if the thing was made to be a magical lie detector, why not make it a rock or a stapler or a pen or something easy to hold?  Why a sword?

Emma runs off the stage, and since no one seems inclined to follow her, Clary decides that’s her job.  Even though there are clearly people off-stage (Clary runs into Aline there) and that’s probably why no one on stage bolted after the wailing child.  But, hey, I’ve heard of worse ways to get the viewpoint character to follow the plot.

At least no one’s yet said “I have no idea why I’m doing this.”

So Clary goes and starts talking to Emma and I swear to god it’s still just talking about the prologue.  There’s nothing being imparted here that we don’t already know, and yet they’re taking way too many pages to get through it.  It doesn’t help that it sounds like a conversation with a 5 year-old instead of a 10 year-old, but even more, the whole thing is rather soulless.  “Yeah, my parents died.”  “Snazzy.  Someone I loved got demon possessed.”  “I have a famous sword.”  This book only has two settings: melodrama and monotone.

The monotone is a lot of what makes Emma sound too young in this scene.

Then Jace comes in and tells Clary that they’re leaving.  Emma finally shows a spark of emotion to go “ooooooo, you two are daaaaaating,” because of course.  What else did you expect from this book?