“It almost doesn’t seem to make a difference,”

Are you sure you don’t want to add any more qualifiers to that sentence?  One more and it can be a legit non-statement.

Jace shot him an irritable look. “What is it about mundanes and their overwhelming compulsion to state the obvious?”

…your entire character introduction was giving a lesson on demons to a fucking demon.

One of my biggest pet peeves about both this series, and many other urban fantasies like it, is the tendency to broad, sweeping, slightly (or not-so-slightly) condescending statements about “normal” people when the exact same statements could apply to the “specials.”  And/or making statements about the specials that seem exclusionary but apply to the normals, as well.  There’s this very smug sense of superiority over normal people, and it’s entirely in the name of serving the wish-fulfillment fantasy.  The reason things like this exist is so the reader can identify with the special group and then feel superior by proxy, but in order to do that without alienating people by creating flat perfectionists, the book has to either shit on everyone else in the world or praise entirely mundane things.

I don’t really like the idea of catering to a wish-fulfillment that ultimately makes people more insular and judgmental, but if you’re going to do it, can we at least restrict the smugness to, you know, magic?  Or whatever it is that makes the special people actually different? 

So, Alec, Jace, and Simon are all sitting around bullshitting and complaining, when the girls walk in with Emma.  Emma explains that she came in over the rooftops, which means we can add “security detail so absurd a child can circumvent it” to the list of Shadowhunter fuckups.

Also, for some reason this takes three pages.

Emma’s information is that ‘Edom’ is apparently an important thing.  The guy who threatened Jia was talking about burning in Edom, but everyone dismissed it as another word for hell (a quick google search reveals it to be a fucking country, though, or a former one at least).  Emma heard them talking about Edom when they attacked her institute as if it’s a physical place where they’re all hiding.

Also Emma heard the other Clave members talking about what to do.  As if they haven’t been talking about exactly that for eons now.  She didn’t even say they were leaning towards one option or another, just more of the same.  Also, there is much Clave bashing, but all it makes me think is “yup, pretty much, so how did these morons last this long, again?”

After Emma leaves (which takes several more pages of just…talking), they pull out a book and start researching.  Apparently in their version of reality, Edom is one of the many dimensions that demons live in.

Of course, the only way to get in and out of another dimension is a portal in the Seelie Court.  Dun dun dun. 

They start talking about how to get there to use the pathway, neatly sidestepping whether or not they should do it, or what the hell they think they’ll do once there.  For a book with this much talking in it, it’s amazing how many subjects they manage to avoid entirely.

“So we’ll use tact and cleverness,” said Jace.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH*wheeze*AHAHAHAHAHA.

Okay, boyo.  If you say so.

“We can’t track him because we’re not in the same dimension,” Jace said. He held up his wrist where Sebastian’s silver bracelet glittered. “Once I’m in his world, I can track him.

I’m going to save some sanity and assume that Jace was actually thinking ahead to this when he picked up that thing, not “oo, something shiny.” 

They spend many, many pages arguing over whether the whole group should go or Jace should go alone.  But of course it’s going to be everyone, and we can tell this from the start, so why are you wasting my time, book?

“You’d better have a strategy for what we’re going to do when we get to the Faerie Court. Because we’re going to need it.”

Hey, here’s a thought.  You’ve got two days before Jonathan’s time limit is up.  How about you not leave until you’ve got an actual plan?