Luke and Magnus sit around in their cell talking a lot and saying nothing.  There’s not much to report from this conversation, it’s all stuff we’ve heard before, except:

“You hope Raphael survives this?” Luke said. “Come on—how many people has he killed?”

Magnus turned cold eyes on him. “Who among us has bloodless hands? What did you do, Lucian Graymark, to gain yourself a pack—two packs—of werewolves?”

“That was different. That was necessary.”

I still hate this whole toxic little plot line.  I hate how it’s been constantly brushed under the rug and ignored that Luke murdered his way into pack leadership.  I hate how the “necessary” part of that statement has never been examined.  I hate the way everyone fucking worships this guy while not batting an eye at his cold blooded fucking murder.  And even when the book deigns to glance in the direction of this little fact, it still attempts to tell us “no, don’t worry about that, it’s nothing to you need be concerned about.”

Because, you know, who really cares about those werewolves, am I right?  You can pop up out of the fucking blue and kill their leader and then lead them into suicidal battle and they’ll still think you’re the greatest ever.

It’s that aspect, combined with the fact that Luke is one of the author’s darlings and one of the author’s darling species of Shadowhunters that really grinds me.  Even the bad things that her favorites do aren’t really allowed to be bad.

And it’s not like Luke can’t kill.  In a narrative, story sense, at least.  The world is set up to be harsh, and the relations between the various species are supposed to be even worse, so he can do bad things and have it fit in the world.  It’s having the book continually ignore it that makes me boil.

“What did you do when you were in the Circle?” Magnus demanded.

At that, Luke was silent. Those were days he hated to think about. Days of blood and silver. Days of Valentine by his side, telling him everything was all right, silencing his conscience.

Instead, this is all he’s allowed to feel bad about.  Stuff that revolves around other Shadowhunters.  Which would be different if it were a character perspective and not a narrative one.

Jump over to Maia, who is in a Toys R’ Us, because that’s where Maureen the Vampire wanted to have their meeting.

“We’ve swept the place. If there were security guards, someone’s taken them out already.”

 “Great. Thanks.”

Uh, this is a group of bloodthirsty vampires we’re talking about.  ‘Taken out’ might as well mean ‘dead’ and by the way ‘security guards’ are also known as ‘completely innocent bystanders.’  And your only response is “great?”

This book has no fucks to give for anyone who isn’t in the main cast and god I want to break shit.

I read somewhere that reading is supposed to make you more empathetic, but this seems to be encouraging exactly the opposite.  “Don’t care about anyone who isn’t in your special group!”

Maia starts talking about making an alliance against Jonathan, but Maureen wants to ally against the Shadowhunters, and since she’s not all there/not paying attention anyway, Maia convinces her that’s what she meant, too.  Maia offers to make a “blood pact” to seal the deal.   Except when Maureen bites her to do that, it ends up killing her instead, because Maia loaded up on holy water before coming to this meeting.  Cool safety precaution, though it does make me wonder about the definition of holy ‘water’.  A person is like three-fourths water, couldn’t you just get a priest to bless that?  Or does it have to be pure water?  And at what point does it stop counting as water and start counting as whatever you mixed it into?  Can you have holy lemonade?

Uhg, now I want a vampire hunter who does all his cooking with blessed water, just in case, and defeats a surprise visiting vampire with his holy morning coffee.

All the vampires stand around in confusion over who leads now, until Lily pops up to say it was all her plan, therefore she’s the one that ‘really’ killed Maureen, therefore she’s in charge now.

Back with the kids.  Simon and Isabelle describe what they saw.

“In the books Edom has a capital, called Idumea,” said Alec.

Ahem: “Idumea was a Greek word meaning “pertaining to Edom”.”

Seriously, I cannot find anything anywhere that suggest that Edom was ever considered anything except an actual, real, physical country.  Most of my search takes me to bible pages, but there’s some non-biblical historical sources, too.

Later, Alec and Jace sit up on watch duty and talk about what a disappointment fathers are in general.  And relationship stuff.  Because of course.

Then they talk about how great it is to be parabati.

“The best thing Valentine ever did for me was send me to you,” Jace added. “Your parents, sure, but mainly you. You and Izzy and Max. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been—like Sebastian.

Have these two ever had a scene together where they were actually being best friends instead of talking about being best friends?  They carry on about it plenty, but I can’t recall one example of them supporting each other or influencing each other or confiding in each other.

Jace sees something off in the distance, thankfully cutting off what I’m sure would be more of their half-baked introspective philosophy class.  He goes to investigate and finds the ghost/shade/whatever of the Iron Sister who made Jonathan’s backwards-cup.

her eyes were the flat orange of flames.

This is what happens when you think you must compare every single thing in your book to something else.  Look at it and be warned.

Jace spends a while paralyzed with dramatic memories of killing her.

Blood on his blade, on his hands, on his clothes. Not demon’s blood or ichor. Not the blood of an enemy. The blood of a Shadowhunter.

Because, you know, we really needed another reminder of this book’s priorities.  We can brush off Luke killing scores of werewolves on a self-serving quest as ‘necessary,’ but oh no, not the blood of one of the special people!

She taunts him for a while and says he’s basically just like Jonathan, and what is her proof?  When they first got to Edom and had all their weird wish dreams, Jace dreamed of being the king of hell.

All we have to base this subplot on are feelings and hallucinations.  Wow, I’m so convinced. *yawn*

Jace gets upset at all this and accidently sets her on holy fire.  That seems to catch everything else on fire, too.  Oops.