Jonathan shows up at the prisoner’s cell to banter with everyone about, yup, you guessed it, FAMILY MATTERS!  Man, he really is a one-note villain, isn’t he?  It’s amazing how many times he can have this conversation without saying a single new thought.

Jace had never had that—he had recklessness, and the anarchic joy of imagined self-annihilation, but he was not a zealot.

Your attempts at being poetic have sort of marred your exposition, there.

Jonathan tries to smooth talk Raphael over to his side, and by smooth talk I mean:

“You can’t say I’ve mistreated you more than your vampire leaders,” said Sebastian. “I’ve fed you. I haven’t put you in a cage.

Well, with an argument like that…I would still have to point out that ‘cage’ and ‘cell’ is a mere philosophical difference.

He does then offer Raph leadership of all the vampires if he can get them on Jonathan’s side, which does get Raph to agree, although fast enough that it’s suspicious.  Especially in this book, where heaven forbid we do anything without talking about it for nine pages first.

On the other hand, I’m really wondering why Jonathan thinks Raph can do that.  It’s an honest question.  We know very little about the societies of all these magical creatures; the best we’ve got is some rudimentary “best killer is in charge” hierarchy.  Is the plan to have Raph kill Maureen (they don’t know about her replacement yet) and then just say “go join Jon-guy”?  Is there a structure more complicated than that?  Is there any sort of centralized network by which he can have influence over other vampires without necessarily being alpha-murderer?

Who knows!

In order to cement the agreement, Raph has to kill Magnus with a knife.  No biting this time, apparently there’s all sorts of magical shit that can happen with that.

As he’s about to die, Magnus finds time for yet still more relationship angst.

Raph refuses to do the deed, because Magnus saved his life when he was little.  Since he refuses, Jonathan decides to stab Raph instead.

Well, I can’t say that I’m shocked.  The promotional material for this book included a cover that said “who will survive,” indicating that there would be a ‘shocking’ amount of death in this book, but they’re all side characters that were disposable anyway.  Yes, named characters that have been in more than one book and maybe had some fans, but really?  Jordan wasn’t doing anything when he died, Meliorn had already served his plot purpose, Raph was just sitting around in a room being a third wheel, and none of them were author-darlings.  This is all just trying to up the body count to make the book seem ‘darker’ without actually serving any narrative purpose. 

This is the equivalent of throwing out the trash.  Yeah, it’s a waste, but were you really going to do anything with that stuff?  It’s a very easy waste.

Hey, it’s Maia and that warlock that works in the morgue.  Remember them?  I know, it was so long ago.

Caterina has the demon equivalent of cockroaches in her morgue, and Maia and Bat try to fight it off while the new vamp leader Lily acts prissy and films the whole escapade on her phone.  They can’t kill the demon without runes because…reasons, but they manage to get it in a cage without much issue.  Lily figures she can send the video to her cohorts, as a reminder that Shadowhunters are still actually necessary.

…you know, except for the part where the demon is pretty well neutralized and was really just kind of pesky before that.

In fact, the demon is pretty helpful since it decides to start delivering ominous early warnings about Jonathan’s plans to attack the following night.

Back with the kids in the caves.  They’re all sitting around, mostly talking about family stuff again, and oddly silent on the whole ‘Simon bled on Isabelle and somehow that did something’ issue.  What the fudge even was that?  Seriously, there’s like three pages of talking about sisters and nothing even asking what happened back there.

Suddenly Simon gets a stabbing pain in his chest for no reason.

Jace was swiftly on his knees in front of him, his fingers under Simon’s chin. His pale gold gaze searched Simon’s face. “Raphael,” Jace said finally, in a flat voice. “He’s your sire, the one whose blood made you a vampire.”

Simon nodded. “So?”

Jace shook his head. “Nothing,” he muttered.

This whole exchange only makes sense if Jace knows Raph just got stabbed.  I mean, he can surmise that his sire got stabbed if he knows that’s how vampires work, but there’s no reason to randomly bring up “Oh, that Raph guy” instead of “Oh, dead sires can do that sometimes.”  It’s totally backwards, and therefore very clearly just in there as a nudge to the audience.

Simon’s supply of drinkable blood got broken in the fight, because these geniuses brought everything with them in heavy glass bottles, so they sit around and debate who in the group he should bite.  Alec ends up offering, expressly because Simon saved Isabelle.  How?  We still don’t know.  (I’m not going to let that go, book.)

They wander off down a tunnel for some privacy, because it turns out that eating your friends with an audience is really awkward.  Of course, it’s even more awkward when you decide to sit around talking about it for three pages, OMG, get on with it.

Actually, they only make one homophobia joke, most of their endless talking is about Simon and Isabelle dating.  Because this book has never met a serious issue that it couldn’t twist into a conversation about relationships.

My god, wasn’t that just a riveting chapter?  All those pages spent on eating and kicking demon cockroaches and…oh, well, I guess Raph did die.  It was couched in so much padding I almost slept through it.