The next morning Jace and Alec are scoping out the bad guy’s HQ, and during this very tense and important moment, they decide to…banter about Alec’s hangover.

1) Why the fuck did they pack enough alcohol to give someone a hangover on this trip?

2) If you have your characters coming up on something as plot-important as the bad guy’s base of operations, which needs to be defeated despite overwhelming odds, have the proper tone.  This is not a funny moment.  If someone’s going to be hungover, that’s a bad thing and should be treated as such, not “haha, your distraction might lead to a fatal error which could cause the end of humanity as we know it, isn’t that so fucking funny?”

“I wish you’d managed to get the skeptron,” Alec said, in a subdued voice. “I got the feeling it could take out a lot of demons. If it still worked, after all these years.”

You mean, the weapon that the last group of people had (on account of they invented it) and yet somehow they still got all wiped out?  Yeah, I’m sure that’ll be a huge help.

Clary had her sketchpad and a pen out and was drawing runes. From the way she was shaking her head, tearing out the pages and crumpling them up in her hand, it wasn’t going as well as she might have liked.

Well, considering this is the first time she’s actually consciously attempted to make a rune, instead of just letting them ‘come to her’…

Jace uses his magic pen to draw a map of what they saw in the dirt, because when you clearly have a sketchpad and real pen on hand, you should always go for the magic one that does god-knows-what.

The muscles of his back moved under his shirt as he used the pointed tip of the stele to draw in the yellowish dirt.

Heaven forbid we forget that Jace has muscles.

There’s one way in, and that’s through the gate in the outer wall. It’s closed, but an Open rune should take care of that.

These runes are getting lazier and lazier…

Jace wants to do a pincer type ambush on them, in a strategy that really needs an army and a lot more long-range weapons to pull of properly, and for some reason the main complaint is that the other kids don’t understand it.  So Simon suggests they steal some uniforms and sneak in instead.

Oh, no, sorry, first he explains that he plays D&D and what he would do in a tabletop game campaign is steal some uniforms and sneak in.  Because, you know, not one single person outside of a gamer would ever be able to figure out that plan.

It hasn’t been in any movies or books before or nothing like that.

Or history books.

They still want to know what Jace’s plan when they meet Jonathan is, and he still says “nah, I got this.”

“There is a plan.” Jace slid his stele into his belt and rose fluidly to his feet. “Simon’s idea for how we get into Sebastian’s fortress. We’re going to do it.”

So, apparently his plan works equally well whether they sneak in or blast their way in?  Because Jace’s original plan didn’t have any sneaking involved…

Switch to Emma, who is sitting in her room and looking over papers she stole from Jia’s office.  It’s the casefile for her parents’ deaths, and they clearly weren’t attacked in the same way Jonathan’s been attacking people, so I don’t really care.  If you want to read the next series to find out all about it, then…well, then you’ve probably read this one, too, so you don’t need the recap.

Back with Clary and the kids.  They’re getting all rune-ed up for battle.

She had done them all herself, putting everything she had into them—all of her desire for them all to be safe

Okay, but last time she did that she passed out, so…

…

… …?

Yeah, she’s fine. 

Well, other than still being in hell, of course.  Apparently she and Jace are affected more than the others because they have angel blood, but that sure didn’t slow them down at all last night.  (Bow-chicka-wow.)  Consequences continue to be at the convenience of the plot, I see.

They’re sneaking around Bad Guy HQ, and Simon smells some evil shadowhunters coming.

“Endarkened,” he said in a low voice. “Five of them.”

 “Perfect number,” said Alec

Yes, how perfectly…convenient.

They kill the five in a very theatrical manner.

Then bemoan once again about how terrible it is that these guys are zombified.  You know, I wouldn’t mind this moaning right here if we hadn’t had it earlier.  The kids have basically been saying stuff about how terrible it is that the evil minions are basically dead inside and how terrible it is that they’re being used like this and how bad it is for the families and yadda yadda, but they’ve been saying it since the beginning, before anyone was actually sure that’s what was going on.  If they’d just held off on the angst for a little bit until all that got confirmed, this would actually be the proper place.  They could kill the bad guys here in a rush of adrenaline, possible after giving a “it doesn’t matter because they’re already gone” pep talk to work up to it, and then get hit with a dose of “damn, the pep talk didn’t help” afterwards.  Then this could actually be a powerful moment of angst.

But nope, it’s just more of the same-old, same-old.

Marked with the runes of death and Hell

…  I…I don’t even know.

At least the clothes don’t fit for most of the group.

And with that, they march off towards Bad Guy HQ.