Chapter 9 of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones: I abuse italics way more than I should in this recap.

We’re back for another episode of ‘How Many Ways Can Cassandra Clare Use Weird and Totally Not Accurate Equivalent Similes to Describe Things That Don’t Need Describing’! Hope you’re all excited!

We start off with some lovely sentence confusion that probably could’ve been cleared up with some editing:

Clary stepped forward to touch Jace’s arm, say something, anything—what did you say to someone who’d just seen his father’s killers? Her hesitation turned out not to matter; Jace shrugged her touch off as if it stung.

SO, Clary moved forward to touch his arm, but this sets it up as if she’s in motion and hasn’t actually reached his arm yet, but then the next sentence is Jace shrugging off her touch, which I assumed hadn’t actually happened yet. THIS BOOK, GUYS.



So they go out into the city after witnessing two super evil Death Eaters and our lovely Snape-like hero, and here’s some purple prose for you:

The moon hung like a locket over the city, casting pearly reflections on the water of the East River. The distant hum of cars going by over the Williamsburg Bridge filled the humid air with a sound like beating wings.

You know that colgate ad where everyone has like, one weird deformity but also they have something stuck in their teeth so you don’t notice it? Like a woman has an extra arm and a dude has like ten fingers on one hand? That’s what this sentence feels like—at first blush you kind of like it, but then you actually picture the things she’s describing and you’re like, “wait, what?”. Are there chains on this locket? Since when is the moon ‘pearly’? What the hell kind of cars sound like wings beating against the air?

Simon said, “Does anyone want to tell me where we’re going?”

First: Who the hell puts the subject before the verb in this instance? Why not finish with ‘asked Simon’—since that’s actually what he’s doing. I swear to God, CC.

Second, no, Simon, we’re not going to tell you because that would make too much sense.

They’re going to the subway, Simon makes a hilarious joke:

“I thought it’d be something cooler, like a van with DEATH TO DEMONS painted on the outside, or …”

what a BITCHIN' van!

Fairy, as per usual, can’t stop thinking about herself and how this affects her, and also how important it is to swoon over Jace and his (totally natural) icy blonde hair:

The lights of the bridge behind them lit his hair to an unlikely halo.

DO YOU GUYS GET THIS FALLEN ANGEL IMAGERY YET? ARE YOU GUYS GETTING IT?

Then something unbelievably gross occurs and it’s astounding to me that anyone reads this “omg tru luv’ because WOW

She wondered if it was wrong that she was glad in some way that the men who’d taken her mother were the same men who’d killed Jace’s father all those years ago. For now, at least, he’d have to help her find Jocelyn, whether he wanted to or not. For now, at least, he couldn’t leave her alone.

Fairy, YES IT IS FUCKING WRONG THAT YOU’RE GLAD. This is probably insanely traumatic for Jace to have to deal with right now (not that that’ll ever get touched on in a legitimate way) and the only thing you can think is, “sigh, so happy that we have this in common now hee hee”. The last line is some next-level Twilight/50 Shades bullshit: Fairy, you met him like less than a week ago, you lived without him your whole life, and he lived without you—just because the same person who killed his parents might have killed yours does not mean that you are meant to be together.

They’re taking Simon to the Institute which is weird because... didn’t they just talk forever about how they can’t have Mundanes in the area? I guess it’s like a state of emergency. The building is old and a gigantic fucking cathedral (or appears to be from the front because of a muggle-repelling spell) which of course requires a key, and so:

Jace reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out a brass key on the end of chain.

Awesome, I’m picturing this perfectly. I almost bought a necklace like that at Urban Outfitters the other day.

But then:

It looked like the sort of key one might use to open an old chest in an attic.

Okay, now I’m imagining a smaller key, something different, and this does nothing to the scene but muddle the image the reader has. Again, this sentence is useless—it’s like when someone is telling a lie and they can’t help but add twenty thousand details in it, which actually makes it more unbelievable.

“It’s a glamour, Simon,” she said. “It doesn’t really look like this.”
“If this is your idea of glamour, I’m having second thoughts about letting you make me over.”

I had such high hopes for your sassy self, Simon.

She was beginning to recognize some of them— they tantalized her sight the way half-heard words in a foreign language sometimes tantalized her hearing—

This is such a big word—like, it’s a big, yummy word, it rolls off your tongue and it gives you the best description. Except it totally doesn’t need to be used in a sentence twice. That just makes you stumble around as you try and grasp for a solid word to catch your balance.

Fairy has a random interlude thinking about coffee and I’m like, nuh-uh, Fairy, I SEE YOU TRYING TO WIN ME OVER, but it’s okay because then we’re back to being incredibly dramatic without telling anyone what’s actually happening:

“I trust you,” he said. “I don’t trust him.” He cut his glance toward Jace, who was walking a few paces ahead of them, apparently conversing with the cat. Clary wondered what they were talking about. Politics? Opera? The high price of tuna?

Right, because that’s what you wonder when someone is talking to a fucking cat: What they’re saying, not why is he talking to a cat? Unless he’s cooing useless nonsense at him like us regular cat people, I call bullshit on this line that was clearly inserted because of the ‘tuna’ joke.

Instead of actually moving the plot forward right now because we’ve just found out Fairy’s mom has been kidnapped by the same evil Warlocks who murdered Jace’s parents and that her long-standing childhood father figure might actually be trying to actively kill her, we end up in the kitchen with Isabelle, making a soup that literally sounds so disgusting I want to gag just reading it:

Steam was rising from the pot, and ingredients were strewn everywhere—tomatoes, chopped garlic and onions, strings of dark-looking herbs, grated piles of cheese, some shelled peanuts, a handful of olives, and a whole fish, its eye staring glassily upward.

You know why this is annoying? Because this scene exists so that we can listen to Fairy freak out about another woman daring to be attractive around her and how annoying that is:

He was too busy staring at Isabelle, rapt and open-mouthed. Of course, Clary realized with a sharp stab of annoyance. Isabelle was exactly Simon’s type—tall, glamorous, and beautiful. Come to think of it, maybe that was everyone’s type. Clary stopped wondering about the peanut-fish-olive-tomato soup and started wondering what would happen if she dumped the contents of the pot on Isabelle’s head.

First of all, ‘tall, glamorous, and beautiful’ is not a description. I could be picturing a lamp post right now, and I might as well. Anyone heard of the ‘sexy lamp’ test that Kelly Sue DeConnick made up for female characters? Fairy and Isabelle fall into that category.

["I have one called the Sexy Lamp Test, which is, if you can remove a female character from your plot and replace her with a sexy lamp and your story still works, you’re a hack."]

Second of all, you have shown literally no interest in your male best friend until another woman deigns to exist around him, and you take your anger out on the woman?

“Want some?”
She shook her head.
“Of course not,” he said around a mouthful, “you ate all those sandwiches.”
“It wasn’t that many sandwiches.”

OH MY GOD ENOUGH WITH THE SANDWICHES.

Fairy is frustrated that he’s just chilling eating and bickering with Isabelle in the kitchen when her mother is possibly dying, which is really understandable, but part of me also thinks she just doesn’t want to be around Isabelle. Jace is being really calm and it pisses her off:

She wondered how often he let glimpses of his real self peek through the facade that was as hard and shiny as the coat of lacquer on one of her mother’s Japanese boxes.

What.

Just....

What.

Why would you bring those up? You haven’t ever described them, and that has got to be the most awkward sentence I’ve read in this novel to-date. I literally can’t even pick this apart it’s so... it’s SO DUMB SOUNDING.

DID ANYONE READ THIS BEFORE IT WAS PUBLISHED?

“No one wants any soup.”
“I want some soup,” Simon said.
“No, you don’t,” said Jace. “You just want to sleep with Isabelle.”
Simon was appalled. “That is not true.”
“How flattering,” Isabelle murmured into the soup, but she was smirking.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING. This is so out of step with everything else that is supposedly happening in this plot! There is a difference between light-hearted moments in dark plots and flat-out DIFFERENT PLOTS ALTOGETHER colliding. This scene goes as well with the dark YA tone CC is going for as fish goes peanuts and tomatoes.

Fairy gets upset because Simon decides to stay with the woman who is actually showing a smidgeon of interest in him, which means that we’re setting up for a gigantic love... quadrangle, probably.

“I’m sorry. For snapping at you.”
He chuckled. “Which time?”
“You snap at me, too, you know.”
“I know,” he said, surprising her. “There’s something about you that’s so—”
“Irritating?”
“Unsettling.”

Mmm, mm, guys. Sign me up for this relationship right here. Nothing like a partnership based on tearing each other down and making the other person uncomfortable!

While they're walking to find Hodge, Jace gives a bullshit speech that probably sums up why I can't buy any of the female characters in this series: basically, females used to be relegated to more of the domestic side of their kind, and it was usually only the super amazing fighters who got to actually become Shadowhunters. Apparently Isabelle's mom never taught her to be a good cook because she was worried that her daughter might get stuck in the kitchen and never get to be a Shadowhunter.

There are a million things wrong with that. No, it's not 'oh my god wow so progressive' to have a female character being bad at cooking. We're not in the fifties anymore, that is not something that equals a strong female character. It basically equates domesticism with women who are 'weaker' and therefore do not go into Shadowhunting (or whatever the verb is), and also that you can't have both. Why can't Isabelle be a wicked amazing chef and an amazing fighter?

The thing that rubs me the wrong way here is that it feels like a 'one of the guys' character-- Isabelle occupies the special territory of both female and male character, and therefore she is 'cool'. It also feels like CC is giving herself a pat on the back for writing her this way, like, 'see? I made their society exactly like ours, but my female characters rise above cooking because they're better than that.'

Ugh.

They finally go and find Hodge, who’s in “The Greenhouse”, which, okay, so Hodge is a total pothead amirite?

The smell struck Clary the moment she passed through the doors: a green, sharp smell, the smell of living and growing things, of dirt and the roots that grew in dirt.

What the hell else was it going to smell like? How are living and growing things different from one another?  The only reason you should have introduced this smell description like this is if she walked in and it smelled like a goddamn bakery instead of a greenhouse.

Hodge gets all mysterious Dumbledore on them, and is like, “The Circle” is coming back but don’t worry I’ll finally tell you things about the plot now” so thank you for that.

You guys, I swear I’ll stop nitpicking every description in this book at some point, but you need to read this fucking description:

The gas lamps were lit in the library, and the polished oak surfaces of the furniture seemed to smolder like somber jewels. Streaked with shadows, the stark faces of the angels holding up the enormous desk looked even more suffused with pain

I KNOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE SUPER GOTHIC AND INTENSE, but all I’m picturing is this:

Hodge reads aloud a manifesto of “The Circle”, and I won’t bother copy/pasting it here because it’s pretty much what would happen if Death Eaters/Voldemort ever wrote a manifesto. I’m surprised they don’t have secret tattoos somewhere.

It’s kind of annoying that the plot is pretty much turning out to be, bad guys tried to make the world ‘more pure’ by getting rid of ‘Downworlders’, and then an unprising happened, but the leader of said movement has been secretly gaining strength for the past decade and he’s gonna come back soon!

I feel like this is reminding me of something but I can’t quite put my finger on it....

they did us so dirty with this scene in the movies, guys. STILL MAD ABOUT IT.

Turns out Hodge and Fairy’s mom were totally Death Eaters way back in the day, and then we get yet another reveal that seriously belongs on a daytime soap opera:

“I know what you said! My mother would never have belonged to something like that. Some kind of—some kind of hate group.”
“It wasn’t—” Jace began, but Hodge cut him off.
“I doubt,” he said slowly, as if the words pained him, “that she had much choice.”
Clary stared. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t she have had a choice?”
“Because,” said Hodge, “she was Valentine’s wife.”

DUN DUN DUN.

I’m here on out only going to picture Fairy’s mother as Bellatrix, specifically, Makani’s Bellatrix from the good ol’ HP Fan Art days:

credit: makani on deviantart

I’ve just snuck ahead and looked and I’m at part II of this novel now, because apparently 95 pages deserves a part II nowadays. But whatever—the first half is done!

Next week I’m going to be in LA partyin’ it up with my BFF, so I might not get a chapter recap done on time (but I possibly might, depending on how much time I have this week before I leave), so if not, see you in two weeks!