City of Ashes Chapter 10: I'm not saying I'm sick of vampires-- wait, no, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Maybe I'm being unfair to this chapter, because I got a bit tricked into reading a romance novel between a vampire and a witch the other day (why can't I just have my witchy paranormal novels? Why can't that be the next trend?!), but god I am sick to death of them.

Pun intended.

me when people tell me about the new vampire YA novels out

Not only that, but Cassandra Clare has named this chapter after my favourite line in one of my favourite poems ever, which has tainted it forever and I'm a bit pissy about it. I'm not trying to be elitist about it, it's a very popular and common poem, but seriously, why.

Anyway, onwards!




They have all assembled in a Jewish cemetery to witness Simon crawling his way out of a shallow grave. I'm doing my best to be as succinct as possible with this because that is actually all that happens in this chapter despite the ten pages it occupies.

Also, in referencing that chapter title, I've realised another thing that irritates me about CC's writing (haha as if the list isn't kilometres long by now).

me to CC: here's an itemized list of thirty years of disagreements

Her constant references to the Western literary canon are there because not she wants you to elevate her work to the status of those ones. She is so desperate for readers to view this as an epic, thrilling saga that she's shoving every goddamn literary hero/heroine/plot/villain reference into her writing and it's exhausting.

Par exemple:

[Raphael] looked up from his digging, leaning on the handle of the shovel like the grave digger in Hamlet.

What? WHAT?! What does Hamlet have to do with this scene? And don't try and tell me there are literary parallels-- I don't care. I want to make those connections for myself. The fact of the matter is, this sentence would have worked just as fine if it ended after 'shovel'. But because CC wants so badly to fit in as many references as she can, it's shoe-horned in there.

I think I would enjoy these books a lot more if it wasn't so obvious that the author took herself so damn seriously.  Oh, and the whole 'this novel is heavily plagiarised' thing.

Clary again argues with everyone telling her that, hey, maybe it isn't a good idea to see your best friend/boyfriend come back as a vampire.

Jace and Clary steal away from the whole grave-digging-alas-poor-Yorick-soliloquy that Raphael was surely about to give and have another conversation about how they're related.

She looked at him silently for a moment.

Uh, how does one look at someone loudly?

He needed a haircut. His hair curled the way vines did when they got too long, in looping tendrils, the color of white gold in the moonlight. The scars on his facwe and throat looked like they had been etched there with metallic ink. He was beautiful, she thought miserably, beautiful and there was nothing there in him, not an expression, not a slant of cheekbone or shape of jaw or curve of lips that bespoke any family resemblance to herself or her mother at all. He didn't even really look like Valentine.

So, if you can get through that terrible word salad, you'll notice that CC is wimping out on the incest--I am not complaining, but her plot is so stupidly inconsistent that it's laughable. If Clary has suspected that they're not really related, why isn't she voicing that at every opportunity? Why haven't we heard about it until now?

Oh, wait. Is it because Simon is conveniently a vampire now and he can't possibly get in the way of Clary and Jace's True Love?

Alec and Magnus show up (yay!) with like a bunch of blood bags from a butcher shop, so now the whole gang is here and we get to watch Clary be a dumb idiot all together! Aren't you guys excited?

"I want to be there. I have to be there."
[Clary] could see only part of his face in the shadows, but she thought he looked almost--impressed.

First of all, what the--fuck is that em-dash doing there? An ellipses would have accomplished what you were going for, but clearly the editor had long-since drunk themselves to death at this point.

Second of all, thank goodness we know that Jace is impressed with her! Glad to know that we still care about this Draco-lite's opinion when you're just about to watch your childhood best friend dig himself out of a grave.

"Simon!" Clary tried to rush forward, but Raphael yanked her back.

Let me tell you why he did that:

1. He has watched this a million times before and knows that the vampire fledgling will do dig himself out on his own.
2. He understands that Simon is a new vampire and will attack the first source of blood he sees.
3. NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR STUPID ROMANCE WITH SIMON, CLARY.

But of course, Clary knows best and winds up almost getting attacked by Simon. A plot twist that literally everyone saw coming. Raphael pulls her away and hands him the packet of blood, and what happens next will shock you! Except not really, because you're not Clary and brain-dead.

And Simon, who had been a vegetarian since he was ten years old, who wouldn't drink milk that wasn't organic, who fainted at the sight of needles--Simon snatched the packet of blood out of Raphael's thin brown hand and tore into it with his teeth.

What does organic milk have to do with that? And also, I've been working in the organics food industry for a long-ass time and let me tell you, ten years ago it was a lot harder to find organic milk than it is now. So your weird 'quirky' fact is dumb.

Clary then runs away and vomits all over someone's grave (I'm not even kidding) and then the chapter ends. Thank God.