Tuesday 10 April 2018

The triumphant return and chapter 11 of City of Ashes!

Hello, hello!

A few things to say--first of all, I'm so sorry for abandoning this for nearly two years. Well, I say abandonment, but in reality, I always sort of knew I'd be putting this blog on hold while I travelled to Australia (click here if you'd like to read about my shenanigans there).

The point is, I'm back, and I have time to read again! And write snarky things! And boy, oh boy, do I have a lot of snark in me right now. In terms of projects, I will continue with The Mortal Instruments (because my hatred of Cassandra Clare still runs so, so deep), but I'll also be starting a new series come June!

As many of my friends know, I have a really deep-seated hatred for the literary canon; specifically, I'm really mad about what is still consistently taught in high schools and lower-level university courses as 'classic' literature while completely ignoring other seminal works that are often (read: always) more diverse.

So, starting this June, I will also be revisiting novels and stories that I studied in high school and university, discussing whether or not I think they need to be retired from the curriculum, and suggesting ones that can perhaps replace them. I will, of course, also continue the book reviews on my GoodReads of the books I'm reading right now as well.

I have a few other ideas up my sleeve, but at the moment those are the two I'm most sure will be happening, so stick around!

And now, of course, on to the recap!


It's been a while since I've read this novel, so I had to re-read all of my recaps (hahahah you seriously think I'd waste time re-reading this trash can of a book) to catch myself up (click here  if you'd like to do the same!).

We last left at the most expected plot twist in the history of all time which was Simon becoming a vampire and not recognising Clary as he lunges for her and tries to eat her.



(also just an fyi this entire post is going to be an extended Schitts Creek advertisement because you all will watch it and love it if it kills me).

Also it ends on the most melodramatic line which I'm sort of remembering had a hand in making me put down the book and walk away from a bit.

So, you'll remember, Simon has just dug his way out of a grave after becoming recently undead, but do we focus on that? Nope, gotta focus on Clary and her emotions about this because that is of course the most important part of this novel. Clary witnesses her best friend drinking blood, and flees and this passage follows:

She went to her knees, gagging, as everything in her stomach came up in a wrenching flood. When it was over, she crawled a short distance away and collapsed against the ground. She knew she was probably lying on someone’s grave, but she didn’t care. She rested her hot face against the cool dirt and thought, for the first time, that maybe the dead weren’t so unlucky after all.

Honestly, have you ever met a worse excuse for a friend than this chick? It's not even a narration problem at this point, this character is just straight-up selfish and the novel seems to excuse it because she's in love with her brother or some shit.

OH YOU PROBABLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT LITTLE NUGGET OF A PLOT POINT DIDN'T YOU.

This chapter is called Smoke and Steel, and starts with this paragraph:

THE CRITICAL CARE UNIT OF BETH ISRAEL HOSPITAL ALWAYS reminded Clary of photos she’d seen of Antarctica: It was cold and remote-feeling, and everything was either gray, white, or pale blue. The walls of her mother’s room were white, the tubes that snaked around her head and the endless beeping banks of instruments around the bed were gray, and the blanket pulled up around her chest was pale blue. Her face was white. The only color in the room was her red hair, flaring across the snowy expanse of pillow like a bright, incongruous flag planted at the south pole.
 I dunno, guys, did you get what colours were in there? I think there might have been some gray and white but I'm not entirely sure that was told to me enough times.

Also please don't even get me started on the hair-as-flag metaphor because I need to get through this chapter.

Clary is finally visiting her mother, who if you remember, has been in the hospital since the last book. She has visited her once before and has instead been making out with Simon and living at Luke's and just... apparently doesn't care that her mother is in a coma.

The skin of her mother’s hand—always rough and chapped, spattered with paint and turpentine—felt like the dry bark of a tree.
Hi, asshole daughter, did you know you can actually be the one to do things like groom your mother's appearance and moisturise her skin while she's in a coma? You're her family, you're completely within your rights to do all of those things.

So why come visit her now? Well, that's because good ol' Clary apparently needs someone to listen to her monologuing! She needs to tell her mother everything that happened at this moment for god only knows what reason.

“So, basically,” she said, “I’ve screwed everything up royally. I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change. I guess that means I’ve grown up now."

I get it, young adult literature is for teenagers who are about to grow up and go through changes, and that's why CC put this sentence in here. The thing is, though, that this sentence is so unbelievably not what an actual teenager would say that it verges into 'hello fellow kids' territory.

And guess what, that whole entire heart-to-heart that Clary has with her mother's comatose body? It was literally so that Luke could overhear her telling her mother that she feels like what happened to Simon was her fault. You wanna know how I know this? Six sentences after that paragraph above, Luke interrupts her, and she stands up and says goodbye to her mother.

This whole little detour to the hospital exists so that Luke can tell Clary more about how it's not her fault that Simon got turned into a vampire (it's not), and reinforce how in love Simon has always been with her, just so we can watch Clary angst more about not loving Simon and BEING IN LOVE WITH HER BROTHER.

Still not buying this, CC--you can shove it down my throat all you want but I'm still gonna yell about it in every recap until the inevitable ~reveal~ that they're not actually siblings.

Anyway, now that Clary is finished angsting about Simon (not her mother, who is in a coma, because fuck her, amirite?) we can now move on to Jace and how Clary is 'punishing herself' by not talking to him because of how guilty she feels about Simon.

I fucking wish I was kidding:

Jace had called her cell phone several times and left messages. She hadn’t picked up or called him back. Not talking to him was her penance for what had happened to Simon. It was the worst way she could think to punish herself.

Clary waxes on some more about how poor Simon needs her to be there for him to come to terms with the fact that he's a vampire now, and then we get to a 'joke' that was probably really funny like a decade ago to everyone but that has aged like a BBC male actor left out in the sun:

“Still. I got him something. It’s in the glove compartment. Just in case…”
Clary snapped the compartment open and frowned. She took out a shiny folded pamphlet, the kind they kept stacked in clear plastic stands in hospital waiting rooms. “How to Come Out to Your Parents,” she read out loud. “LUKE. Don’t be ridiculous. Simon’s not gay, he’s a vampire.”
I'm not even... like I'm sure I don't need to tell y'all why a straight woman making a joke about how coming out is the same as suddenly becoming a fucking mythical creature so I'm just gonna...



They get back to Luke's and Simon is arriving at the same time (how convenient) and we get some more of Clary's angst that makes me want to throw up in my mouth:

“Clary,” Jace had whispered, and he’d reached for her hand, but she’d recoiled from him just as Simon had recoiled from the light. She wouldn’t touch him. She’d never touch him again. That was her penance, her payment for what she’d done to Simon.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it like... the person who bit Simon that did this? No? Too logical? We'd rather all have a convoluted reason to view these TWO CANONICAL THUS FAR SIBLINGS as star-crossed lovers? Carry on.

Clary goes to talk to Simon for the first time since he got Edward Cullen'd and remember how I said that coming out pamphlet was fucking stupid?

Turns out it's the crux of this entire fucking scene so you'll excuse me if I don't paste any of those quotes here, it's all stale jokes about how the undead are just like gay people!! just like you and me!! hahaha isn't this hilarious?


Clary and Simon have this conversation and are suddenly cut off by a loud crash outside (can't let them get too far into anything with depth) and it turns out that Maia--remember, the werewolf girl who I desperately wanted Simon to date instead of Clary--was being stalked by something called a 'Drevak demon' and Luke noticed and ran over it with his truck.

I'm gonna let that sink in for a moment and please, please feel free to picture the ridiculousness that is a man running over a demon in a pickup truck.

And juxtaposed with how hilarious that is, it turns out that Maia, a character we have seen a grand total of maybe twice, is dying from where that demon-thing bit her, and we need to notify someone so she doesn't die!!! Because that's the part of the plot we absolutely care about right now and we definitely needed another main character since all these other ones are so well developed.


And that's how chapter twelve and the first post in nearly two years ends! I promise I'll actually work on updating weekly for the next little while, and thanks for even bothering to read this if you are!

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