Chapter 4 of City of Bones: I really want ramen soup, now.

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This chapter is called “Ravener” and while I can feel an Edgar Allen Poe joke in here, I’m more annoyed that it’s not a word that exists in the English language, which means it’s made up, in which case I’m annoyed that it’s such a badly created word.

When we last left our daring, brave hero (ha. Hahahhaa.) she was running home because her mother just died offscreen, and the chapter begins with this sentence:

The night had gotten even hotter, and running home felt like swimming as fast as she could through boiling soup.

I don't understand it either, Ron.

Besides the unnecessary comma there (my English teachers would be so proud), this is like the worst sentence ever. Why does running feel like swimming? Why did you choose boiling soup? Why would boiling soup slow you down? Don’t you mean something like hot molasses? Soup is quite thin so aside from the fact that it’s boiling, it really wouldn't hinder you in the slightest, which means this simile falls apart really quickly.

Fairy gets trapped at a crosswalk, and she tries to phone home on Jace’s phone-that-isn't-a-phone, and realises he was, in fact, telling the truth when he said it wasn't a phone. Congratulations, did you think he would lie to someone who just listened to their mother die on the phone? AND DID YOU JUST STEAL SOMEONE’S PHONE?

She gets to the front of her apartment and everything looks okay except that the front foyer is in darkness and I’m still having a hard time picturing what the hell her house looks like—but as someone who is really bad with spatial awareness/describing buildings, I will actually let that pass; It’s a really difficult thing to do.

Madam Dorothea (that creepy fortune teller lady that lives underneath them) is just sitting in an armchair in front of her door, and Fairy describes her like this:

The old woman was wedged into it like an overstuffed cushion. In the dimness Clary could see only the round shape of her powdered face, the white lace fan in her hand, the dark, yawning gap of her mouth when she spoke.

Which, first of all, WHAT A TERRIBLE SIMILE AGAIN. You know what goes into armchairs already? Cushions. If she’d really wanted to use this comparison, she could’ve phrased it like ‘The old woman was so wedged into the chair that Clary mistook her at first for a cushion’. Second of all, not only did I immediately picture No Face from Spirited Away, but I’m still getting a conflict of tone from this whole book! Cassandra seems desperate to tout this as very serious YA fiction (which does exist), but then we get descriptions like this, that are so cartoonish in their quality that it’s laughable.

pictured: Jace, Fairy, and Madame Dorothea

Madam No Face chastises Fairy’s mother for making a racket above her, and then asks if she can get Luke to change it, and then do a million other things for her:

This was typical of her elderly neighbor. Once she got Luke to come around and change the lightbulb, she’d ask him to do a hundred other things—pick up her groceries, grout her shower. Once she’d made him chop up an old sofa with an ax so she could get it out of the apartment without taking the door off the hinges.

New life goals: Madam Dorothea.

Fairy gets upstairs and things are very Not Right, and she walks in to find her apartment trashed:

Both windows were open, yards of gauzy white curtains blowing in the breeze like restless ghosts. Only when the wind dropped and the curtains settled did Clary see that the cushions had been ripped from the sofa and scattered around the room. Some were torn lengthwise, cotton innards spilling onto the floor. The bookshelves had been tipped over, their contents scattered. The piano bench lay on its side, gaping open like a wound, Jocelyn’s beloved music books spewing out.

I’m not going to talk about the supposed YARDS of curtains that look like restless ghosts (which is redundant and makes my head hurt), but let’s talk about the ‘gaping wound’ in a piano bench—as in, what a terrible way to describe that. She had a great opportunity to use that earlier with the sofa cushions, but instead wastes it on something that already opens? You already used the word 'innards', that was your perfect oppurtunity! How is a piano bench like a ‘gaping wound’ if it’s on hinges?

This prose is so purple I can barely read it.

Most terrifying were the paintings. Every single one had been cut from its frame and ripped into strips, which were scattered across the floor. It must have been done with a knife—canvas was almost impossible to tear with your bare hands. The empty frames looked like bones picked clean.

Clearly this person wasn’t an art fan.

Also, the whole spiel about the canvas? You don't need to tell me canvas is hard to tear with your bare hands, I know this, I can infer this. Tell me it was ripped apart and I'll fill in that information.

Heart pumping, she raced into the kitchen. It was empty, the cabinet doors open, a smashed bottle of Tabasco sauce spilling peppery red liquid onto the linoleum. Her knees felt like bags of water.

Of all things, TABASCO SAUCE? The kitchen is a fantastic place to have action and scenes of destruction—it’s usually where your most fragile items are. I’m just imagining a completely okay kitchen with one sad smashed bottle of Tabasco, like her mother was just trying to put hot sauce on her dinner and someone surprised her.

Also, if you ever describe the colour red as ‘peppery’ please know that I hate you with every fibre of my being.

And again with the weird false equivalencies! Why water? Water is heavy, yeah, but it’s not nearly as heavy as say, sand, or lead, or these stupid attempts at creating suspense in a story.

Her brain keeps telling her to call the cops and get some help to which I am shrieking ‘YES PLEASE STOP BEING AN IDIOT’ but instead Fairy decides to explore the rest of the apartment, and when she gets to her mother’s room, something tries to attack her.

It was crouched against the floor, a long, scaled creature with a cluster of fat black eyes set dead center in the front of its domed skull. Something like a cross between an alligator and a centipede, it had a thick, fat snout and a barbed tail that whipped menacingly from side to side. Multiple legs bunched underneath it as it readied itself to spring.

OH COME ON. THAT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE MY FAVOURITE DINOSAUR AND NOW I JUST THINK IT’S ADORABLE.

I'm gonna send Cassandra Clare a thesaurus for her birthday so that I don't need to read her repetition of the simplest words (notice the word 'fat' in two sentences one right after the other up there?).

To her horror Clary realized that the noises it was making were words.
“Girl,” it hissed. “Flesh. Blood. To eat, oh, to eat.”

this is so familiar... I wonder where I've heard this kind of description before...

So this creature gets all up on her like a bad rash and then all of a sudden she remembers that she has Jace’s ‘Sensor’? She jams it into the creature and then somehow gets knocked out and when she wakes up Jace is beside her, ripping pieces of cloth.

So this dude is an accomplished Shadowhunter but still has to rely on old-school techniques of binding wounds, right? YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF NEW YORK. GO TO A PHARMACY.

We find out that weird thing was a demon called a “Ravener” (wow I am so shocked I didn’t see that coming) and that it poisoned her and Jace needs to take her to the ‘Institute’ RIGHT NOW. This is a bit too convenient but whatever.

I’m a bit tired of this whole, “come with me there’s no time to explain a single damn thing to you even though it might endanger your life” thing that seems to be occurring in lots of YA fiction. I get that you want to keep the suspense, and I get that you don’t want to info-dump—but it’s just so unrealistic that someone wouldn’t stop and go “Dude, no, unless you tell me exactly what is happening right now I have no reason to go with you and I’m taking my ass to a hospital”. All I can think about is how predatory Jace seems.

So Jace TATTOOS HER WITHOUT HER PERMISSION which means if I ever meet him in a dark alley he is getting his ASS BEAT UP. But my favourite part is that he tattoos her with this:

He slid the thing Clary had thought was a knife back into his belt. It was a long, luminous cylinder, as thick around as an index finger and tapering to a point. “My stele,” he said.

Gee,

that sort of

sounds really

source: dracosharry.tumblr.com

familiar.

source: nevilles.tumblr.com

I wonder where

source: simplypotterheads.tumblr.com

she got

that idea from

source: simplypotterheads.tumblr.com

Then Fairy goes all Damsel-in-Distress and faints into his arms.

“Jace,” she said, and she crumpled into him. He caught her as if he were used to catching fainting girls, as if he did it every day. Maybe he did. He swung her up into his arms, saying something in her ear that sounded like Covenant.

First of all, LOL at her wondering if he just catches fainting girls all the time. He probably does, Fairy, because he’s a predator. Second, if that’s supposed to be a swear word, then what the fuck, and if it’s not, you’re doing a bad job at dropping subtle hints, Cassandra.

YUP I SCROLLED TO THE NEXT CHAPTER AND IT’S CALLED ‘CLAVE AND COVENANT’ YOU REALLY ARE BAD AT SUBTELTY.

These chapters are short as hell—more proof that this was totally a fic before it was a ‘novel’.

See you at the covenant~ I’m gonna really need a drink next time I think.