Chapter 5 of The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones: I should apologise for the CSI references in this recap, but I'm not gonna.

Whaddup y’all, I’m in a coffee shop doing this recap because sometimes I like to pretend I’m a real writer who drinks coffee and only does this for a living instead of someone who packs people’s groceries into a paper bag.
When we last left Fairy she was being spirted away by possibly (and most likely) predatory Jace and he was taking her to the ‘institute’ which, yeah that sounds totally safe and reasonable, man we don’t know and just met.

We find out that Fairy has been knocked out for three days, which is absolutely ridiculous. One, I’m going to assume that Fairy’s mom is alive because we have Fairy having a really stupid dream about her in a hospital bed, but two, someone would have noticed her missing. Simon would’ve flipped the fuck out—the last time he saw her she’d disappeared out the door of a coffee shop and her phone shattered into a million pieces, which means she went missing and her phone was probably discovered outside of the coffee shop.

Three days, Clary thought slowly. All her thoughts ran as thickly and slowly as blood or honey.

GO AWAY. Why can't you just pick one? Why do you need to tell me both? Is this something your editor forgot to take out? Was that a note to them? "her thoughts ran slowly, like honey (or blood?)" 

Blood does not run slow—have you ever cut yourself accidentally near a main artery? Do you understand why bleeding out when you’re injured before getting to the hospital is such a serious concern for a lot of people? CASSANDRA WHAT DOES YOUR BLOOD LOOK LIKE BECAUSE IF IT’S RUNNING LIKE IT’S CONGEALED YOU SHOULD REALLY GET THAT CHECKED OUT.

While I have a stupid freakout about this, Fairy is having ominous~ dreams:

The dreams held her, one after the other, a river of images that bore her along like a leaf tossed in a current. She saw her mother lying in a hospital bed, eyes like bruises in her white face. She saw Luke, standing atop a pile of bones. Jace with white feathered wings sprouting out of his back, Isabelle sitting naked with her whip curled around her like a net of gold rings, Simon with crosses burned into the palms of his hands. Angels, falling and burning. Falling out of the sky.

I don’t understand that first simile but it’s not necessarily bad per se, so it’s fine. I have more of a problem with the fact that I’m only at chapter 5 and the only thing that I’ve been given by way of any sort of plot is annoying allusions~ to something creepy happening in Fairy’s life. I’m serious—I have no idea what the bulk of this novel is going to be about, I know that Fairy is probably ‘special’ and I know that it’s probably going to come down to her to save the world or something, but that’s all I have. At this point I should at least know exactly why the Shadowhunters do what they do, and have some sort of idea what Fairy has to do with them. Instead, Cassandra is hitting me over the head with terrible metaphors while going “THIS IS A PLOT. I PROMISE, THINGS WILL HAPPEN BUT I’M NOT GOING TO EXPLAIN THEM TO YOU”.

This paragraph is so stuffed-full of dumb imagery I’m surprised it doesn’t have indigestion. “Eyes like bruises”? Luke standing on bones? Jace with wings? Why is Isabelle naked and how does a whip look like a fucking net? Why is Simon there and holy Christ could this sound anymore like Dante and Whedon had a really stunted, annoying baby?

Having visions and dreams that have specific imagery in them is fine—honestly, it totally is—but the problem is when it substitutes for actual story action. I should have some sort of suspicion about Simon already, I should maybe wonder about Jace and his past, and then this imagery can be used to further it. But certainly not when I have no idea about the plot and in this big of a chunk of text.

“I know. Little thing, isn’t she? Jace said she killed a Ravener.”
“Yeah. I thought she was a pixie the first time we saw her. She’s not pretty enough to be a pixie, though.”

Oh my God, shut up. As if Fairy isn’t considered the most gorgeous girl in this whole novel, as if we aren’t going to be told over and over again how beautiful people find her, as if this isn’t the dumbest and most overused trope used to play off the young adult female who reads this series and feels it resonating with her insecurities. Newsflash, girls: you’re probably fucking gorgeous (and it’s okay if you’re learning that and still not aware of it) and these people are using you. They do not mean you when they write these girls—these protagonists will always be porcelain-skinned, petite girls with perfect hair and beautiful doe eyes, and everything that is 100% unattainable to human beings.

“Hodge said he hasn’t been to see her since he brought her here. I guess he doesn’t care.”
“Sometimes I wonder if he—Look! She moved!”
“I guess she’s alive after all.” A sigh. “I’ll tell Hodge.”

I have no comment about this except for an eyeroll and this:

henceforth, this is how I am imagining this character named 'Hodge'

So Fairy is waking up (ugh, unfortunately) and we get to hear about everything finally! Yay! I’m so excited to read about this in a huge paragraph of information that I will promptly forget.

Clary turned. Isabelle was perched on the next bed, her long jet-black hair wound into two thick braids that fell past her waist. Her white dress had been replaced by jeans and a tight blue tank top, though the red pendant still winked at her throat. Her dark spiraling tattoos were gone; her skin was as unblemished as the surface of a bowl of cream.

Wound implies that something is twisted and usually with hair, up, so at first I was picturing princess Leia buns, but then they apparently fall past her waist? I have really long hair (like past my waist too) and I don’t ever ‘wind’ my hair into anything but a bun. Also, since you’re telling us that her braids fall past her waist, telling us her hair is ‘long’ is totally redundant and I hate you.

Also, nice to see that her baby’s fist pendant is still there. And Jesus, how pale is Isabelle? Cream is literally pure white, and like... I’m really pale, but no one would compare me to cream. Maybe she should get her iron levels checked.

There’s a ton of exposition that is so bogged down by how CC describes her characters, for instance:

She slid off the bed, landing on the floor with a catlike arch of her back. “I’m Isabelle Lightwood, by the way. I live here.”

They’re introducing themselves here, I should care, but my immediate reaction was wondering what she meant by how Isabelle landed—did she land on all fours? Is she just on all fours with her back arched at Fairy like an affronted cat?

pictured: how Isabelle gets around, probably

We find out Fairy’s clothing has been burned (how fucking convenient) and she has to borrow Isabelle’s clothing, and then of course she asks about Jace and we get this completely stupid response:

“Tell me, is he always really rude, or does he save that for mundanes?”
“Oh, he’s rude to everyone,” said Isabelle airily. “It’s what makes him so damn sexy. That, and he’s killed more demons than anyone else his age.”

from now on I'm just going to respond with cat gifs, it keeps my blood pressure down.

Tell me, CC, do you think it’s sexy when a guy constantly treats you like garbage? Belittles you? Acts as if you know nothing and that it’s your fault for being so ignorant of something that you could only possibly learn from them? No? Well then why are you perpetuating this toxic idea that a man likes a woman or is desireable to a woman only when he treats them like absolute shit? I get it, we all went through that phase when we were younger—but do you know why? Because we were taught to, and now that we’re older, it’s our responsibility to make sure younger girls don’t let men treat them this way en lieu of actual fucking respect—as a woman who is probably well into her 40s, you should be ashamed that you’re still writing this romantic drivel. This isn’t romantic, this is exactly the problem everyone had with Edward Cullen and Christian Grey—it’s abusive and not deserving of praise.

Also, if she’s setting up a love triangle between Isabelle, Fairy, and Jace, I’m going to put my fist through my computer screen.

We find out Jace’s parents died from someone other than him which is all kinds of wrong—why does Isabelle feel comfortable telling a complete stranger his life story? I don’t care if he doesn’t care, telling a complete stranger that he watched his father being murdered is really really intrusive.

Isabelle’s clothes looked ridiculous. Clary had to roll the legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red tank top only emphasized her lack of what Eric would have called a “rack.”

I am so shocked. No really, so completely shocked. Look at my face:

damn that is way darker than I intended

Has there ever been a YA heroine who has proudly been like “Hell yeah I have boobs and hell yeah they look fabulous!”? Because I feel like it’s shameful to have big boobs in fiction nowadays—they always seem to denote the sexually available/confident girls, which is complete BS. Having bigger organs does not mean they deserve to be sexualised.

Also, CC, no one uses the word 'rack' anymore unless they're twelve (or a middle-aged author really out of touch with slang).

Jace was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands moving rapidly over the keys. He was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, his tawny hair ruffled up around his head as if he’d just woken up. Watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys, Clary remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands, his arms holding her up and the stars hurtling down around her head like a rain of silver tinsel.

Oh my God, I couldn't help but laugh aloud at this—every person who has ever read/written fanfiction knows this scene. I've written it, it’s just a thing—the protagonist discovers the love interest in a ‘vulnerable’ moment and it’s usually them on a piano. I can’t stop laughing because this scene so clearly demonstrates that this used to be a fanfiction—I would never dream of having a scene like this in my novel because it’s so... pointless. The piano serves no purpose than to illustrate that Jace is a sensitive soul who has layers~

christ this movie is old

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this a ‘fandom thing’ about Draco? Like wasn’t it like a headcanon that he played piano and wasn’t that a running theme in a lot of fics that woobified him? ‘Cause I feel like that was a thing.

“You wouldn’t have.” That irritating superiority was back in his voice. “Mundanes
don’t know about it. There are wardings—protective spells—up all over the borders. If you tried to cross into Idris, you’d simply find yourself transported instantly from one border to the next. You’d never know what happened.”
“So it’s not on any maps?”
“Not mundie ones[."]

I’m just gonna...

leave this here

It’s called Idris, which I’m sure has some super special meaning, but I’m quite content picturing Idris Elba every time it comes up.

So the ‘Institute’ is a place where anyone who requests it can stay and they learn things from a teacher there and wow this is so original I’ve never heard of anything like this.

[contented sigh] sorry, what was I reading? Oh. Oh, right.

Jace takes her to the library, and we get a regular description of one—it actually reminded me of the one from Beauty and the Beast, but then she goes and ruins it with this:

These were no ordinary books either— these were books bound in leather and velvet, clasped with sturdy-looking locks and hinges made of brass and silver. Their spines were studded with dully glowing jewels and illuminated with gold script. They looked worn in a way that made it clear that these books were not just old but were well used, and had been loved.

I dunno about you guys but those sound like ordinary books. Like, all she had to say was that they were old and expensive looking. What the hell was she expecting? The entire NYT’s best-selling hardcover section just chilling in an old school?

We finally meet Hodge:

y'all remember

“A book lover, I see,” he said, smiling at Clary. “You didn’t tell me that, Jace.”

W...hy would he know that? Why could he tell him that? Why is this relevant?

Alec finally gets some speaking time, and he’s a total asshat, which is hardly surprising considering everyone exists to be mean to Fairy so she can be sassy and stand up for herself so that we can pretend to see her as a strong female character.

Regardless, here’s the big reveal we were all waiting for:

“She’s not a mundane,” Jace said quietly.
Hodge’s eyebrows shot back up to his hairline and stayed there. Alec, caught in the middle of a sentence, choked with surprise. In the sudden silence Clary could hear the sound of Hugo’s wings rustling.
“But I am,” she said.
“No,” said Jace. “You aren’t.” He turned to Hodge, and Clary saw the slight movement of his throat as he swallowed. She found this glimpse of his nervousness oddly reassuring. “That night—there were Du’sien demons, dressed like police officers. We had to get past them. Clary was too weak to run, and there wasn’t time to hide—she would have died. So I used my stele—put a mendelin rune on the inside of her arm. I thought—”

First of all—LOL at ‘mendelin’ because I totally read it as ‘mandolin’ and this happened immediately:

if you haven't watched this movie, RECTIFY THAT IMMEDIATELY.

Basically, Fairy is a shadowhunter, she has ‘Clave’ blood, and I could literally care less because I guessed this like at the beginning of the book. Let me put this into perspective: when you start reading Harry Potter, you know that Harry is a wizard because JKR says it right away. She then spends like one chapter discussing his whole life right up until he finds out he’s a wizard, and it’s fine because it’s a nice neat little backstory.

I knew Fairy was ‘special’ the minute I started this book, what’s annoying is that the main character says so often that she isn’t special, and in turn expects the reader to believe her in order for this big reveal to work. This is so, so lazy.

So apparently that tattoo he placed on her arm could’ve actually fucking killed her and he just gambled on the fact that she was a Shadowhunter and not a Mundane, which is so unbelievable and I have no idea why Fairy isn’t losing her mind at that thought.

She calls Luke and he’s a total dickhead which... is surprising. I don’t know what to make of it but I do know that I don’t care.

[T]he dial tone buzzing in her ear like a big ugly wasp.

Nope.

So Hodge is all “WE NEED TO TALK, ALONE” and everyone leaves and he becomes a weird sort of version of Giles from Buffy and is completely fatherly and whatever, which is sort of cute. Honestly, this is the most bearable scene so far, and because of that I don’t trust that she wrote it but whatever.

Then we find out this about Fairy’s mom:

“No. She hated all that stuff. She even hated Disney movies. She didn’t like me reading manga. She said it was childish.”

apparently CC's goal here is to make every other character in the novel unlikable so we HAVE to like Fairy

I, again, get a whole load of information dumped on me in one go. Someone named ‘Valentine’ is mentioned, there’s a negotiation happening with the ‘downworlders’, and Shadowhunters are revealed as the children of Angels and Humans, which is very Greek. Apparently they drank Angel blood mixed with human blood out of something nicknamed the “Mortal Cup” and can you see where this is going because....

“I apologize; this must be a dull history lesson for you. That was Valentine. A firebrand, a visionary, a man of great personal charm and conviction. And a killer. Now someone is invoking his name …”

This irritates me. This irritates me so much my head might explode. Not only could CC not be bothered to change the first letter of the name of her villain (if you try and tell me that Valentine isn't a stand-in for Voldemort at least just by name I’m going to need a twenty-page thesis on why you think that’s the case), but she couldn't even bother coming up with something less transparent than this.

Giles/Hodges tells her to go fine Jace, because if he agrees she can go visit her house/tell everyone she's okay.

She glanced toward the door where the fat blue Persian was curled up like a small ottoman. He rose as she came forward, fur rippling like liquid. With an imperious meow he led her into the hall.

This is the best idea she’s ever had and I’m 100% on board with having guide cats everywhere. MORE GUIDE CATS FOR EVERYONE.

The chapter ends with more ominous~ foreshadowing~ if you wanna call it that, and that’s it!

Guys, I’m at chapter 5 and I finally have a plot. Sort of. A bit. Look, let me believe I do, okay?