Chapter 13 of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones: I can grudgingly admit that I'm enjoying this but I feel like that has everything to do with Magnus Bane.

I have a confession to make: this has been sitting open and unfinished on my laptop for like a week now. I know, I know, I’m sorry, but life got crazy and I couldn’t do anything about it!

We left the last chapter on another underwhelming cliff-hanger, as is the norm in this book, I feel. Again, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it if it weren’t for the fact that they’re so soap-opera-esque that it makes the book funny in places there shouldn’t be humour.

There is a teeny tiny rape content warning just for a mention of the word/discussion of it, just as a forewarning.

This chapter is called “The Memory of Whiteness” and I want to make a white-washing joke but I’ll let that one slide.

“So the Covenant’s all right with this—this mind-rape?” Clary asked bitterly. When no one answered, she sank down on the edge of Magnus’s bed. “Was it only once? Was there something specific she wanted me to forget? Do you know what it was?”

UGH, I really really need people to stop turning the word ‘rape’ into something other than what it stands for in today’s society. I know that it has had previous meanings, but it’s just ignorant to claim that it might not trigger someone as long as it isn’t referring to a specific kind of rape.

Magnus paced restlessly to the window.

Pacing means he moved back and forth between something as a continuous action that has happened more than once—you could just say ‘moved to’ or some other verb and be done with it, but THAT WOULD BE TOO EASY I GUESS.

Now I’m imagining him taking one step to the window and then back and like moving that way to the window slowly like he’s dancing or something.

did this music video actually happen or was it a collective hallucination?

Basically, Fairy’s mother brought her to Magnus late one night and asked him to ‘blind [her] of the Sight’. The sight is apparently what allows Shadowhunters to see the otherworldly creatures and demons that actually roam around the city that Mundies can’t see.

So Magnus instead makes her forget what she’s seeing as she sees it, but the catch is that her mother has to bring her back to him every two years to renew this spell? This is kind of intriguing, because it frames a really unlikely person as a paternal figure in Fairy’s life—he tells her he’s watched her grow up.

I get that her mother had good intentions (I guess) in doing this, but I feel like this might have been a big gamble in writing her character. Personally, I think it’s incredibly messed up that Fairy’s mother let a strange man toy with her own daughter’s mind and now he’s saying that trying to reverse the effects of it could damage her mind forever.

Fairy promptly is like, “tough shit, I don’t care if it’ll wear off on its own I want it to be over now” and, like, he just told you it might cause you to go insane.

And then the story gets half hilarious and then crazy, stupidly dark in like .2 seconds:

“Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants. The difference in your case is that it’s true."

Oh, my God. The ‘royalty born into peasants’ insult is almost like... I don’t know if she’s making fun of teenagers or trying to stroke their egos but that is way too over the top.

This is the problem everyone has with YA fiction nowadays, though. Everyone has to be inherently special—it’s not that chance happened to them and they had the opportunity to rise to the occasion, it’s that they were destined to be special and better than everyone else. But the thing is, if you look at the franchises that succeeded with adaptations or whatever, it’s the ones where the person was for all intents and purposes just ‘normal’, and then they became extraordinary through a decision. I can’t relate to a Clary Fray—she was born special, she was born with things that I don’t have and I can never even pretend it might happen to me someday.

So that’s the paragraph that comes before this, and I want you to keep it in mind because I got whiplash from how quickly the tone changed in two sentences:

"You want to know what it’s like when your parents are good churchgoing folk and you happen to be born with the devil’s mark? [ ... ] When your father flinches at the sight of you and your mother hangs herself in the barn, driven mad by what she’s done? When I was ten, my father tried to drown me in the creek. I lashed out at him with everything I had—burned him where he stood. went to the fathers of the church eventually, for sanctuary. They hid me. They say that pity’s a bitter thing, but it’s better than hate. When I found out what I was really, only half a human being, I hated myself. Anything’s better than that.”

Wow. And Fairy’s reaction is priceless and 100% about herself as usual:

“I don’t care if I’m different,” she said. “I just want to be who I really am.”

FAIRY. The man just told you his mother killed herself and he killed his own father in self-defense and that’s how you answer? As far as character development goes, her reaction to this story would have been a perfect moment to really show the kind of person she is—I now have proof that she’s just a selfish character.

The dumb thing is, I don’t think CC is meaning to write her this way, either, I think she’s just assuming that we’ll put whatever character traits we want into Fairy because she’s Ginny Weasley.

Magnus offers her something else, and grabs a book out and starts flipping through it, and we get a useless bit of dialogue again.

Jace’s eyebrows went up. “Is that a copy of the Gray Book?”
Magnus, feverishly flipping pages, said nothing.
“Hodge has one,” Alec observed. “He showed it to me once.”
“It’s not gray,” Clary felt compelled to point out. “It’s green.”

Really, Fairy. After everything that has happened just in the last five minutes you were compelled to point out that the book doesn’t match the colour of its name?

“If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you’d have died in childhood,” said Jace, brushing dust off the windowsill and eyeing it as if considering whether it was clean enough to sit on. “Gray is short for ‘Gramarye.’ It means ‘magic, hidden wisdom.’ In it is copied every rune the Angel Raziel wrote in the original Book of the Covenant. There aren’t many copies because each one has to be specially made. Some of the runes are so powerful they’d burn through regular pages.”

Y’ALL, IT’S THE GRIMMERIE.

this is exactly how I pictured the Isabelle/Fairy makeover scene, in case anyone was wondering.

I wish I was re-reading this. Just kidding I don’t that was a long, dense, book.

Alec looked impressed. “I didn’t know all that.”
Jace hopped up on the windowsill and swung his legs. “Not all of us sleep through history lessons.”
“I do not—”
“Oh, yes you do, and drool on the desk besides.”

I know Jace and Fairy are the OTP of this book, but I’m kinda rooting for Alec and Jace, honestly. I’m gonna start keeping a running tally of how often they bicker like a married couple:

We’re Not Married But We Probably Should Be: 1

Magnus basically makes her read a rune that stands for ‘remembrance’, because apparently most Shadowhunter children learn them growing up and she should begin to learn them? The magic is still so difficult for me to grasp, probably because Runes as magic is not very popular and should have been explained way better but whatever.

Magnus refuses to help them find the Mortal Cup, and he’s like, “why the hell should I care about an organisation that thinks I need to be kept in my place’ and I really think I’m falling in love with him as a character.

Which is bad, because CC is like the GRRM of character assassination—if you love a character, you can bet she’s gonna fuck them up somehow.

Jace, who was clenching and unclenching his hands, looked like he was about to say something furious, but Alec, standing up, put a hand on his shoulder. Clary couldn’t quite tell in the dimness, but it looked as if Alec was squeezing rather hard. “Is that likely?” he asked.

We’re Not Married But We Probably Should Be: 2

Then Jace ruins it to go fawn over a wet napkin AKA Fairy.

“Move it along, teenagers. The only person who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self.”
“Canoodle?” repeated Clary, never having heard the word before.

I... what? WAS THIS NECESSARY TO INCLUDE? Let me ask you a question, reader, does this make Clary’s character more interesting? Does it add anything to the plot? Does it actually read as cute and funny as she was intending? Does it match the tone for the rest of the scene?

SO WHY IS IT IN THERE. Also, I feel like canoodle isn’t really a word that’s uncommon, but I’m a biased English major so I’ll let that pass.

Everything seemed clearer, crystalline edges sharply defined. She watched a group of musicians take the small stage at the center of the room. They wore flowing garments in deep colors of gold, purple, and green, and their high voices were sharp and ethereal.

And here we have some more adjective overload, describing two different things, no less! Sharp voices, and sharper images! This is truly the work of the author of our generation.

A rush of guilty concern hit Clary. She’d forgotten about Simon.

I’m going to rename this whole book “Fairy forgets about people who are friends with her because they have no self respect and don’t actually know what being in a friendship means”. In fact, I think that’s the fourth time she’s forgotten about Simon in this novel thus far and he’s supposed to be her best friend that she might have romantic feelings for.

Forgot about Dre: 4

“Where’s Simon?” Clary interrupted.
Isabelle wobbled. “He’s a rat,” she said darkly.

OH MY GOD. So basically Simon has pulled a Pettigrew and got himself accidentally turned into a rat.

“Bitch,” Clary said savagely, and flung a surprised-looking Isabelle’s hand back at her, hard. She didn’t stop for a reaction; she was running toward the bar. Dropping to her knees, she peered into the dark space under it. In the moldy smelling gloom, she thought she could just detect a pair of glinting, beady eyes.

Okay, so... Let me break this down for you. Fairy is mad at Isabelle because (even though Isabelle warned him not to) Simon drank a something that turned him into a rat. Then she ran over and found them and told them; that’s literally all that has happened. But of course, now that Fairy has remembered her Best Friend she has to get angry, because how else would we know that she cares about Simon?

Nice gendered slur there, too. I appreciate it, Fairy.

I seriously don’t understand why this is in any way, shape, or form, important to the actual plot of the story. This is like going on a road trip to a destination you’re not even sure about and having to stop at rest stops every time you see one. It’s exhausting and it makes me want to stop reading because I’m not getting anywhere!

“You’d be happy to leave [Simon] if it weren’t for her,” Isabelle said [to Jace], managing to inject the single syllable word with enough venom to poison an elephant.

I cannot deal with this. I told you guys she would kill my love for Isabelle, and look! She did. Isabelle is now a jealous ex-whatever.

Also, “managing to inject the single syllable word with enough venom to poison an elephant” is just dumb. I have nothing witty add—it’s just the dumbest thing I’ve read all day.

Anyway, turns out the potion is just temporary, so this entire passage is a whole bunch of nothing.

me too, Chris Fine. me too.

They suggest putting rat!Simon in her backpack:

Clary looked at him hard, but couldn’t find anything wrong with the idea. It wasn’t as if she had a pocket she could have tucked him in. Isabelle’s clothes didn’t allow for pockets; they were too tight. Clary was amazed they allowed for Isabelle.

What is this? What is that last sentence? I had to read it like six times to understand that it was a dig at Isabelle, but then I’m confused at what kind of insult it is. Is she saying her clothing is too small for her? Is she saying it’s too revealing? And how is this an insult?

Oh, right. It’s a nice little bit of slut-shaming.

The party ends and Magnus is like "SOMEONE GET ALL OF THESE PEOPLE OUT OF MY HOUSE RIGHT NOW".

“I’d say it was a pleasure to meet you, but it wasn’t. Not that you aren’t all fairly charming, and as for you—” [Magnus] dropped a glittery wink at Alec, who looked astounded. “Call me?”

ALL RIGHT, I WANT THIS STORY INSTEAD. Magnus/Alec/Isabelle spinoff sitcom right now, and not written by CC.

Magnus stops her before he leaves and he’s like, ‘here’s my requisite paternal advice now that everyone knows I’ve watched you grow up since you were like 2’:

And one last thing.” His eyes flicked toward the
door, through which Jace, Alec, and Isabelle had disappeared. “Keep in mind that when your mother fled from the Shadow World, it wasn’t the monsters she was hiding from. Not the warlocks, the wolf-men, the Fair Folk, not even the demons themselves. It was them. It was the Shadowhunters.”

Okay, yeah, but I'm pretty sure her genocidal maniac of an ex-husband had something to do with it, too, no?

And then, dun dun DUN, Simon turns out to be missing from Fairy’s backpack!

Forgot About Dre: 5

Anyway, they have to go straight into a vampire’s lair now, because someone took him from her backpack or something. Look, I honestly don’t know where this book is headed, either.

But at least the chapter ends on an actual suspenseful moment! This is the first time I’ve actually sort of wanted to keep reading to find out!