Hey guys! So I’ve been a bit MIA because I’m moving in two weeks and just finished that lovely season of University where you’re handing in essays and doing midterms. I have a bit of a break right now (I use the term break lightly) and I thought, why not read another chapter!
Chapter 14 is called “The Hotel Dumort” which is a cute French pun, but also kinda annoying when you realise she named the vampire hideout that.
I’m thinking about skipping her long paragraphs of travelling description, but I feel like that will be cheating a bit, so I’ll suffer through them for you.
They get to the church where they're going to pick up weapons to help them fight the vampires and there’s a huge padlock—what a surprise.
She watched him as he worked at the lock, watched the lean curve of his back, the swell of muscles under the short sleeves of his T-shirt. The moonlight washed the color out of his hair, turning it more silver than gold.Aside from the lol-tastic description of Jace (I seriously have no idea what he really looks like yet, just all these pseudo-harlequin romance descriptions), on what planet can silver and gold be interchangeable? Like, if I’m thinking silver hair, or gold hair, those are two really different looks.
Clary felt suddenly annoyedMe, always, reading this book.
“When the self-congratulatory part of the evening is over, maybe we could get back to saving my best friend from being exsanguinated to death?”
“Exsanguinated,” said Jace, impressed. “That’s a big word.”
Yeah, too bad she didn’t use it properly. Clary literally just said “killed to death” basically, since the definition of exsaguination is to drain something completely of blood and is commonly used on autopsy reports as a cause of death.
EDITING.
 |
| sometimes I wonder where this guy is now |
Jace asks permission into the church from an angel statue, which is neat actually.
She realized that, apart from the Institute, which didn’t really count, she’d never actually been inside a church before. She’d seen pictures, and seen the insides of churches in movies and in anime shows, where they turned up regularly. A scene in one of her favorite anime series took place in a church with a monstrous vampire priest. You were supposed to feel safe inside a church, but she didn’t. Strange shapes seemed to loom up at her out of the shadows. She shivered
I’m gonna call fucking bullshit right here. I’m an atheist, my whole family is as well, but lots of things still take place in churches, especially in North America. You’re telling me she’s never been to a wedding that took place in a church? Or a wake/funeral/etc? The reason this sticks out like a sore thumb to me is because it seems so special-snowflake-y.
Also, it seems like she stepped into a cathedral, and not a church. Churches are a lot less ornate (correct me if I’m wrong) if my memory serves me well, and they’re smaller.
And I can’t remember the last time I didn’t feel creeped out at night in a cathedral.
"Shadowhunters cleave to no single religion, and in turn all religionsassist us in our battle."
Yes that seems like something all religions would do, definitely. Not like the Catholic Church and Christianity take a firm stance against anything to do with the occult or demons or anything, right?
They have a weird argument about whether there’s a heaven and hell and whether angels exist or not, which is so boring because, here we are, about to jump into a (hopefully) really good action scene where they battle vampires, and they’re talking to me about God.
I stopped going to Sunday school for a reason, you guys.
There was something about Jace, though, that made her want to push him, crack that shell of cynicism and make him admit he believed in something, felt something, cared about anything at all.
Probably because your author wants desperately to make you two fit into the whole ‘girl changes hopelessly lost and unfixable dark brooding hero into something she can date’ trope.
They pick up some holy water and some 'angel blades' and things that sound suspiciously like wands again and head off to the lair of the undead~
It had come loose from a nail and it dangled hidden behind a stunted tree. HOTEL DUMONT, it should have said, but someone had painted out the N and replaced it with an R.
“Hotel Dumort,” Jace said when she pointed it out to him. “Cute.”
Clary had only had two years of French, but it was enough to get the joke. “Du mort,” she said. “‘Of death.’”
Ah, I see. Well at least they acknowledged the ‘cute’ aspect of that. But, seriously? Two years of French and you struggled to get that? I took two years of Spanish and I’m confident I could struggle through an actual book and conversation. Also, I'm pretty sure it's actually "Hotel of the Dead", the noun 'death' is actual 'le deces' or something stupid like that and wouldn't make any sense here.
IF YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE A LANGUAGE RELATED PUN PLEASE TAKE TWO SECONDS TO GOOGLE IT JESUS CHRIST. I get that it can be translated both ways but it sounds a lot better when it's translated as "of the dead' what the hell.
They start toward the hotel and I suddenly want all of these vampires to die so that was very clever of CC:
It was narrow, choked with garbage: moldy cardboard boxes, empty glass bottles, shredded plastic, scattered things that Clary thought at first were toothpicks, but up close looked like—
“Bones,” Jace said flatly. “Dog bones, cat bones. Don’t look too closely; going through vampires’ trash is rarely a pretty picture.”
Ladies and gents, step right up because it’s time for another game of ‘How many food-related adjectives can an author use to describe a POC?’
He was thinboned, with the big dark eyes and honey-colored skin of a Diego Rivera painting. He wore black slacks and an open-necked white shirt, and a gold chain around his neck that sparked faintly as he moved closer to the light.
I have a feeling the only Spanish people CC has ever seen are the ones in West Side Story because... wow.
PS, here’s a screenshot of Diego Rivera paintings:
He then proceeds to speak and swear in a really laughably (read: not at all laughable) caricature-ish way?
His name is Raphael and he... knows about the vampires and might be working for them. I’m bored already because this is yet again another way to stall the action in the chapter.
Raphael inhaled sharply and said something in Spanish too low and rapid for Clary to understand. He came toward them, almost stumbling over a pile of crumpled plastic wrappers in his haste. “I know what you are—I have heard about your kind, from the old padre at St. Cecilia’s. I thought that was just a story.”
I can’t put my finger on why this is irritating, I wish I could find some writing on it, but it’s so... like... no I can’t figure it out. But it seems really debasing and squicky and I wish she’d written this character literally any other way. Like he is literally only here to be another token character so far.
They find an old cellar door into the hotel and have to jump into it.
It was only a second’s fall and Jace caught her, her dress rucking up around her thighs and his hand grazing her legs as she slid into his arms. He let her go almost immediately.
Why. Does. Everything. A. Woman. Does. Have. To. Be. Sexual. That line doesn’t make me go “omg sexual tension~” it just makes me wonder how the hell he was catching her and how she didn’t kick him in the face?
Raph decides to follow them (okay I can get behind him if he’s gonna be a legitimate supporting character) and they go on to explore the hotel.
Apparently all of the vampires destroyed every set of stairs in the hotel, which, same you guys. It’s just really funny to imagine them being like, “well we fly everywhere so why the fuck do we need these? BURN THEM”. It’s so overdramatic.
Dust lay thick on the steps now, like a layer of powdery gray snow that made Clary cough.
You know what I didn’t need in that sentence? Adjectives for the snow. If you say “like a layer of snow” the visual is actually more pleasing and reads easier.
BUT WHATEVER.
 |
| I have so many 'judging you' gifs and these recaps give me the best opportunity to use them honestly |
Raph can ‘sense’ things, which, okay.... sure.
Okay, no, I need to address this. Every goddamn Character of Colour I’ve encountered in this series so far has been written as if she went “I’m going to insert this race in this part of the book” and then created a character out of it. Diversity is great, but in a fucking fantasy world where I get more descriptions of the swelling muscles of a character’s back than a CoC they should be defined by more than the fact they’re a POC.
I’m not saying CC should have written colour-blind, I’m saying she should’ve at least given Raphael more of a fucking description other than telling me his skin was ‘honey-coloured’ and leaving it at that.
[For anyone interested, this is a really great link on white authors writing diversity]
MOVING ON.
They're moving around through the hotel and exploring or whatever, and at this point I am again SO BORED. They've brought up the missing stairs like twenty times as if I'm supposed to care at all?
"You can see where it was, years ago. Like an old woman who was once beautiful, but time has taken her beauty away."
Then Raph disappears and they find him standing alone in the middle of a room and it's like, okay? Turns out Raph is a vampire, which is cool I guess. He called all of the vampires and it looks like we’re gonna have a good ol’ Breaking Dawn-esque ending and nothing action-filled (ie, there’s a huge standoff and both parties go their separate ways because of the main girl’s super special protagonist powers).
Clary wondered if there were any ugly vampires, or maybe any fat ones. Maybe they didn’t make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn’t want to live forever.
 |
| I will never stop using this picture ever |
ARE YOU SERIOUS? I don’t even wanna talk about this I’m just gonna move on this is such bullshit and so self-loathing I can’t even deal.
Fairy proposes a trade between Simon and Raphael (who is apparently ‘ruling’ them while their real ruler is on vacation in Cabo or something). I can’t believe she’s just bursting in here not knowing anything about this whole world and she’s making all the right decisions? What a fucking Mary Sue.
Okay so apparently, if they swear an oath (they being the Shadowhunters) it means they’re bound to it for life. So, it’s like an Unbreakable Vow and Jace is pissed that she offered that.
All hell breaks loose after that, which is pretty great actually! Fairy and Jace are fending off a bunch of vampires and then at the end of the chapter WEREWOLVES appear. It’s really interesting to read and I only wish CC edited the rest of her book the same way she did her action scenes—they’re sharp and concise.
So, Jacob and Edward have made an appearance in this book now! Just kidding.
Until next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment