Chapter 21 of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones: Werewolf McWerewolf and That Time I Included the Kanye Grammy Gif

Heeeeey everyone (including everyone that I know that has told me they read this stupid frickin’ blog and DON’T COMMENT ON IT AT ALL) it’s your favourite time of the week (or like... two three weeks. I’m a student, cut me some slack).

This whole chapter is from Luke’s (Werewolf McWerewolf of the series) point of view. That definitely sounds like a great time and not at all boring—

how I feel about this whole ordeal

Luke begins his story discussing how Fairy’s mom and him were childhood friends.

When Jocelyn and I were old enough, we were sent to Alicante to school. It was there that I met Valentine.

What the hell kind of a name is Alicante? Did she just rearrange the letters in the word 'caliente' and call it a day?

Valentine was taking a page out of Voldemort's book and using his school as his test run for his crazy genocidal murder group, and Luke himself was a part of the early Death Eaters—sorry, just his friends.

Lightly summarised, Voldentine was obsessed with the idea that Shadowhunters were a dying breed, and wanted them to use the Cup more freely to make more Shadowhunters so that they could have an army and pass on all their knowledge.

They formed the ‘Circle’ in order to save the Shadowhunters from extinction. Then came the night that Valentine’s father was killed in a routine raid on a werewolf encampment. When Valentine returned to school, after the funeral, he wore the red Marks of Mourning. He was different in other ways. His kindness was now interspersed with flashes of rage that bordered on cruelty.

So... we’re using the dead parent narrative as an excuse here. I'm not worried about Voldentine having an actual backstory, but the thing I appreciate about a lot of recent (well-written, mind you) novels is that their antagonists were allowed to be just that-- antagonists. They chose to be the evil person they were, there was no "Oh but he had a hard life" or "He was just misunderstood".

After they all graduate Hogwarts—sorry, Alicante, the Circle grows more influential and Voldentine changes its ideals to reflect war on Downworlders—essentially, any demon or non-human thing that exists in the world—and their infiltration of the non-Shadow realm? I think that’s what this is getting at.

Voldentine becomes more obviously a sociopathic asshole and then this happens:

Jocelyn became pregnant. The day she told me that, she also confessed that she had grown afraid of her husband. His behavior had turned weird, erratic. He would disappear into their cellars for nights at a time. Sometimes she would hear screams through the walls ….

Awesome. I hope there’s no underlying abuse plotline in this novel because I’ve had enough of that with all the other novels published lately. Can’t anyone write a book without a woman getting beat in it for effect?

Voldentine invites Luke out to hunt werewolves one night, and doesn’t prevent one from attacking Luke, which in turn leads to him being bitten. When he turns for the first time, Voldentine graciously tells him to kill himself because it’s the honourable thing to do, which is mad fucked-up.

This whole backstory is really depressing, honestly.

Luke kind of takes his advice and goes to confront the werewolf who attacked him, hoping to die in the process of killing him? It’s actually kind of confusing because their rules of lycanthropy aren’t very well-defined; it appears that becoming a werewolf in this novel actually lets you become a wolf whenever you want, and not just at the full moon, which kind of takes away the point, honestly. Like, if you can choose when you transform, why not just choose to never transform if it’s that heinous to you?

I expected the pack to set on me and tear me apart. But they knelt at my feet and bared their throats in submission. [ ... ]I had come to the place of the wolves, and instead of finding death and vengeance there, I found a new life.

Doesn’t Luke have family members around that he needs to report back to? Does no one care that he goes missing from this point onwards?

Jocelyn (Fairy’s mom) comes to visit Luke in his new werewolfy life, and THIS HAPPENS:

She had had her child, she said, a boy, and had named him Jonathan Christopher.

Fairy has a brother???

I literally couldn't care less that's how bored I am at this point.

Voldentine has plans to disrupt the accords and all this other boring mumbo-jumbo (seriously the way the things in this book are explained is maddening it’s so hard to make sense of anything), but basically, he stole the real Mortal Cup and replaced it with a sham one, and the Clave didn’t know until it was too late.

There’s a huge battle between the Clave and the Circle that kind of mixes a lot of weird mythology into it, and honestly, it’s not important. It’s also CC’s weakest battle/action scene to date, and I think a lot of that has to do with the first-person perspective.

Voldentine and Luke have a fight that ends in Voldentine dragging Jocelyn off. When Luke chases them outside he finds Jocelyn and she's freaking out saying Voldentine has sworn she'll regret ever going against him and threatened their kid.

Wolves are fast, but a rested horse is faster. I fell far behind, and she arrived at the manor house before I did.

They arrive and the house is burnt down to the ground, and:

among the remains, scattered as if they were too fragile to hold together, were the bones of a child.

ISN’T THIS A YOUNG ADULT BOOK? THIS IS NASTY.

They run away, Jocelyn is determined to break it off with the Shadowhunters and if I can be perfectly honest I don’t blame her at all.

She was obstinate. At last she told me why: She was carrying another child, and had known it for weeks. She would make a new life for herself and her baby, and she wanted no whisper of Clave or Covenant ever to taint her future

She runs off with Fairy and settles herself into the house we were acquainted with at the beginning of the novel. We also finally find out why Hodge was punished so severely (he took place in the battle):

The Clave had punished the other three with exile: They were leaving for New York, to run the Institute there. The Lightwoods, who had connections to the highest families in the Clave, got off with a far lighter sentence than Hodge. A curse had been laid on him: He would go with them, but if ever he were to leave the hallowed ground of the Institute, he would be instantly slain. He was devoting himself to his studies, they said, and would make a fine tutor for their children.

Hmm, yes, this man was murderous and working with someone bent on domination—exactly the kind of guy we want teaching our children!

The chapter ends with Luke seeking Jocelyn out even though she has said she wants nothing to do with him or that world and finally finding her, and all I can think is how little that story actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. It was full of ‘interesting’ stuff, sure, but man was this the wrong place in the book for it.

We are past back-story land, we need action and plot to take over. I want things to happen! There are only 100 pages left in this godforsaken novel!

Sidenote: How many of you would actually watch a video of me just reading the chapter and recording my reactions to it? Someone asked me about it in person and I was a little skeptical of the idea, honestly, but one of my favourite book reviewers (Mark Oshiro) does it and it's hilarious. So what do you think? Maybe a special final chapter one?