City of Ashes Chapter 8 Pt 1: Why do you like to watch me suffer?

Lots has happened since I posted! For starters, I've been actually reading books I want to read instead of Divergent and TMI, so that explains the lack of recaps. Uh, also, I have like two jobs (plus a third if you count my nannying), so I'm usually down for the count when I get home from those.

Everyone: hey update ur blogs

me:

Being an adult is hard, you guys. And this chapter is like, torturously long. Like, 'why are you making me suffer' kind of long.

Onwards!



We begin this new section of the novel with a dream that Clary is having. Oh boy, am I excited for all of the sophisticated and subtle imagery that I'm about to get!

In the dream Clary was a child again, walking down the narrow strip of beach near the boardwalk at Coney Island. [ ... ] She could see herself as if from a distance, wearing oversize child's pajamas. The hems of the pajama bottoms dragged along the beach. Damp sand grated between her toes, and her hair hung heavily against the nape of her neck.

How else does hair hang, though? Also like... how important was it for me to know the exact type of pyjamas she was wearing?

Dream Clary sees her mother in the distance, and then the special Chosen One gets something spelled out to her that I'm sure will have no relevance in the plot at all:

"Come here," said Jocelyn, and when Clary came to her, she said, "Hold out your arm."

Ready for me to be an overly syntaxical jack-ass? That capitalised 'Hold' shouldn't be there because the way this sentence was edited, Clary's mother is continuing her sentence. Like, she effectively just wrote, "Come here, Hold out your arm," since she never placed a period anywhere in that phrase.

Easy fix?

"Come here," said Jocelyn. As Clary came to her, she said, "Hold out your arm."

BUT SURE, EDITORS ARE USELESS, WHATEVER.


As a side note, I actually looked to see if this book had an editor and found their name and seriously considered sending them a message like 'bruh what the fuck' but then I realised that would be pointless and moved on with my life.

Her mother draws a protection rune on her in the dream and she wakes up and BAM that rune is on her in real life, and Clary has the exact same reaction I did to finding that out:

When she sat up and flipped on the light, she saw without surprise the black Mark that ran the length of her forearm.

Why wouldn't that surprise her? Has this sort of thing happened before? Does Clary get dream tattoos all the time?

Clary wakes up and goes to meet Simon, who is not at the destination but instead at a record store tha she instinctively knew he would be at instead, which begs the question... why not just meet there?

He was wearing a rust-colored corduroy jacket with a torn sleeve and a blue T-shirt bearing the logo of a headphone-wearing boy dancing with a chicken. He grinned when he saw her. "Eric thinks we should change the name of our band to Mojo Pie." [ ... ]
"What is it now? I forgot."
"Champagne Enema."

I get that it's like a running gag with the band names but at least try for creativity if you're gonna beat the dead horse that much.

"By the way, I know what your shirt means."
"No you don't. [ ... ] You're a good girl."

So, I had to google this because I literally sat and stared at it for a few minutes and still couldn't figure it out.

Things I am proud of: not this.

It means 'Rock out with your cock out'... And like.... what!? Just.... w h a t?

That's it. I don't even have anything snarky. I just can't believe something so ridiculous made it into the final draft of a bestselling novel. This reeks of Fanfiction inside joke.

Clary and Simon are on their way to meet up with Magnus and Alec, which I'm like, so here for. I know that the story is about Clary and her lust for her brother or whatever, but can we just focus on these two instead?

As they neared Magnus's building, Clary saw a lanky figure unfurl itself from where it had been sitting on the stoop. Alec. 

How exactly does a human being unfurl themselves from a sitting position? 

He was wearing a long black coat made of the tough, slightly shiny material Shadowhunters liked to use for their gear.

Leather. What you're describing is leather. Does Clary not know what leather is?

They enter Magnus' apartment and have the stupidest argument that mimics every other argument when Clary is in a room full of men (as she is often in this series).  Just copy and paste the banter and add in a few dated lines about TiVo, What Not to Wear, and the Clapper, and you've got it.

Magnus wants Jace out of his house because Jace is cleaning it too much so they decide to have a 'round table meeting'--I'm not making this up. It happened.

Magnus conjured up an enormous circular table surrounded by five high-backed wooden chairs. 

Can't wait for Sir Gawain to come in and chop off their heads.

"How can you create something out of nothing like that?"
"You can't," said Hermione Magnus. "Everything comes from somewhere."

This is quite possibly the laziest plagiarism of a magical theory I've ever seen. Like, not even an attempt at furthering it or tweaking it so it doesn't seem lifted from the Harry Potter universe, just straight up 'yeah it's the same rule. don't ask me to explain it more'.

He explains that the things he conjured are from shops and whatnot around the area, which is actually a terrible way of having your magical system work. Do they make copies, or do the items just disappear (in which case, do people ever get their things back?) and how does Magnus have a mental inventory of everything in every store/shop/building?

Magnus sets a theory forward that Valentine is responsible for all of the recent Downworlder deaths in New York, which... duh. I have never seen a plot so unwillingly to catch up the speed of the reader. It's like that one person who deliberately walks slow to piss you off when they know you're in a hurry.

Valentine is trying to do... something. I'll let Magnus explain it.

"The Ritual of Infernal Conversion, [ ... ] [every] magical object has an alliance, [ ... ] the alliance of the Soul-Sword [that Valentine has stolen] is seraphic--like those angel knives you Shadowhunters use, but a thousand times more so, because its power was drawn from the Angel himself, not simply from the invocation of an angelic name. What Valentine wants to do is reverse its alliance--make it an object of demonic rather than angelic power."

Basically, he's using blood to make a demon army. I'm not fucking around you guys, that's the gist of what's being said. Actually, he's using children's blood specifically, which--why the fuck is there even magic for that?

Clary gets startled and spills hot coffee on her, and we get possibly the most dramatic coffee burn ever:

There was an angry red blotch on her wrist where the hot liquid had scalded her.
"It's okay," she said. "No big deal."
Simon lifted her hand and kissed the injury. "All better now."
Clary made a startled noise. [ ... ] Drawing her wrist back, she looked across the table and saw Jace staring at them, his golden eyes blazing. "You're a Shadowhunter," he said. "You know how to deal with injuries." He slid his stele across the table toward her.

Let me outline what just happened with a list. Yay, lists!

Lists make everything better!

1. Clary had been (presumedly) drinking this coffee prior to this. She blew on it to cool it down a few pages back.
2. Alec got a message, which startled her, causing her to spill some coffee on her wrist. No where else, just her wrist.
3. The coffee was hot enough to immediately scald her hand and leave a red mark. 
4. Simon (because he is her boyfriend), kissed it better.
5. Jace, (HER BROTHER) angrily suggests she uses a stele for her 'injury'. The coffee burn.

Why was her coffee even heated that high to begin with? I'm pretty sure a cappuccino does not ever get heated to a temperature hot enough to scald. I have had liquid hot soup run down the side of my arm while serving a customer, and that was only because it was on a burner directly right up until me serving it. Did Magnus purposely order extra-hot cappuccinos?

But the list is, in all, useless, because this whole stupid exchange served nothing except highlight the fact that Jace disproves of Simon and Clary and we need to see some more man!pain about Clary choosing to use a stele--and of course, it's not really about the stele versus being a mundane, it's a decision between Simon and Jace, because everything is about men in this novel.

Isabelle calls Alec and introduces the next plot point, and now we get to see a bitchy Faerie Queen! I'm serious, I'll put money on this right now before I read ahead--the Queen will be unnecessarily rude toward Clary and her specialness, probably glow with some scary beauty, and she'll definitely smirk a lot and make scary sharp proclamations. 

"Faeries," Jace went on [ ... ], "are the offspring of demons and angels, with the beauty of angels and the viciousness of demons.
[ ... ] Bur faeries live for hundreds of years and they're as cunning as snakes. They can't lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you--with a sting in the tail of the gift"

Faeries sound like fellow Scorpios, tbh.

There's another dumb argument centered around Clary between Jace and Simon, and I'm just so bored. 

pictured: me reading this book

Jace is arguing to go with them to Seelie court and he mentions that he's not allowed to leave Magnus' house because he's basically under arrest. And Magnus does this:

"[ ... ] I specifically enchanted the contract with the Inquisitor so that I could let you go for a short period of time so long as another of the Nephilim was willing to take your place."

You GUYS. Magnus signed his boyfriend living with him under no suspicion into a contract. MAGNUS IS EVERYTHING TO ME RIGHT NOW.

Anyway, so Alec agrees to stay with Magnus in Jace's place, and they set out to meet Isabelle by the secret entrance to the Seelie court.

Aaand super quick before I wrap this recap up, do you guys want to read the most vomit-inducing introduction of Isabelle into the chapter ever? Don't be silly, of course you do.

There was a small wooden gazebo built out over the water; Isabelle was sitting in it, staring out across the lake. She looked like a princess waiting at the top of her tower for someone to ride up and rescue her.
Not that traditional princess behaviour was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time. This made Isabelle a hard person to like, though Clary was trying. [bolding mine]

You know what, Clary? This whole fucking book makes you a hard person to like, so shut up.

Okay, see you guys soon! I promise. I'm about to have a little more free time on my hands, so I'll be updating better! Pinky promises all around!