Hello!
You may (but will probably not) be interested to know that I have a Tumblr now, in which I reblog things and put up cross stitch pictures and things. Please keep in mind that I am really not very interesting.
On to City of Bones!
You may remember that we had just learned all about the Shadowhunters’ history of magical fascists, which has totally never been done before, like ever, and Clary had an eerily prophetic dream that is just too obscure to fathom.
So Jace wakes her up, and it’s 5am, and a Silent Brother has come to visit. Banter banter Jace is obnoxious, then Clary goes to get dressed and wishes her “thin freckled legs looked more like Isabelle’s lanky smooth limbs.”
Right. So. So far, Clary has basically been presented as an everygirl, if you will, average looking and a bit heavier than the ideal. This is why she is jealous of Isabelle. And now her legs are “thin”. Also, the not-exactly-complimentary term “lanky” is used for Isabelle’s legs, which I’m not sure what’s going on there. There are plenty of nice ways to describe what I’m assuming are model-like proportions. Slim. Slender. Sylphlike. Also “limbs”, enh, why would you put yourself through that?
So she goes to see Hodge and the Silent Brother, who comes out of the shadows and is – GASP – totally silent. Hodge introduces her and Clary’s like um so hi, and is weirdly surprised when there’s no reply.
Silent. Brother.
Anyway, joke’s on me, because the Silent Brother isn’t so silent after all! He cheats with telepathy. Boo.
This is pretty weird, actually, because though Jeremiah the Silent Brother (who would name a child that, honestly, did his parents really not expect that he would go off and become a Silent Brother with a name like that?) is talking to Hodge about Clary, Clary can hear it. This is telepathy, remember, it’s not like his words create sound waves that – whoops! – accidentally hit her ears. He has to be doing this on purpose.
Jeremiah seems kind of rude!
Clary is like HOW DO YOU KNOW MY MAM (who was married to the most famous magical fascist of all, yeah, how unlikely that anyone would have heard of her) and Hodge tries to explain only to be interrupted by Jace who CANNOT HELP BUT REMIND EVERYONE THAT HE IS STILL IN THE ROOM, HELLO!
Basically Valentine thinks Jocelyn has the Mortal Cup, and that she took it to keep him from getting hold of it, and faked her own death so the Clave wouldn’t look for her. Clary quips that no one the Clave thinks is dead is ever dead, and Jace is like WHATEVER, MY DAD IS DEAD.
I just – no, you know what, that’s a cheap shot. Yes, Jace, your dad is totally dead.
So they start bickering, and Brother Jeremiah is like DON’T MAKE ME TURN THIS INSTITUTE AROUND, and pulls down his hood to reveal his mutilated face, thus shocking them into silence. Neat trick!
He tells her he’ll tell her the truth if she does the same, and she’s all omg I don’t lie! and he’s like lolz I want your memories though because the mind cannot lie. Um, OK! Simplistic and profound-sounding, whatever, fine.
Clary agrees to it, and the Silent Brother goes rummaging around, and just as he starts to get somewhere Jace is like NO WAIT THIS ISN’T ABOUT ME AT ALL! OK, I’m just barely kidding, he’s like omg Clary has clenched her fists too tight and cut her palms with her own fingernails! and Hodge is like good job, Jace, this is clearly the best reason to sabotage the only lead we have. THANKS.
But Jeremiah says he couldn’t find anything anyway, because her memories are blocked by a spell. There’s nothing for it, she”ll have to go to the CITY OF BONES! Jace, unable to bear being left out of anything, says he’ll go with her.
They wait outside the Institute, and Clary is like omg, Simon! literally just so Jace can be like NO I’M JACE REMEMBER, LET ME INSULT SIMON JUST SO YOU REMEMBER which is tiresome and getting predictable, and also I really wouldn’t hang out with someone who insulted my only friend like that? Seriously, Jace is being a colossal tool, and he needs to stop. He taunts Clary about how Isabelle will get bored of Simon and she’ll have to console him, and Clary’s privately like whatever, I bet Isabelle can see what an awesome guy Simon is. For some reason this horrifies her.
Is it just me, or does Clary hate the idea of anyone else being happy? She doesn’t want Simon, but she doesn’t want him to date anyone else. She gets annoyed by attractive people being attractive. What do you want, Clary? WHAT DO YOU WANT?
They banter some more (why can no one just talk like normal people?) and then a fancy black car pulls up, because my god why is everyone so obsessed with material wealth aaaaaaaaaaa and this isn’t just the Mortal Instruments, this is like all the YA fiction I’ve read recently. Do we really have to revere rich people like this? Can’t working class people be interesting too? Must all the wonders of the world be in how many valets the new kid at school has? Whatever, the fancy black car turns into an EVEN MORE FANCY carriage, and they ride over the traffic.
I don’t think horses are the best animals for that. Why not a magical giant lizard drawn carriage, which can travel up walls and shit like geckos? Way cooler.
After the relentless banter Jace starts talking about his past, and his dad who made him learn piano and got him weapons and horses and books, and Clary’s like secretly yeah but that’s not what most kids want for Christmas.
Er, speak for yourself.
HORSES
BOOKS
A HUNTING FALCON
She looks at his ~artist’s~ hands (hi can we stop using that phrase now like as a species) and is weirded out that sometimes boys wear rings because the only human she interacts with is Simon and she stares out of the window while Jace confesses his desire to murder Valentine. My god does no one in this book have manners.
Jace is “without expression“, and no, I really mean it. “He was without expression.” You can’t do this. You can’t have them being all LOL ENJOY THE NEW CARRIAGE SMELL, SARCASM IS THE LAST REFUGE OF THE IMAGINATIVELY BANKRUPT, and then say “he was without expression“.
So he graphically describes his father’s murder and says that “only people with no purpose are unhappy” because Cassandra Clare is unable to not describe every human experience in a profound bullshit one liner. Profound, more like FAUXFOUND AM I RIGHT
I’ll get my coat.
Segue to an explanation of why demons are evil and Downworlders aren’t (because Clare said so, and they come from different worlds to suck all life from everything) and it turns out that the Shadowhunters’ numbers are dwindling because more demons are happening and they all die young and don’t have the Mortal Cup, and because they aren’t having enough babies…? and then they arrive.
At the CITY OF BONES! Which is in a graveyard. Which I guess we all expected.
What we didn’t expect was that Jace’s arm hair is as “fine as pollen“. Cassandra Clare, do you even know what pollen is?
Despite the fact that this is a graveyard, Clary is shocked and horrified to realise that there are graves in it (omg there are names written on the walls and they are dead people’s names? WHAT KIND OF PLACE IS THIS?) She bumps into Jace, who she had forgotten was there, in a moment of truly Bella-Swan style thickheadedness, and freaks out, and then they get to the most beautiful angel sculpture in the graveyard, because of course they do.
Jeremiah draws a rune on it and it opens up a hole in the earth, which Clary thinks looks like an open grave, PROBABLY BECAUSE IT IS A HOLE IN THE GROUND OF A GRAVEYARD OH MY GOD THERE IS SUCH A THING AS OVERKILL, CLARE.
Entirely unlike an open grave, there is a staircase lit by torches leading the way down.
Then they go down the stairs.
Then I decide to cop out and take the last part of this chapter later. I want to drag out the actual City of Bones screen time for as long as possible.