City of Ashes (Mortal Instruments, #2)
City of Ashes is the weakest installment in Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments Trilogy,* and that’s saying something. I’m not giving it one star, because I did rush through it in some enjoyment, but as discussed in my previous review of City of Bones, it was enjoyment based mostly on seeing what nutbag thing was going to happen next rather than enjoyment based on good characters, good plot, and exciting developments. Book one had the advantage of introducing the world, and book three (as problematic as it is) has a crazy amount of plot development and action. This one mostly felt like filler to me.
*I’m not counting books 4-6, which sound mostly like cash cows to me.
The basic plot of City of Ashes is that Jace and Clary believe they are brother and sister and they are also in love with one another, so this causes them angst. That is 75% of the content of this novel. Jace basically turns suicidally depressed and Clary decides to try her best friend Simon on as a romantic partner, mostly because she wants someone to mack on, and she can’t mack on Jace. 95% of her thoughts surround Jace, how beautiful he is, how tragic, how much her DNA wants to be with his DNA forever BUT IT ALREADY IS BECAUSE THEY ARE BROTHER AND SISTER WAAAAAHHH. There’s also some stuff in there about Simon turning into a vampire, Jace’s adopted family rejecting him because they think he’s working for Valentine (?), and Valentine causing trouble by stealing the Mortal Sword, killing all the Silent Brothers, and threatening to call up a shit ton of demons to overrun the Earth. Clary also seems to be developing SUPER DUPER SPESHUL MAGICAL POWERS that no one has ever seen before, and Alec continues to deny that he is gay for Magnus Bane.
The stuff with Jace and Valentine is probably the most interesting, or at least it had the most potential to be interesting. Jace’s desire to be a good person and his love for Valentine as his father conflict with one another in a way that could have been mined for content, but Clare mostly just uses it to cast suspicion on Jace that the reader never believes for a second. The stuff with Simon, again, also interesting, although I laughed out loud at the scene that pushed Simon to finally visit the vampires. They all visit the faerie underworld or whatever it’s called and because Clary tastes faerie food, the faerie queen won’t let her go until she’s been kissed with the kiss she truly desires. I will give you three guesses as to whose kiss that is, but you will get it in one. Simon witnesses this, er, display, freaks the fuck out, and then goes and gets himself turned into a vampire.
Really, though, I don’t blame him. I might even sort of understand the impulse for Clare to milk the Jace/Clary tragedy for all its worth, as long as she didn’t cross the line between conflict and exploitation. All the pining doesn’t cross the line. It can easily be interpreted as both characters coming to terms with their awful circumstances. But that kissing scene? WAAAAAY crosses the line. She doesn’t just manufacture a moment for her to characters to kiss. That would be bad enough. And she doesn’t just have them kiss each other quickly and be done with it. She doesn’t even make it a lingering kiss filled with regret or whatever. No. What does she have Jace and Clary do? FULL ON FUCKING MAKE OUT PASSIONATELY IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY AND EVERYONE THEY KNOW. WHILE THINKING THEY ARE BROTHER AND SISTER.
To quote myself from a Goodreads status update while reading: “”I feel like I shouldn’t have to keep saying this. INCEST IS NOT SEXY. INCEST IS NOT SEXY.”
The incest obsession pushed this over the edge for me. The rest of it was mediocre, contrived, and rather harmless — absolutely nothing spectacular. The characters are still shells that telegraph their movements constantly. Jace has been neutered completely by his angst. Valentine isn’t scary. New werewolf Maia was introduced too fast. Dialogue is HORRIBLE. I don’t want to get into all the fanfic/P2P stuff in this review, because I feel like I beat it to death in the last one, but again, most of this content came from Clare, and you could tell. All of her most interesting stuff is the stuff she “borrows” from other people.
If the first one was a trainwreck, at least it was interesting. This one was not. Manufactured conflict between characters, plot happening because characters aren’t talking to eah other, shallow motives coming across as stupid ones, characters constantly reacting instead of being proactive, beyond obvious telegraphing that Jace is related to the Inquisitor (which: hello, Umbridge rip-off, and we can also add Lucius Malfoy into the Valentine cocktail along with Vader and Voldemort).
So anyway, yeah. I guess you could say reading this was an interesting experience.