Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 64

Narcissus in Chains--Chapter 2

One thing that I look for when I edit my books are conversations between two characters and/or internal dialogue where a character says something like "Usually it doesn't work this way" or "Gee, that's really out of character for him." Why do I look for this? Because my brain will notice that something is wrong with the plot in a fundamental way and is trying to fix it via a hand-wave. Sometimes this means I have to come up with a better explination. Sometimes it means I have to add or remove something else. Once in a while it means the whole bleeding mess is beyond salvage.

Why do I bring this up? Because this happens all the time in the Anita Blake books. ALL. THE. TIME.

Ronnie, Anita's friend, is in the apartment when this whole "We've kidnapped your friend" phone call happens. Anita has to explain this, even though a two year old with brain damage could figure out that bad shit just went down. Ronnie then says the following:

“That’s odd. Usually stuff like this builds up, it doesn’t just drop out of the blue.”

But it does. And because we suddenly can't have Blake with either of her two lovers for some reason unknown to man and God, there's no way for this to have built up at all. Six months of nothing, her dodging and avoiding the two biggest people in her life because she couldn't choose. I hate Twilight with a burning passion, but even Bella Swan had more guts than Anita has, romantically. So Anita hasn't been involved with preternatural politics, she hasn't been playing Servant to Jean Claude or Lupa to Richard's Alpha. The bad guys would look around and go "Gee. I guess she's not important to anybody. Oh, well. Moving on." And because we can't find an easy way to build this up...we don't.

Not that I'm opposed to having trouble dropped in your lap. I like that kind of plot. Part of the fun is figuring out how it happened and why. But obviously Hamilton's brain thought there was something wrong with this.

Now, to explain a little more about Blake, she's got a LONG history with the police. She was a vampire hunter before vamps were legal, and she's an executioner now. Whenever anything vampire or un-dead related goes down, the cops call her because she's supposed to be an expert. The procedurals have always been pretty shaky in this book, but I've ignored that most reads because there was always a promise of action and coolness.

Why do I say this? Because it's Ronnie who suggests star-sixty-nining the phone call to find out if they're really at the BDSM club. They are, and it's a pay phone. Blake, of course, didn't bother asking where the club is so she has to think very hard for a very, very long time about who could get her there.

This is why editing is such a wonderful thing. You hang up the phone, end scene, and start the next scene outside of the club with the sentence "I called Character X for directions and backup" But no. The whole point of this sequence is to justify Anita getting back in touch with Jean Claude.

Let me repeat this, just so you get it.

Chapter one established that Anita hasn't been in contact with either of her males for six fucking months, that she has been going out of her way to avoid talking to him, and that he has finally, finally, FINALLY decided to leave her alone (their relationship is a little Edward Cullenesque. Only he doesn't watch Anita sleep. Trust me, it is VERY disturbing to write that Jean Claude and Anita is healthier than Edward and Bella)  and chapter two has her calling him at the very first sign of trouble.

This is the first time the book wastes its pages. It will not be the last.

Now, if I were running a shapeshifter pack and I were not a shapeshifter myself, the first thing I'd do is institute a "Call the police" rule. As in "Call the police if nobody's dead" because the cops, in real life, are the people with the very big guns and in this universe should be the people with guns that could turn shapeshifters into tiny pieces. But having the police would ruin the fun and give Anita somebody to turn to that isn't Jean Claude or Richard. Ronnie, having lost the arguement to bring the cops into this mess, asks Anita who she's going to take with her to the grown-up's pain pen, and then figures out it's gonna be Jean Claude. She asks if maybe this isn't one of Jean Claude's plots (He'd do that) and Anita says that he knows she'd kill him if he tried. Ronnie asks if Anita could kill him, Anita stares her down, and we get the first of many, many, many advertisements for just how bad ass Anita is.

Something very like fear slid behind her eyes. I don’t know if she was afraid for me, or of me. I preferred the first to the last. “You could do it. Jesus, Anita. You’ve known Jean-Claude longer than I’ve known Louie. I could never hurt Louie, no matter what he did.”

One: All your friends should be afraid for you, Anita. Your moral decline began a long time ago but it takes a fucking swan dive after this book.

Two: YO. LAURELL. Your characters are bad-ass when they do bad-ass things on camera. So far we have had Anita bitch about how hard it is to get her Sig-Saur under her mini-skirt and choose not to go to the cops when one of her emotionally stunted charges gets kidnapped. Stop riding on her actions in the previous books and have her do something awesome in THIS one.

Ronnie asks her why she has to be so scary. She goes on a long ramble about how "her" shapeshifters are only safe because everybody else is scared of her (...I don't remember that.) and then out comes over the top line number one:

"They fear my threat. I'm only as good as my threat."

 No. You're only as good as the things you can actually do. Your threat is no good if you couldn't actually pull off what you're threatening to do. The tone of this conversation would make "bluff" a far, far better choice. Ronnie points out again how out of character for any human being Anita's reaction actually is, and Anita just shrugs it off.

Again: This is why you cut to the club immediately after the phone call. We don't have to watch Anita have hysterics, or not have any, in this case. And we don't have to play "Ring around The Plot" the way we are right now.

The last sentence in the chapter is how Anita dials the number for Jean Claude's resting place and then waits for Ronnie to leave the room because "I didn't want her to see me cry."

The two most powerful sentences in any piece of writing are the first one and the last one. The first one is THE most important, as it gets the reader engaged. The last one is secondary, but just as necessary, because it provides the reader with closure.

The problem here. LKH used this entire chapter to convince us that Anita is a tough-as-nails bitch who won't even blink when one of her charges is kidnapped and who would shoot someone she loves in a very deep, very fucked up way. And then she blew it all by having the last image in the chapter be that of Anita getting all sobby.

Oh yeah, and that's the end of the chapter. It's going to take one fuck of a long-ass time for Anita to get to that fucking club.

Narcissus In Chains--Overview and chapter one

I want to get this out of the way before we go any further. I don't beat other books down because I want to feel better about my own writing.

When you're a would-be writer and you get rejected over and over and over again, there are two paths you can take. You can assume that the publishing world just doesn't get you, man, or you can understand the painfully obvious truth: those terrible writers you hate are still better than you.

As much as I hate to say it (and you guys have NO. IDEA. how much this hurts) Laurel K. Hamilton, Stephenie Meyer, Hubbard, John Norman and even Cassandra Clare are writing gods compared to me. They are published. They are popular. They have something, some spark of ability, some marvelous coloring of word, phrase, or plot, that my writing sadly lacks. Otherwise, I'd be published too. You know. For real. I respect them for what they've accomplished, and accept that I am not that good and never will be. Those of you who read my self published books ought to understand this, if nothing else. I am not self publishing because I want to be a famous, rich writer in spite of the mountain of rejection letters I got. I am self publishing because I have given up.

But there is a difference between respecting these professionals for the pure accomplishment of being professionals, and saying that their work does not suck. Their work freaking sucks. Meyer's books are colorless and unhealthy. John Norman hates women, Cassandra Clare doesn't give a shit about what she's copied as long as it's shiny, and Hubbard was a sad old man who had consumed far, far too much booze and drugs in his long, lonely downward spiral, who was also responsible for some of the worst violations of human rights and dignity in human history. I love to hate them, partially because I never liked their work to begin with.

The same cannot be said for Laurel K. Hamilton.

I started out as a huge fan of her books. Her narrative voice is addictive crack, her heroines are kickass, her ability to present a plot is very, very good. Even now, when I hate every fucking word she puts out, I have to admit she knows how to present those first, all important pages. She does it so well that I continually fall off the wagon and start reading her work again. I know I shouldn't. I know I will be sadly dissapointed in what I read, but...

Let's back up for a second.

Way back in the eighties, when your only choices for vampire/human relations were Dracula and Buffy-the-movie, when urban fantasy was not even a thing, Laruel K. Hamilton published Guilty Pleasures, in which a vampire hunter has to cooperate with vampires to save her friend...and also has to deal with vamps being legal people for the first time, ever. Guilty Pleasures gets its name from the vamp-run strip club Jean Claude the vampire runs as a front for other things. And unlike Twilight, the vampires are not, and never will be the good guys, although Jean-Claude came pretty close. He was hot. Scenes between him and Anita were hot. A good time was had by all.

A little while later, Richard the werewolf was introduced as the other member of the love triangle. I was young enough not to consider this the unavoidable love triangle, yet, but I was old enough to get frustrated with Anita, fast. I liked both Jean-Claude and Richard equally, I didn't want to pick between them, and as the books progressed, I REALLY wanted Anita to just fucking pick one and get back to the kick-ass awesome paranormal politics plots I was actively reading the books for.

I forget which book Richard proposed in (Anita accepted), but I think things started getting resolved in Burnt Offerings, when Richard shape-shifted on top of Anita, freaking her out and sending her straight to Jean-Claude. In Blue Moon, Richard, Jean-Claude and Anita formed some kind of metaphysical...triad...thing in which the powers of one individual were greatly augumented by those of the other two. This was a huge boon for Jean-Claude and Richard, who had become Master of the City and Alpha, respectively, and could use the power boost to keep from getting demoted, aka made very, very dead. For Anita, this was more problematic.

Anita Blake was the first professional character I reluctantly had to name a Mary Sue. Her powers increased with every book, starting with her ressurecting an entire graveyard in The Laughing Corpse. Her necromancy powers gave her an increasing hold over vampires, to the point where a rival to Jean-Claude was willing to jump through extremely complicated hoops in order to force Anita to his side. Plot began to revolve around her exclusively. Half of my wanting her to just fucking fuck already was because I hoped her settling down would pull the plot back to the relm of possibility. Because remember, kiddies, a good character doesn't cause the problems. They just solve them.

Blue Moon promised resolution that actually made me really excited. Anita would not, it seemed, be choosing between Jean Claude or Richard, but rather would have both Jean-Claude AND Richard. The dynamics, I thought, would be very cool. Equally exciting was the prospect of having active plots in the novels again. The Murder of the Book would no longer be second fiddle to Anita's romantic issues, and not being shackled to Primary Plot Position would, bizzarely enough, allow that romance to grow. I couldn't wait for the next book, and boy was I happy.

Obsidian Butterfly was probably my favorite book in the series. Sure, we had neither Jean-Claude nor Richard to advance that plot, but we were reintroduced to Edward, the psychotic vampire-killer who killed monsters because only monsters presented any challenge at all, anymore. When we last saw him, he'd promised Anita that he and she would fight to the death one day, and damn if you didn't know that Edward could probably take her, necromancer powers and all. In OB Edward is revealed to have a weird secret life a'la Dexter--he has a fiancee, who has two kids, and he is protective as fuck of this proto-family. Edward called Anita to Arizona to help him deal with a vampire problem that turned out to be two mayan vampires who both believed they were gods.

Don't get me wrong. All of these books included more sex than you could shake a dildo at. They were also violent as fuck, sometimes at the same time. Anita was grating whenever she had to interact with a female, most of the villians--and heroic characters, for that matter--were one-sided cardboard cut outs. But Laurel K. Hamilton still played a good game and in OB she had never been better. Some of the sex scenes pushed my envelope and nearly triggered my gag reflex, and the main villain had a serious eyelid fetish (his. skin. was. blinking) but none of that, not my discomfort at some of the descriptions, not my total disgust at the leopard orgy scene, not my misgivings about some of Anita's choices, could distract me from the ultimate pleasure that book was. Better yet, Anita went home at the end of OB. Back to Richard and Jean-Claude, back to the complex and challenging life that lay ahead of her as Servant to the Master of St. Louis and as Lupa to Richard's Alpha. I was dead certain the next book was going to be good. 

The next book was Narcissus in Chains.  

How bad is it? Let me put it this way. Every book I have done for this blog so far? Are books that I read before I started blogging. Yes, my lovelies. I read Mission Earth, Captive of Gor and City of Bones for the hell of it. I'd heard that these books were bad, and hey, I liked bad books. I read them, I loved them.

I have never finished reading Narcissus in Chains. I have read books about sparkling vampires, chained kidnapped love slaves, HP knockoffs, Lakes that have sex with you, Charmed ripoffs that find the bad guys using Google Earth, and the granddaddy of all terrible books, The Caterpillar's Question, and this is the book that broke me. It broke me because, unlike all the other books I've blogged so far, I read it expecting it to be good. I had high expectations. I was excited to have it, I could not wait for more Anita awesome, and I remember this weird, floating, funny dread that got deeper and deeper the more I read.

What happened? Well, fans and former fans of the Anita 'verse have a lot of theories. One of them is that LKH's personal life went to shit. Another is that her contract with her old publishers expired and, as they informed her that she shouldn't write porn in her books (meaning, not that porn shouldn't be in her books, but that SHE, specifically, shouldn't write it) (because she couldn't) and wanted a great deal of editing done that she did not wish to have done, when she jumped publishers she got a no-editing clause in her contract. Another theory is that she just plain lost her mind. All of these are questionable. I believe in the second option, personally, but that's mostly because LKH's personal life is, to be honest, none of my fucking business. But regardless of the reason, one thing is very, very obvious. For nine wonderful books, LKH not only did not suck, she was one of my favorite authors.

Immediately afterwards her quality dropped so hard it exterminated the dinosaurs.

So without further ado...here we fucking go.

We open with Anita and her best friend Ronnie sitting in their car discussing Anita's love-life.

There is a test somewhere that requires two women to sit together and have a conversation about something other than men. Personally? I think this rule is bullshit. It ignores a fundamental with writing: Dump everything you don't need. There are two reasons to have characters talk to each other. Develop interpersonal relationships, or advance the plot by talking out the problems. And if you're constrained for time, you might not have a chance to have a guy-free moment with the girls. And oh, Jesus I forgot how fast-paced LKH's writing is. There's something about her flow that's kind of like honey. This is gonna be painful, isn't it?

The point of the conversation is which guy Anita should have. This was when my younger self got confused, because I'd been pretty sure this was settled at the end of Blue Moon.

And then Anita points out that she hasn't seen either dude for six months.

Uh...girl? I'm pretty sure this means you're not dating either of them.

Also? Anita dresses like a hooker. Consistantly. When she's supposed to be working as a vampire hunter/paranormal expert on loan to the cops. This is usually explained away as her being fresh in from a date, but I remember one costume several books ago where the slits in the skirt ran up to her belly button. I remember this because it took her three pages to think through how to put her gun away without flashing her unmentionables to the whole world, only to give up and just do it anyway, with Richard, I think, there to hide said ladybits from view. This would be alright if Anita were presented as that type of character, but there's this facade of "former good girl" that doesn't exactly mesh with "let's go to the crime scene in a corset, tights and heels."

Also-also? She goes everywhere armed to the teeth. In fact, you could argue that Anita doesn't need a concealed carry licence because nothing she carries could ever be concealed.

Anita and Ronnie are on their way back from a club. Because they had a car-fight over Anita's love-life, our heroine is now walking around the city wearing two inch heels. I like heels, but I only wear them when I know I'll be spending most of the day sitting down. If I am not cautious, I will utterly wreck my feet.

Anita gets into her house, Ronnie following her and apologizing, when the phone rings. Anita picks it up and...oh, God. We're there already.

I forgot how much I hated this. I got to this mention and...no, no, it's okay. We're going to continue.

It's a member of the wereleopard pack that Anita is sheltering. EVERYTHING in this universe, apparently, has a were-form humans can catch--cool fax: blood donors in this world have to be tested for lycanthropy. That's how Richard the Overpowered Werewolf became a werewolf--and the wereleopards became Anita's through a weird kind of rescue thing. Anyway, another wereleopard has been kidnapped. His name is Nathanial.

Uh...I'm gonna cut the rest of this review as a trigger warning. BE WARNED. Okay?



This is where LKH's writing starts to fall apart, incidentally. Apparently in the Anita-verse being abused makes you crave that kind of abuse. Nathanial was abused during BDSM sessions with the former Alpha. In the real world this would mean that Nathanial would be REALLY careful about being chained up, would only use doms with good bounderies, definately employ safewords, and basically do everything to keep himself and his lover safe--first, because that's what victims of sexual assault do to avoid being triggered, and second, because he's a freaking leopard inside. This is not a house cat, boys and girls. This is a thing that can and will eat you.

In the Anita-verse Nathanial seeks out situations where he loses all control over his own safety. And he's gotten himself into one such situation now, and Anita must go rescue him. Here's an idea of how clueless this description is:

A healthy bottom will say stop when he’s had too much or he feels something bad happening, but Nathaniel wasn’t that healthy.

Fuck me, at least Fifty Shades of Gray had the sense to have Christian give Ana a safeword. And it's not stop, LKH, because stop is the word you use when you're in scene. And if you're not healthy enough to safeword there is no fucking way you're going to BDSM bars. The sight of chains alone is probably enough to freak you out.

Anyway, Anita and the wereleopard on the phone info dump for a few minutes--which translates to pages and pages of minutae--the wereleopard is yanked off the phone and one of the kidnappers comes on. Awful nice of Leopard-Dude, AKA Gregory, not saying up front "Anita, these guys have a gun to my head". The kidnappers want Anita to come to the club Narcissus in Chains to liberate her "pets".

End of chapter.

Next Chapter: How hard is it for an overpowered necromancer to go to a bondage club? Well, if you're Anita Blake, everything is hard.

Literally. 

City of Bones--chapter 22+Epilogue

So in case you missed it, Clary and Jace are brother and sister. And Valentine, apparently, had no clue he had a daughter because his first reaction is "what the fuck is this shit?"

It's interesting that this is the second time he's been on screen, and the first time he and the main character have interacted, and I'm not scared of him at all. He's less bad guy and more "Cardboard cut out". I think it's because he hasn't directly affected the main character and there's nothing particularly threatening about his apperance.

Yes, folks, we're going back to Harry Potter for a minute.

Voldemort is scary. Not as scary as, say, the Crimson King or Saron, but scary in his own way. Voldemort is about as present in HP as Valentine is in City of Bones. The Crimson King and Saron? Are LESS present. In fact Saron never appears in Lord of the Rings in person AT ALL. Part of what makes these characters scary is how the other characters act when they are mentioned. Saron is treated as horrifically demented and evil. Voldemort is so scary to the wizards, they're afraid to even say his own name. We don't learn that name until several chapters in, well after the concept of "Bad Guy" is established.

Nobody in this book presents themselves as scared of Valentine. He's just Valentine, dude of hearts and flowers. Nobody says "You shouldn't talk about that" or "nobody goes there anymore" or anything of the kind. He's presented just kind of "Whoops, bad guy" and that's it. The way other characters treat his memory indicates to us that they are not afraid of him, and so we, by extension, are not scared of him either.

The second thing that made Voldemort scary is how he affected the main character's life. He killed Harry's Parents and condemned him to live in a closet for years and years. He put the other student's lives at risk, and he caused the death of a fellow student (Cedric Diggory) before he even managed to come back to life. The Crimson King is another example of this kind of villain. He appears in Dark Tower exactly once, dead at the end of the seventh book. But his presence radiates from about the third book on, and you come to hate him for what he's done.

Valentine's actions do not seem to adversely affect Clary's life. Yes. He kidnaps her mother. But that moment feels secondary due to the plot's structure. Jace invading Clary's life is the primary conflict. Her mother's kidnapping feels like it comes third in line to the shenanigans involving vampires. So when he shows back up, you don't really care.

And last, but most importantly, nothing about Valentine is scary.

Think back, boys and girls, to the first time we met Voldemort in person. We go through HP and the Sorcerer's Stone being told how scary and awful Voldemort is. He's a bad dude, he kills people, he drinks a unicorn's blood to survive, he sets up terrible accidents to get the main character killed, and so we are primed to have our first meeting with him be awful...and he turns out to be a disembodied face on the back of another character's head. 

We go from formulaic coming-of-age-with-wands type story to freaking Lovecraft. THAT is how you introduce a bad guy.

And then the second time we meet Voldemort, he's a life-sucking psychic apparation manifesting via Ginny Weasley's soul-sucked body and a mysterious book. This time we're a little more ready for it, and we are still not at all ready to go from shiny kid's story to freaking Cthulhu. And his third apperance is just as bad. After that he gets the normal entrance-and-exit moments, walking in and out of rooms and things, but by then the sense of eldrich dread is firmly established. We first met this dude as a face on the back of another man's head. He is bad news.

The first time we meet Valentine he walks into a room. We're primed for something good, but we don't get it. And because we don't get it, we have no dread of him at all.

So Valentine, Jace and Clary...talk about things. About parents and children and missing moms and blah blah blah. Apparently Valentine took Jace, killed one of the members of his circle and that dude's son to make it look like he'd burned himself to death, flipped his ring upside down to make his name's initial (M for Morgenstern) look like a W (For Weyland) and just never left the house. Also, apparently in Idris, they don't check picture IDs or even bother checking the homes of Valentine's old buddies to make sure they weren't harboring a doomsday weapon or other fugetives. I would really HATE to be a part of this world, matter of fact. It must be a breeze to get away with murder here. Oh, wait. VALENTINE HAS.

And Valentine idolizes Satan for refusing to serve. Note: The book never states what Lucifer refused to serve. God is still He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. And it pisses me off because now you're mentioning the fucking adversary and not discussing the heart of the entire Religion. THE STORY OF SATAN HAS NO POINT WITHOUT INCLUDING GOD IN THE NARRATIVE. It's like trying to tell the story of drugs without mentioning that you were once sober.

So then Valentine destabalizes the whole situation even more by pointing out that Clary and Jace are siblings, and this is presented as a hugely shocking thing, even though the reader figured this out ten chapters ago. Jace is all in denial because he was kissing his sister. Then we have to read Valentine's spin on the situation, which we don't care about because, again, Magical Hitler. 

Luke shows up. More posturing is preformed. This is the climax of the book and everyone is standing around AND TALKING. Luke and Valentine swordfight, Luke gets stabbed, Valentine throws him on the ground and starts to stab him, Clary does the perfect woman thing and throws herself between the blade and her uncle, Jace sees that Valentine intends to kill his own daughter and enemy at the same time and stops the fight himself. Valentine tries to cover up his intentions and Clary gives the unavoidable speech about what a real monster is. Jace chooses the right side against his father. There is a fight. Valentine escapes. Jace collapses sobbing on Clary's shoulder and repeats her name over and over and over. It's all very romantic.

  And it is so LONG and DRAWN OUT, and the fight is completely ABSENT of any kind of TENSION, that when Valentine escapes you're less "NO HOW CAN IT HAPPEN" and more "THANK YOU GOD THIS BOOK IS ALMOST OVER"

Not yet. One more chapter. The Epilogue. Which I'm doing here because I WANT TO BE DONE.

Clary's mom is still unconsious and in Magical Hospital. Luke is...uh, not there. Simon is supportive. Clary and Jace take a magical romantic bike ride. Even though they are Brother and Sister. Emotional closure is provided and the book is over.

...

THE BOOK IS OVER!

I'm going to go do things that do not involve this terrible book, and I advise you to do the same.

City of Bones Chapter 21

Planet Bob is eating my lunch, I swear to God. I hope you guys will like it, and I also hope you will consider it as part two of a four part thing. I know where I'm going with it, I LIKE where I am going with it, but I am SO FUCKING NERVY about this.

Also, guys? I don't recommend books often. I'm recommending this one. I know nothing about the dude that writes it, I stumbled across it trying to promote my own shitty writing, and it is FREAKING AMAZING. Buy it. Buy it and love it. Buy it and tell me what you think of it so we can both gush together.

And finally: My finger is doing well. I have shucked the sock-like bandage they mummified me in, I am taking the goddamned antibiotic they gave me. I hate antibiotics. I always forget to take them. But I am on this one. There will be no delay in publishing schedule.

And now, back to the suck.

It occurs to me that I may have ended yesterday's blog prematurely. Luke ends his life story with "And the rest you know." So I have one important question.

How does he know what she knows?

Seriously. For all he knows the Murder Trio kept Clary in freaking gauze between when mom got nabbed and now. There's lots of things he should be trying to explain, and a lot more things he should be trying to spin, given that he's a Downworlder and all.

So after Luke tells his story Clary FINALLY does the math and figures out that Valentine's her daddy. Big. Fucking. Whoop. The good news is, we  will not have to play catchup with this anymore. The bad news? Is about two chapters away. And I'm saving it. Sorry.

So Clary is all like WHY WOULD YOU NOT TELL ME MY DAD IS MAGICAL HITLER?  And Luke is like, "Uh, Magical Hitler." And then...well, allow me to let the book speak for itself.

“Don’t get upset? You’re telling me that my dad is a guy who’s basically an evil overlord, and you want me not to get upset?”

 “He wasn’t evil to begin with,” Luke said, sounding almost apologetic.

 “Oh, I beg to differ. I think he was clearly evil. All that stuff he was spouting about keeping the human race pure and the importance of untainted blood— he was like one of those creepy white power guys. And you two totally fell for it.”

First,

Thank you for pointing out the freaking obvious.Second: If even you, the author's self insert understands that Following Valentine Was A Very Bad Thing, WHY THE FUCK ARE THREE QUARTERS OF THE PRIMARY CAST CHILDREN OF THE SS? PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME SO THAT I STOP HAVING THE DESPERATE NEED TO TAKE A FUCKING SHOWER.

Seriously. Take away the magic and this book is fan fiction ABOUT HITLER. This is EXACTLY why I hate this series, I think. The author wrote it because she wanted to redeem her favorite character, Draco, from being a whiny little shit, and so she did...while either neglecting the implications of her source material or choosing to ignore them.

Now, if you're still having trouble understanding why this is such a terrible book, allow me to translate this into Godwins' territory, okay?

IRL, this story would be about Eva Braum's daughter by Adolph discovering who her daddy is, while being aided in her quest to save her mother by the children of Gobbles and Mengele and mentored by Himmler.

The author OBVIOUSLY did not intend this. NO SANE HUMAN BEING WOULD DO THIS TERRIBLE THING. But because the author did not give two shits about her source material and never has, that's what we've got. THANK YOU GOD this woman included the quoted paragraph. Otherwise I'd be totally disgusted with every single thing about this book, rather than most of it.

And in case you'd like to do the same thing? Meaning file the serial numbers off your fan fic and publish it? Do it, by all means. But take three seconds to research what the original author's using as a source, so you don't accidentally have your main character be Hitler's offspring.

Back to the suck.

Luke calls Clary on her hypocritsy, pointing out that she was spouting the "ALL DOWNWORLDERS ARE EVIL" hardline she'd been fed by the Murder Trio. WHO ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE SS.

Sorry. It's just...SO FUCKING OBVIOUS.

So Luke asks Clary what happened, and she tells him, and then points out that her Daddy now has everything and she has nothing, and Luke points out no, he's got a whole wolf pack he'd love to shove up Valentine's unmentionables, if only he knew where Valentine was and...

..no. No, you're not. You are SERIOUSLY not going to have Clary pull Valentine's hideout OUT OF HER ASS at the eleventh hour. PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE NOT--

“What if Renwick isn’t a person, though?” said Clary. “What if it’s a place? Renwick’s. Like a restaurant, or . . . or a hotel or something.” 

Luke’s eyes went suddenly wide. He turned to Gretel, who was advancing on him with the medical kit. “Get me a phone book,” he said.

NO. NO. NO. NO, Clary DOES NOT GET TO DO THIS. If she had been a more active, intelligant character--namely IF SHE DID NOT HAVE TO HAVE HER PARENTAGE SPELLED OUT FOR HER IN TRIPLICATE--she'd get a pass. But this chick has the intuition of grass seed. She does not get to do this. I will grant no passes on this.

And then...this happens.

She didn’t reply. There was a hard knot at the center of her stomach. She found herself trying to breathe around it. The beginning of a thought tickled at the edge of her mind, wanting to resolve itself into a full-blown realization. But she pushed it firmly down and away. She couldn’t afford to give her resources, her energy, to anything but the issue immediately at hand.

The average reader might give this a pass. But guys? I write. I might not be very good at it, but I do write. And I do produce paragraphs like this. Editing has helped me understand what these paragraphs mean. This is an attempt at the writer's subconsious to point something out, or else allow for some moderate character development that the writer feels uncomfortable with. How do I know she's uncomfortable with whatever was behind this paragraph? It's that phrase, "She found herself". There are two sets of words that I edit out whenever I find them. There is probably some fancy name for them in real editing, but I call them waffle words and filter words. Waffle words are the words a writer uses when they feel uncomfortable committing to an absolute. "Seemed, almost, probably" are the big offenders here. When a writer says "she seemed to be going" they either mean, "She is going, but I don't feel comfortable committing to the action" or "She's going to fake you out in ten minutes and I'm spoiling it by cheating at narration." Filter words are a slightly different animal. Filter words are "She saw" or "She felt" or "She heard/remembered/dreamed" ect. These are words the writer puts in front of a sentence they feel uncomfortable with. I do this a lot with action scenes, and you guys do not see half of when it happens because I edit it out every fucking time I remember to do it. Filter words are horrible creatures that sap a scene of energy simply because I don't feel comfortable letting my heroine have the crap beat out of her.

This paragraph was kept because of the abomination that's going to happen in the next couple of chapters. It was written in the first place, IMHO, because there was about to be character development that the author didn't want to deal with. My judgement, take it with a grain of salt, but given the shitstorm that is about to befall us, I do not think Clare would have filtered that paragraph if she intended it to be ham-fisted foreshadowing. Our minds, blog readers, are smarter than we are, and that goes double for writer's minds.

Anyhoo, back to the suck.

So the werewolves go through the yellow pages to find Renwick's, and fail to find it. So then Clary asks Simon to Google it.

Several years ago, I blogged about a book called Bone Magic, where the main characters found the bad guy VIA GOOGLE EARTH. Kids, it looks like we have come full circle at last.

Also? If the only way to find Magic!Hitler's hideout is to GOOGLE THE GODDAMNED ADDRESS, it looks like mundanes have a leg up on Shadowhunters. Just sayin.

And Renwick's is in a smallpox hospital.

Okay. I have to ask this now, given that Cassandra Clare is the one that shoehorned it in there: Are Shadowhunter's vaccinated against disease? It's a good question. I had the same problem with Harry Potter. See, the goal of vaccination is not to protect EVERY person from the disease. It's to create a thing called "herd immunity", where, if a single individual is infected with a disease--say, smallpox--the other people near them--the herd--will have been vaccinated, and the disease will go no further than that individual. The stupidity propagated by Jenny McCarthy has broken herd immunity for several diseases, one of which I believe is Polio. And I'm willing to argue that even Chicken pox is worth vaccinating against (Chicken Pox=shingles, and possibly ongoing nerve issues and herpes simplex. It. NEVER. Goes. Away.). Shadowhungers, like the Wizards they're based on, would comprise a "herd." Is this herd immunized?

This is a serious question. The Modern World has, so far, avoided a pandemic. I have to call this a miracle worked by both modern science and the hand of God. All we need, boys and girls, is for one person with an air-transmitted disease with a lethality rate of over 70% to take ONE plane ride, and the entire world will be fucked. And Valentine is now camped out in a place that harbored people with one of the worst diseases in the history of everything. Smallpox wiped out the Natives LONG before the White Man decided to camp out here. One infected Shadowhunter could wipe out most of them while the mundanes watched in horror.

So they go off to murder Valentine, and it is revealed that the Werewolves are running a takeout Chinese restaurant in their spare time.

This is where I'd normally say "WHY ARE WE NOT READING THAT BOOK" but the fact is, that book already exists. If you have not read Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series, or better yet, the Alpha/Omega series, go fix that. NOW.

(I visited PB's amazon page for the first time ever looking up that link, and I am now totally pissed. There is BOTH a A/O book AND a Mercy Thompson book upcoming AND NEITHER ARE AVALIABLE NOW. The universe, my beloved friends, the universe is not fair.)

And oh, hey, STORY TIME!

When I was a kid, I visited one of my parent's old foster kids. I was at that age where I thought EVERYONE lived the way I did. Poor people lived in Afganistan. When we visited this guy, I saw some toys in the backyard. They were terribly broken, missing wheels and heads and so forth. Among these items was a rocking horse. I did not like rocking horses, per se, but I had recently gotten a book on carosel horses, and I badly wanted one. I wanted the ribbons and the bows and the pretty roses. So when I saw the broken rocking horse I did everything but demand my father ask the old foster kid if I could go dumpster diving through his trash and take the broken rocking horse home.

The thing I did not realize was, that "trash?" That was the family's toys. My head was shoved so far up my own little privelaged butt that I could not imagine anyone settling for broken dump trucks and rocking horses when there were Barbies and Tonkas aplenty. I remember this with distaste and embarisment. I am ashamed that I was ever that great an idiot.

Why do I bring this up?

The vehicles stretched in a line down the block and around the corner. A convoy of were-wolves. Clary wondered how they’d begged, borrowed, stolen, or commandeered so many vehicles on such short notice.

MAYBE THESE ARE THEIR OWN CARS, YOU BIGOTED BITCH. Nowhere in this book does it say Werewolves can't hold a job. In fact, given that Mercy has spoiled me for wolves forever, I'm assuming that they're paying Luke dues to be a member of the pack.


More hamfisted foreshadowing occurs while Clary explains about Jace.

Also, we find out that Luke has been Alpha for this pack...oh, I'm sorry, "Clan Leader" for less than a week. He saw Joycelyn vanish, and decided the best thing he could do was go committ murder.

There are six zillion better reasons for him to be pack Alpha. I blame the writer for this one.

And, no shit? Clare needs to stop making me think of Mercy Thompson. Otherwise I'm abandoning this book in favor of someting chock-full of werecoyote awesome.

They get to Roosevelt Island, the smallpox center. The paragraphs in this section are nearly impossible to read, and I'm getting pissed trying to make sense of Cassandra Clare's disorganized thoughts. This is the first book she ever got published. The very first one. I do not see how this is possible.

The long and short of it is, they sneak inside. The wolves clash with the Forsaken--which, remember, are normal humans inscribed with runes--and the murdering that then occurs is pretty graphically described. There is some pack-related posturing--I am now strongly craving Adam Hauptman and Warren, not to mention Mercy and Bran and Charles--and they make it into the building with Clary and Luke in one piece.

We then get a pointless tour of the luxurious facility. You know, the consentration camps were pretty cozy for the SS. I remember a couple stories about how the soldiers used to get so drunk, they wouldn't bother turning out the lights. they'd just shoot the bulbs out.

Then they find Clary's Mom. Clary makes no effort to rescue her, in part because the bed where Mom is kept drugged is probably booby trapped, and in part because two of Valentine's lackeys show up. Blackwell and Pangborn.

 I am 90% certain that Pangborn was a Harry Potter character that I've blocked out to save memory space.

Also, I very, VERY badly want this chapter to end, but there's no sign of that anytime soon.

Luke kills Blackwell, and then tells Clary to run. She does. She can't get any weapons because they are all spelled to the walls. I am sure they are. She keeps running. Why is this chapter still going on? Clary keeps running. She hits a room where she finds Jace standing at a window. She tells Jace they have to run, and Jace says no, everything's a huge misunderstanding, Luke should call the wolves off and everyone should have a nice, big long talk.

Then Valentine comes in the room, sees Clary, and says, basically, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT."

And Jace says the most beautiful thing a bad book bitch could ever hear:

Jace caught at her wrist. “No.”
 She could not contain her disbelief. “But, Jace—” 

“Clary,” he said firmly. “This is my father.”

It can only be what it is, folks.



NEXT CHAPTER: Did I mention yet? That the Mortal Instruments was Cassandra Clare's Ron/Ginny incest fic? Do you need brain bleach yet? Do you? do you?

City of Bones--Chapter 20

So now we get Uncle Luke's life story. And we start off with the many, many, many unintentional implications of having ALL the main characters be either directly related to the Voldemort clone, or be his minions. Because, remember kiddies, Rowling based her Death Eaters off the SS. So these guys, by means of being a copy of a copy, are a copy of the SS too. And they have a sworn war with demons. Who have not shown themselves to be bad in and of themselves. They've shown themselves to be attached to Valentine and bad, but not bad for the sake of badness.

Hence, the Shadowhunters are racist bigots. And they built their city out of shit that repells demons. This stuff is every racist's DREAM, is all I will say.

So Luke relates how Valentine--whose last name is "Morgenstern" because referencing Satan in this book hasn't happened often enough (I refuse to google this to prove I am right, but I am pretty sure Morgenstern=Morning Star, which was one of Lucifer's nicknames.) pulled a Jonestown and built himself a cult. By being genuinely nice to people. He goes nuts over his father's death, and I have to call bullshit on that one. Clary's mother is, of course, the only moderator and CAN HEAL HIM WITH HER LOVE. He does scary things around her but not in front of her, because if he loses his beard he's up shit creak without a paddle.

Then he and Luke go hunting werewolves and Luke gets bitten, and Valentine says he should kill Luke himself, but he can't, so here's a knife, go do the honorable thing and kill yourself. Instead Luke runs away, finds the wolf pack that turned him, killed their leader and became leader himself. A couple years later Joycelen finds Luke and she's got a kid with her. No, it's not Clary. It's a little boy named Jonathan Christopher.

You know, the name that Clary was told was her father's.

And of course Valentine's cheese slides off his cracker and he allies himself with the demons--you know, the things he swore to fight against?--so that he could kill the Downworlders--you know, the things he hates because they're part demon. Makes no sense, but they steal the Mortal Cup, and I have to say it sounds like the Shadowhunters are less than security conscious, if you know what I mean.

Oh, hey, Joycelyn's son, Jonathan Christopher? he has white blond hair.

There is a fight as Valentine tries to destroy the Accords--the thing that keeps Shadowhunters and Downworlders from killing each other--and Luke beats him, and Valentine decides the very best thing he can possibly do is take the cup and go burn his house down with his son and himself inside.

Joycelyn, preggers, runs away with her unborn child who is Clary. Luke follows her and finds her in New York, and pledges himself to protect her because he has loved her since childhood.

We learn absolutely nothing from this story, except for a thing hinted at that I don't want to bring up yet.

Also, it is the whole chapter. So right while we're building up to the climax, we had to take a break and let that shit happen. Great.

I have to go change bandanges now. No snarky. Frankly, that was all so boring there isn't much for me to snark.

Other than WHY ARE JACE AND THE LIGHTWOODS THE FREAKING GOOD GUYS?

Someone please answer this. They have yet to develop a single positive quality.

City of Bones Chapter 20

Yeah. So I'm as addicted to doing this as you guys are to reading it.

Ian--Hi Ian!--brought up an interesting thing in the comments, and I wanted to bring it up here, even though it's basically what I've been saying since I started blogging like this. He mentioned that he missed the names from Harry Potter. And it brought up what the biggest issue with this book is:

It's derivitive. It's derivitive without bothering to figure out what made the source material so valuable. Ian brought up the Voldemort/Valentine connection (if you don't mind me taking that thought and running with it for a sec). There is a reason--a good one--for Voldemort to be Voldemort. One, it's a scary name to a kid, and two, to an adult it sounds like the pretensious nonsense a mixed up emo sociopath would come up with to make himself sound awesome. Ian said this. I did not. I think he's absolutely right, and that's probably why, after book two, then name stopped driving me batshit. Finding out that Tom Riddle pulled that name out of his psychotic ass made it perfectly fine. It didn't matter that I didn't consiously acknowledge this. My brain got it, and that made the world okay.

So tell me, boys and girls, when you hear the name "Valentine" do you feel creeped out? Do you think of scariness and racism and self-importance and Hitler? Or do you just think of candy hearts with "Be Mine" printed on them? Because I think of candy hearts.

There's no thought put into this book, is what I'm saying. And because there's no thought, there's no grace. There's no beauty. And I, for one, did not give a shit when Hodge face-heeled and then died. Because I did not care about Hodge.

So last time, the Cup, Valentine and Jace all up and vanished while Clary sat and watched. Proving she is a useless bag of rocks and do NOT give me that "If she had tried she'd be killed" shit. I've hit that barrier about nine times with Casey Winter, a couple times in Starbleached and...sadly, I have yet to seriously hit it with Leythorne because he's (intentionally) an overpowered son of a bitch. My issues with him are less "he'll be killed" and more "He doesn't know how to do X yet and can't until after Y happens." The dynamic that makes scenes dramatic is when the character tries even WHEN they'll be killed.

Now it does turn out I was technically wrong. Hodge survived the wound long enough to write a letter and give Clary a long "Nobody understands me" speech about how even when he's helping Valentine, he's basically a good guy."

They said the same thing at Nuremburg.

Clary screams that Valentine killed Jace's dad and now he has Jace so Jace will die soon too, and Hodge says basically "Whatever" and walks out of the room.

Hodge stuck Clary in a magic bubble before the fighting, so some of her inaction gets a pass. ALL of it, though, is stupid. Especally as NOW she remembers she's got Jace's magic wand and can magic herself out of the bubble using shit she's never been trained in. She chases after "Imagoodguy" Hodge and is rescued by a werewolf.

Who drags her off dramatically and then reveals himself to be Uncle Luke. After, of course, Clary is knocked out again.

I read an article not too long ago that said you can't just shrug off being knocked out the way they do in Hollywood. After about a minute or two, you're talking about brain damage. After a few hours, it's a miracle if you will ever be able to talk or feed yourself again. Clary should be a veggitable.

So these are the same werewolves who rescued Clary and company from the vampires a couple chapters ago. All of whom are on Clary's side, because Luke is their alpha.

So you remember a few chapters back, how I said it's Jace's fault Clary's in this deep shit she's in? And how if he hadn't gotten in the way Clary would have had supernatural help? Uncle Luke would have found her, sheltered her, and most importantly of all, wouldn't have exposed her to traitors. 

Clary, natrually, repeats the lines that the Murder Trio fed her about how terrible Downworlders are, and accuses Luke of abandoning her and her mother. Luke tells her she's being a racist bitch, and then sighs and says "Well, you'll need to hear the whole story."

End of chapter.

Next chapter: I would have loved this book to death if it were about Luke and Simon. Can we have this book now please? 

State of the CW=OW.

Today's post comes in three flavors. The Good, the Bad and the ugly.

The Good: I am not dead.

The Bad: I MIGHT wind up having to push the release date for the next Starbleached book back by about a week. And posts here might get cut down to just a couple. And I will not be able to do a lot of other things involving fingers.

The Ugly:  I cut my finger at work. Left index. Which means I am currently typing this with a man down. And it is annoying and slow. But you deserve to know this and I deserve to vent.

Slicing my finger open was not the problem. I've done that before. The problem was that it was deep. Deep enough for bandaids to not work at all. I wrapped it up in gauze, tape and a "finger condom" (If you work in food service you know what this is) and worked through the rush for two hours. Then I changed the gauze.

Not only was it still bleeding, it was still bleeding just as badly.

So I ask my mom if we have gauze and antibiotics at home, because I will need them. She asks why. I explain why. She tells me to make the boss look at it. The boss hums at it, then decides maybe I need to go to the Urgent Care clinic here in town.

They are as useless as a screen door on a submarine. We go home. My stepfather tries to help me fix it. I wind up screaming because rubbing a deep wound is not helping. We decide to drive to the ER one town over, because it may need stitches.

At this point I feel like an idiot. I want to go home and put a bandaid on it, but I want to make sure, absolutely sure, that I don't need stitches. I go through the motions feeling like one of those people who go to the ER for a splinter or a cold, and I know everyone else feels the same way. The doctor looks at it, says "Oh, we'll clean that up, stop the bleeding and glue it back together. You'll be fine." He goes to a nurse and I clearly hear him say, "she's taking it off to look at it every two minutes."

No. I am not. But I have faith in the doctor.

The nurse comes over and asks me to take the gauze off so she can clean it. I do. I also drip blood on the floor trying to get my hand to the little tray. It's not a big cut but it is GUSHING, and by now it's been four hours since the slice. She tells me to hold on to my finger and not let go. Then she goes to the doctor and says, "You're sure you can glue that back together?"

My faith is shaken, but I hold onto my finger, gripping the painful part tightly, for fourty-five minutes solid. I do not let go. Not even when my right thumb starts screaming from holding unending pressure at the thirty minute mark. The doctor comes over and says "Let's have a look."

I take the gauze off. The cut is gushing. Pressure made no difference whatsoever.

The doctor says "Yep, that needs stitches."

I wound up with four of them. My left index finger is now in a sock-like bandage. I can compensate, but this blog post was a test of the system, so to speak, and I am not encouraged by my utter lack of typing skills. Tomorrow I shall continue editing come hell, high water or throbbing finger pain, but City of Bones, I am afraid, shall have a repreive until I get my index finger back.

 I am now going to take pain pills and go to bed.

City of Bones chapter 19+ Starbleached 2 Info

Business stuff first. The TENTATIVE title for Starbleached 2 is still Planet Bob. It's not going to focus on Adrienne, though she's still there, but rather on Bryan and Bob Harris, the dude from the cockpit in the first couple pages. Bob really surprised me when I was drafting out the story. As I may have said earlier, part of what this story is about is how our past defines our present and future. One thing that I'm exploring with this is how two people--in this case, Bryan and Mich--can come from a similar, horrible background and turn into who and what they are. It's one of my favorite things to think about. It is a lot of fun.

That said, this book is a horrible bitch to edit and I'm praying on my knees that you lot are going to like the end result.

Okay. On to what you really came here for. City of Bones.

When we last left our heroes, they had destroyed Dorothea's favorite tarot deck.

...as someone with a casual interest in tarot and the owner of several damn fine decks, I have this to say:

How does everyone react?

Jace says it should be bigger, Isabelle compares it to a toilet bowl. It's their version of the Holy Grail, and they're like...well, it should have more sparkles.

True fax: My family has collectively decided that one of my uncles will witness the Second Coming, settle into his mansion beside the Streets Paved With Gold and say "Well, the story was alright, but the special effects could be better."

And then Madame Dorothea betrays them to Valentine. BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE DOES. She's only helping the dude that wants to kill her and all her kind, and Downworlders are awful and evil things, and I do not think anyone connected with this book thought out this dynamic here. THIS DUDE IS MAGICAL HITLER AND YOU ARE HIS TARGET. WHY ARE YOU HELPING HIM, YOU TERRIBLE PERSON.

And then magic smoke comes out of the portal and turns Dorothea into a demon. BECAUSE OF COURSE IT DOES.

And it's the demon Abbadon.

...Clare, I've put up with a lot of shit from your book, including your decision to shit all over my religion because you have "issues" with it. I can accept this. But now you are giving me Left Behind flashbacks, and I couldn't even finish my reviews of that series. AND I SUDDENLY WANT TO, BECAUSE IT IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THIS BOOK.

Also. THAT IS NOT ABBADON.

Jace makes quips about New York and Staton Island and demon stink that aren't funny, because, and I don't know if anyone else noticed, BUT THERE IS A FUCKING DEMON IN THE FUCKING ROOM THREATENING TO FUCKING KILL YOU. Humor IS a defense mechanism, but that's more "Romantic tension" defense, and not "Raging demon." Or to quote the greatest movie of all time:

BEST. MACRO. EVER.And of course, everyone enters the fray, Jace leading, and of course the only one not participating is Waif-like Clary. This will, no doubt, be changed in the movie. Either that, or she's going to stand on the bannisters all wide eyed while the monster rushes at her a la Freddie Kruger. And one by one all of them fail, and Clary is wishing desperately for a weapon and then SIMON comes to the rescue.

SIMON saves the day.

The mundane.

With a bow and arrow that got left in his van.


You know, I was willing to give Clary a pass on being utterly fucking useless in a fight because she's a mundane and mundanes can't fight monsters.

Congradulations, Simon. You just blew her only excuse out of the water. There is now NO REASON why Clary can't be an active participant in her own survival. Except that if she did actually try to fight, there would now be no reason for anyone to come and rescue her.

Alec is injured, so they have to drive him back to the Institute, because no MORTAL facility would know how to heal Demon wounds. And they let Simon drive.

The hypocrisy in this book is killing me. They don't let mundanes know about Demons, and then despise mundanes for not knowing about Demons, but are perfectly willing to use mundanes to fight and survive against the demons.

Have I mentioned lately that Shadowhunters are horrible people? Because they are really, really horrible people.

Meanwhile, on the drive, Clary moans about how she knew the skylight Simon shot out was there, and she could have thrown something at the light if she'd wanted to, and how awful and useless she is.

You know, I've noticed in my own writing when characters start talking about negative character traits, how stupid actions are or how inexplicable someone's behavior is, and I, personally, think the events are fine, this is usually my subconsious saying THIS IS NOT HOW THE WRITING SHOULD WORK, STUPID.

They get to the institute. Logic says Hodge should chew them the fuck out for being stupid teenagers and this does not happen. Instead, while Alec is dying in the infirmary, Jace has a guilt trip out in the hallway so he can confess his love to Clary.

Bullshit. Jace does not feel guilt, because Jace has shown all the behaviors of a clinical sociopath. The words coming out of his mouth do not balance his actions. But he LURVES Clary so everything is alright, and she must comfort his Special Snowflake-ness and make the fact that his blood-brother is dying of demon venom in the next room.

Hodge interrupts them before Jace can complete his emotional reawakening and kiss Clary (GAG ME) and drags them both upstairs. They argue about things for a moment, and then Hodge said "Well, too bad you didn't get the cup." and Clary says "We did get the cup" and Hodge says "Really? Hey, Jace, you look like your dad, and it's time for both of you to die."

Yep. It's a Face-Heel Turn. One that you could probably see from the beginning because, for the ten THOUSANDTH TIME, the adults in this novel were all members of the magical SS. Hitler is back, Clary has the holy grail he was looking for, and Hodge, who has been badly punished for his role in trying to impliment a demonic genocide, now has all the leverage he needs to get back in good with his old boss.

So Hodge summons Valentine, and Clary, who could solve every problem in this book right now if she had a .45, stands there like an idiot and watches Hodge and Valentine interact. It basically runs like this:

Valentine: Give me the cup
Hodge: I want to go home
Valentine: home is wonderful, isn't it? Give me the cup.
Hodge: I want to go home.

Repeat ad nauseum. It's also a chance for exposition, but because we want to create SUSPENSE, nothing is fucking exposited.

Then Valentine picks up Jace, promises Hodge that Jace will "be with his father soon" shoots Hodge in the fucking heart with magic and then leaves. End of chapter.

I really hope you can see where this is going, because the nausea will be much, much worse if you don't.

City of Bones chapter 18

So, in theory, the driving plot behind this book has been Valentine kidnapping Clary's mom to get the Mortal Cup. I say in theory because the actual driving force is Jace, bigotry, angst and soap-opera style intrigue of the who-bones-whom variety. But we're going to stick with that theory because it is about to produce beautiful carnage for us.

See, while Clary was dealing with boy angst, she absently drew some runes on one of her sketches, and it brought the sketch to...uh, something involving feathers. The book is never very clear. By this, she discerns that you can use runes to draw an object--in this case, a coffee cup--into a drawing, then reach in later and pull it back out. How this is connected to runes making a sketch of a wing feel like feathers, I have NO fucking clue. And so, she discerns, her mother must have drawn the Mortal Cup into the Ace of Cups in Dorothea's tarot cards, and that's why she drew THAT card out of the pack!

Let me refresh you on Clary's history of discernment prior to her pulling Plot Device Fourty-Two out of her ass, shall we? Over the last seventeen chapters Clary has:

-Missed the fact that Jace, Isabelle and Alec are all murderous psychopaths
-Missed the fact that her mother wanted them to get the fuck out of town before Something Bad happened
-Missed the fact that Simon was in love with her
-Missed the fact that Jace is in love with her
-Missed the fact that "Uncle" Luke is just as involved in all of this as the rest of them.
-Missed the fact that Valentine is her fucking father.

Basically, this girl makes Bella Swan look like Sherlock Holmes, and we're talking about a character who frequently forgot to breathe. But, because the Plot says Clary figures out where the Mortal Cup is, she embarks on a chain of reasoning that I cannot follow for the life of me. These facts do not connect, but because The Plot needs it to happen, it happens. And so the same chick who cannot figure out that the boy doing everything but groping her in the alley to indicate his romantic interest is interested in her until AFTER she fucks up their relationship by kissing another boy works out that her mother painted a magic cup into a magical tarot card after having seen and handled said card exactly once. 

Miss Clare? I'm going to say this exactly once, using the 1000 words that people most commonly say:

PEOPLE. DO. NOT. WORK. THAT. WAY. 

I will buy House's logical jumps because he has displayed his ability to connect wildly disconnected facts into a buyable conclusion long before he pulled that tick off the patient's unmentionables. I will buy that Sherlock Holmes was able to get Moriarty's little red notebook because he's already discerned a Kossak assassin using hair and the Victorian Age's Tic-Tac shortage. But Clary Fray has demonstronably proven herself to be stupid. Not head in the clouds distracted, just stupid. She misses things that are bang-on-the-head obvious, such as her birthday falling way, way, way too close to the time when Valentine was still banging her mom. It's repeated over. And over. And over. And she doesn't pick up on it.

People compare this book to Star Wars because of the revelation that DUN DUN DUN Valentine is Clary's Dad. But do you know how many times it was hinted that Darth Vader was Luke's daddy? None. Oh, in the first movie Obi Wan drops that he knew Luke's Dad in a long speech, and the fact that he was Vader's teacher comes out when he and Vader are trading blows on the Death Star. But that's as close to a connection as we get from the characters. Empire dropped hints too, but they were more "WTF" than they were "Isn't that odd?" Luke seeing his own face inside of Vader's helmet, Vader having his helmet off in that once scene--it was short, you may not remember it--are part of what build up to that twist. But what made it a twist was that the actual connection itself is never even hinted at. Vader's romantic life is never brought up. Questions about Luke's parents are never brought up, save for the common "in my father's footsteps" trope. You know that Vader and the Emperor are after Luke because he is "the son of Skywalker". That's all you get.

In this book, two numbers are repeated over. And over. And over. And over. Valentine died sixteen years ago. Clary is fifteen years old, though she just turned sixteen, and her mom and Valentine were fucking married. Every girl who ever wanted to be a pretty pony princess could do that math in their sleep, because they've been trying to shoehorn themselves into every royal family that ever was since they heard that adoption was a thing.

This does not even bring up "I"m drooling in your lap" Simon. Look, even if you're not remotely interested in a dude, you notice that he's invading your personal space every chance he gets. You notice, because if you're not interested, this creeps you the fuck out. This is not cutesy or romantic. It's an indicator of severe mental dysfunction. We're talking serious, severe, very un-funny autism. As in the person suffering--and I am not using that word lightly--from autism would not be able to function normally with nurologically typical adults. But Clary does not have that. She's fully capable of sending off the correct social signals when the plot needs her to, which means her brain works fine. And if her brain works fine, not guessing that Simon wants in her pants when he is so very, very obvious about it means that Clary is just stupid.

And she's just guessed her mother's super secret hiding place when the rest of the magical world could not.

This is not inconsistant characterization. This is fucking Frankenstein.

This is fail. This is double fail because this is happening here, at this point in the story.

A good story has an expected structure. Good storytelling is using that structure either for or against the reader in such a way that it makes the story more interesting. For example, I fell in love with District 9 as a thing when Wikus van de Merwe hit Christopher Johnson over the head with a piece of trash at just about the same place in that movie as this point in this book: Right before the failure point.

What is the failure point? It's the point in the story where everything goes sideways. The romance is broken up. The hero is captured by the bad guys. In Memento it's where you realize that Carrie Ann Fischer's character has manipulated Leonard into attacking a guy who is harassing her. In The Matrix it's when Morpheus gets caught. It is the emotional high point--and I'm speaking in intensity, not positive/negative--where you, the viewer, are supposed to be totally on the main character's side and rooting for them, so that you'll be screaming OH NO YOU DIDN'T! when the hero gets grabbed/slapped/shot/drowned/whatevered. This is a necessary moment, because that moment of emotional intensity is going to push through to the climax. Miss that moment, and everything else falls apart.

What made me love District 9 forever was how, right when the story needs you to be on Wikus's side, he does the thing most natural to his character and smashes Christopher upside the head with trash. You realize that Wikus is still the same slimy, stupid, nasty little racist that set that house of alien eggs on fire and then joked about it, that he deserves to die, and you hate him. You hate him the entire time that he's caught by the Nigerians (mostly because Chris is getting the crap beat out of him by Koobus's goons, and you're still totally on his side) you hate him while he fights his way out of the Nigerians and the merceneries, and oh my God do you hate him when he's walking away from Chris.

And that's why, when Wikus turns around and saves Chris anyway, it is a crowning moment of awesome. The fight afterwards? It is only awesome because you know this racist, dishonest, nasty piece of shit has finally turned into a person and is going to die--intentionally--to save the life of an alien he would have gleefully set on fire three days ago. A lot of people think the point of D-9 is reverse racism. It's not. It's a movie about transformation, and it's all set up by making you hate the everloving fuck out of the main character...which you would not do if his character as a racist, self-centered shit were not maintained every single step of the way. It's about a racist realizing that racism is wrong, and how to come to that realization, every single thing about his character has to change. In a way, it's a challenge, not to the racists, but to the people who want to change them.

And I think that's why City of Bones was a total failure for me. Because the whole book is about Clary not getting things. She doesn't get that these two boys are in love with her. She doesn't get that her dad is the bad guy that kidnapped her Mom. She doesn't get--well, we'll get to that one later. But when the plot says she needs to understand something? Characterization goes out the window. This book has a plot, it has characters, kind of, and it has a lot of shiny cool things. But it isn't about anything. It is a lot of sound and fury, but it signifies absolutely nothing at all. What gives a story satisfaction is that feeling of having come 180 both on the outside and on the inside. The world is changed, the characters have grown, and a good time was had by all. But the characters in this book can't change. They're not consistent enough for change to be part of their vocabulary. They are whatever the author wants them to be...even when the story demands they not be that way.

So of course, Jace and Clary go back to Madame Dorotheas to get the cup out of her tarot deck.

...can I go on another rant guys? It'll only take a second. There's a big, long ramble in here about how a tarot deck is the safest place they could have put it, and I SO have to call bullshit. First, because they are cards. Even if they're your tarot cards, you can always lose them. Or give them away. Or have them stolen. I have owned seven decks, and I had to think hard to remember all of them. Of those decks, I have lost the entire minor arcana from two of them, mostly because I didn't like the minors in either deck and just used them for the majors. And the Ace of Cups, mind, is a minor card. One deck, I gave away to a friend. Two decks I keep out to use every once in a while, and the last two decks I keep in a shoebox in the closet. The decks I like best are the ones I keep out. They get shuffled, handled, stepped on. And remember how I mentioned "given away or stolen?" a moment ago? Tarot card lore says your reading skill is only "good" if your first deck is either given to you by a proficient reader, or if you steal it. And a deck with beautiful illustrations is pretty damn hard to find. The two best that I've seen are Shadowscapes and the Steampunk deck, and those are the two I've got over on my bookcase right now. If you have a pretty deck and a steady stream of clients, the odds of somebody grabbing your cards and going out the door are probably big enough to make hiding an important magical artifact in them pretty bone stupid.

And who's to say that Dorothea wouldn't lose interest in the hand-painted deck? They're probably a bitch to shuffle, even if you just do 'em domino style, and if Joycelyn has the same "respect" for religion that Jace does, her interpretation of the cards may not be the best. Shiny pictures don't do much if they don't strike a cord with you. Of the decks that I lost, one of 'em was gorgeously illustrated. Alphonse Mucha style. And I hated it because the pictures were so vague they were practically meaningless. I even retired my Shadowscapes deck for a little while (VERY little) when the Steampunk deck came out, because DAMN those pictures are good. Not as pretty as Shadowscapes, but...yeah, I digress. The point is, to the general public a tarot deck is a mysterious object of power and prestige, and sometimes loathing. To a reader, a tarot deck is a tool, one that you can pick up, discard, or even use to play games with if you want to (...some day I want to play a real game of Tarot with my Rider-Waite Deck. Just for the hell of it)

Clary's mom basically hid the Magical McGuffin for this book in somebody's tool shed, and ran the risk of Dorothea getting  tired of that particular hammer.

So they decide to go get it, and call Simon to have him drive them over there, because God Forbid a member of the main cast not be in on this. He calls bullshit on Clary, she pulls the "My mom is missing" card out on him, and, after Clary and Hodge have a long talk about uncle Luke--guess we're about to have Magical Revelation number 131 starring Uncle Lucian in a few more pages--Simon meets them at the Institute in a yellow banana. Ok, a van that looks like a banana, but I digress.

Also, why is Simon not the main character of this series? He didn't even get to star in the book that was SUPPOSED to be about him for fuck's sake.

They go into Dorothea's house and Clary sees the tarot cards. Spread out over the table. Their surfaces are "Slickly painted."

SO. MUCH. FAIL.Let me illustrate the number of things wrong with this.
-THE HIDING PLACE FOR THE MAGIC IMPLIMENT OF DOOM IS SPREAD OUT ON AN OLD WOMAN'S COFFEE TABLE.
-Either this is not the original set of illustrations, or Cassandra Clare has never seen a hand painted anything before in her life.
-Cassandra Clare has also, clearly, never handled a tarot deck more than once. Otherwise she'd understand why "hand painted" and "tarot cards" don't exactly work well.

Maybe, maybe, MAYBE they are laminated watercolors. My soul screams at the idea of laminating watercolors. I cannot imagine Joycelyn Fray, or any artist, willingly laminating any of their artwork. And the BULK. Oh. My. God. Seventy eight cards, and this is not going to be card stock, boys and girls, this is going to be high quality paper thick enough to drink the paint/ink in. Plus the width of laminate plastic. The only way to shuffle this deck is going to be the domino method. This is a brick-sized deck of cards you could kill somebody with.

You know why you buy cards that are printed, as opposed to using originals? because you're going to damage the everloving fuck out of the cards.

Two words, and there is so much fail.

So Clary pulls the cup out of the magical tarot card and of course even though it was just big enough to fit in the illustration--given the imagry described, it was probably traditional Rider-Waite, so maybe the other minors are pretty good--it comes out big and pretty and shiny as the Holy Grail Mortal Cup Mcguffin 429 ought to be, and the card itself crumples to ash.

....yeah, Dorothea should have killed the little bitch when she saw that happen, is all I can say.

NEXT CHAPTER: The boring and predictable revelations begin.

City of Bones Chapter 17

I mentioned last chapter post that I like action. But I am not adverse to romance or books that focus JUST on character development. One of my ultimate, all time favorite books is That Hideous Streingth, a book that many people consider to be C.S. Lewis's worst work of fiction. There is so much vitriol surrounding it, I've added it to the list of to-be-bitched books, because yes. Even I acknowledge that the book has severe issues. Why do I like it? Because it's a story about how evil works, and how its ultimate "goal", if you will, is its own self destruction.

Why do I bring this up? What salvages THS for me is that character development. The primary story arc is a man who is an idiot, and probably C.S. Lewis's own self insert, whose mind numbing stupidity almost brings about the end of the world, and how he gets out of that stupid. And of course there is Jane's arc. Jane's arc rocks. These are two people who are not good at the beginning of the book who become good later.

That is not the case here. City of Bones contains one terrible person--Jace--and one prop to reward that terrible person with--Clary. And because Clary is not a real person, and isn't intended to be anything except our vehicle for adventure, anything that focuses on romance is predictable, boring and just...ugh, let's just get to it already.

This chapter is called "The Midnight Flower." Congradulations, we're about to land on Planet Girl.

The description of the greenhouse is stunningly bad. The scent of blooming flowers hits Clary "soft as the padded blow of a cat’s paw." Because the first thing I think of when I smell roses is of my cat batting my face around like it's her favorite chew toy. There is colon abuse, M-dash abuse, and this little gem:

a plant bearing a star-shaped yellow blossom whose petals were medallioned with golden pollen.

That is not a word. That does not even invoke an image I would associate with a plant. I'm thinking of Lillies, and how, if you don't remove the stamens before they mature, the pollen gets everywhere. Festooned, covered, coated, dusted, glazed, all of these are words I would apply. But medallion implies the big gaudy thing at the end of a necklace, not the soft fluffy stuff on the tip of your nose. And that noise you heard? That was the sound of spellcheck underlining "Medallioned" so hard it burned out a couple pixels on my laptop's screen.

And of course, the lights of the city glitter like "cold jewels".

Jace assures Clary that they'll be left alone up here because Isabelle and Alec have allergies. This is their house. Why would they have flowers in their house they are allergic to? Clary asks what all the flowers are, and Jace says he doesn't know, he's not a botanist, he only needed to learn how to kill things. This strikes me as less "Jace is a Badass" and more "Cassandra Clare didn't want to write about flowers."

Which sucks. Yes. Flowers are a boring topic and having characters talk about flowers might be difficult...if you do it wrong. In Sunshine, my favorite book of all time, a vampire gets the main character to keep herself alive (it's complicated) by talking about her activities as a baker. It develops her character and his at the same time, not because she's talking about baking muffins but how she's talking about those muffins. This is a moment for Clary and Jace to connect. He could talk about something that grew in Idris, about a peaceful moment he remembered from his childhood that's connected to flowers, she could mention something else, and through their movements and how they react to each other they could develop their relationship subtly. Nope. They talk about birthday presents, about Jace's dad doing nice things for Jace for a change, and you get the feeling that this is being rushed along. This is a CONNECTION moment, after all. These two will feel a CONNECTION, and we must rush along to that moment.

Jace confides that he had no friends, his Dad homeschooled him and that he never saw another kid his age until he was ten years old. Then he says "Don't feel sorry for me, Dad was great."

Clary does not call bullshit on this. I will. Bullshit, Jace, your dad was emotionally and physically abusive. Idris needs CPS like YESTERDAY. He goes on to tell Clary she's lucky her dad died before she was born, so at least she doesn't miss him.

...BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. JACE. Death of a family member creates an absence. Perhaps not an acute loss, but I miss the chance to get to know my paternal granddad. It's not the same as knowing the person you lost, but it's still something that you can miss and mourn. But once again, Clary is perfectly okay with somebody else invalidating her feelings. And then, at midnight, all the pretty flowers open.

The author watches too many AMVs when she was writing this, because I could hear the music and the anime shininess in the background.

Anyway, Jace and she discuss tattoos and if he and Isabelle ever dated. He says no, it'd be too weird, Isabelle was too much like a sister to him. And then they clean everything up and have the accidental kiss and...you know, I thought this would be more vomit worthy. This is more like watching two actors who have no chemistry whatsoever try to convince you that they're going to make like rabbits when the screen fades to black. He takes her back to her room, kisses her one more time, and OF COURSE Simon catches them and Simon's hurt because, DUH, he's in love with Clary. What I don't get is why Jace suddenly goes cold on Clary. Well, I mean, I do get it. Romantic Cliche Number 2227 requires the romantic leads to have wacky misunderstandings before they lip lock in true love. But Jace knew that Simon had a thing for Clary, and he knew that Clary didn't return the emotion. But nope, he burns her off because, you know, the special snowflake must show off his softer side, as covered by raging jealousy and total disreguard for the feelings of others.

And then Simon and Clary have a fight, and Simon proves to be the most perceptive male alive.

“Details,” said Simon dismissively. “He’s an asshole. I thought you were better than that.”

And then, after several paragraphs of Clary missing the very fucking obvious, Simon confesses his love, then walks out the door, leaving Clary to collapse into a helpless pile of angsty, blubbering tears.

Human beings whose brains are wired correctly are goddamned good at reading social cues. The healthy human brain can read when someone is happy, when someone is sad, when someone likes you or when someone hates you. When the brain is not wired correctly, the individual becomes socially handicapped. Now, what I am about to say will probably be very ugly to some people, and I apologize ahead of time. Clary Fray shows no other signs of being severely autistic, but her utter inability to read the people around her has no single other possible explination.

IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR HER TO NOT KNOW HER BEST FRIEND WAS IN LOVE WITH HER.

But no, we have her collapsed in little sobby tears because she didn't know, and now Simon is gone and she never understood how much she loved him before, only she loves Jace too because he made her happy for a few minutes, making her forget her mother and Luke's betrayal--given how often Clary has thought about Mom and Luke, she forgot it a LONG time before Jace took her to see the pretty flowers--and...and...and maybe it's her fault she's losing Simon, because she committed the terrible sin of being happy.

Words cannot express how fucking angry that makes me.

I am not going to rant about this, because it will make this post way way way too long. So I'm just going to state the plain facts and move on.

I had issues with Self Injury, starting when I was eighteen and running until I was about 21. I still have them, but 21 was when I stopped actively doing it. One of my triggers was accepting the blame for things I had nothing whatsoever to do with. One of the worst episodes, one of the few that has left permanent scars, was when I bought dinner, for myself, and did not offer any to my grandfather. I overheard him telling my grandmother what a horrible, inconsiderate person I was for buying myself food and not offering it to anyone else, and for daring to eat it in front of him. I blamed myself for making my grandfather hate me, and I effectively removed the top layers of skin from my right knee using a razor blade as a reaction. Accepting blame for the actions and behaviors of another person is not healthy. That's what Clary is doing right now. I know exactly how Clary's brain is working right now, because it's what my brain does all the time. And the fact that this is never brought up, never mentioned again, and kind of glorified in these passages as a normal way to react to teenage stupidity, has made me extraordinarily angry. 


We cut from Clary being emotionally triggered into a state of dejected and unwarrented self hatred by the two most important men in her life to Clary realizing that her absent scrawling of magical runes on the edge of one of her drawings has made the wings in the drawing feel like feathers. Now, because are two thirds of the way through this crap-tastic novel, this triggers Clary suddenly realizing something important. And I'm not going to spoil it for you guys, but this book has finally begun that wonderful tradition in terribly written fiction of swiveling around and shooting itself in the face.

Brace yourself kids. The next chapter is going to be pretty vicious.