Ferretbrain readers should remember from my last review, I hated Cassandra Cla(i)re's City of Bones so much that I could barely express myself. It went around the “Bad/Funny” wheel so many times it gave me motion sickness. It also read rather a lot like Harry Potter fanfic.

So as you can imagine, I was overjoyed when our illustrious editor presented me with a copy of the second book in the trilogy (carefully informing me that since she had bought two other books on a three-for-two offer at Waterstones she had not, in fact, paid money for it).

It's still bad. It's bad in pretty much all the ways it was bad the last time.

Thanks for reading. 'Night.

Okay, there's more. Once again, this is going into disjointed subheadings, because Cassie Cla(i)re just does that to me.

Chapter Headings

Just in case you were in any doubt what kind of book this was, I thought I'd start off by giving you a full list of the chapter headings:

Prologe: Smoke and Diamonds, Part One: A Season in Hell, Valentine's Arrow, The Hunter's Moon, The Hogwarts HighInquisitor, The Cuckoo in the Nest, Sins of the Fathers (do you see, it's a biblical reference), City of Ashes, The Mortal Sword, Part Two: The Gates of Hell, The Seelie Court, And Death Shall Have No Dominion (yes, that's right “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”), A Fine and Private Place, Smoke and Steel (supposed to echo the prologue maybe?), The Hostility of Dreams (okay, seriously Cassie, you're taking the piss), A Host of Rebel Angels (because Valentine is a bit like Lucifer), Part Three: Day of Wrath, Fearless, The Serpent's Tooth, A Stone of the Heart (no, I don't know what that means either), East of Eden, Darkness Visible, Dies Irae.

I should probably add that these self-aggrandising, portentous titles pretty much exclusively come in front of chapters in which very little actually ... y'know ... happens.

Basic synopsis of City of Ashes: Valentine is back, zomg. Referring to the Ministry of Magic Guide To Resurgent Psychopaths, the Clave (the international organization of Shadowhunters in charge of stopping the world going to shit in a shoebox) decide that the most sensible thing to do is to (a) victimize his son and (b) sit around with their collective thumbs up their collective asses.

The Pesky Kids from the first book return. Cassie Claire “Clary” is slowly discovering more about her precious Mary-Sue powers, and is now dating Everygeek Simon, Draco Jace has been locked up by “The Inquisitor” because they think he's spying for his father (spying, presumably, on the Clave's secret plans to do nothing the fuck about Valentine), Alec is still being tokenistically gay and Isabel is ... not in it much actually, having been relegated to the place where girls who are hotter than the protagonist get sent in the second book. It's the pesky kids who work out that Valentine is planning on taking the Mortal Sword and performing the Ritual of Infernal Conversion to turn it into an evil sword that will allow him to summon Demons.

The Ritual of Infernal Conversion

Okay, so here's how it goes. Valentine has stolen the Mortal Sword, one of the titular (is it titular if it's the title of the trilogy, rather than the book?) Mortal Instruments. He steals this in chapter – like – six and the Clave pays no attention whatsoever because after all, it's not like the powerful psychopathic genius would have stolen the awesomely powerful mystical artefact for a reason is it?

In order to complete the Ritual of Infernal Conversion Valentine must drain the blood of a child of each of the “Downworlder” races. “Child,” by the way is defined as “anybody under the age of eighteen”. Clary objects to this definition later on on the book, on the grounds that sixteen year olds aren't children but teenagers, and somebody corrects her by pointing out that “teenagers are a modern concept” whereas of course the RoIC is deep and ancient magic.

Now ... you probably know where I'm going with this, but yes, I know that the idea of “teenagers” is a modern concept but that isn't because in ancient times you were considered a “child” until the age of twenty, it's because you were considered an adult from pretty much the moment you hit puberty. I would have been just about okay with the fact that the “children” Valentine was targeting were actually people who were all old enough to hunt demons for a living, had Cla(i)re not pulled the infuriating “aaaah do you see ... it's a modern concept” thing. If you're going to play the sub-Gaiman “ah, but in the old tales” card, at least get your old tales right. Idiot.

Anyway, Valentine attacks a couple of Downworlder kids and drains their blood (right there and then in the street, this will become important-slash-infuriating later), it comes right down to the wire and he needs only Vampire and a Werewolf.

Shockingly, Cassie Classie Clary's best-friend-slash-pity-fuck Simon gets turned into a Vampire just as Valentine is looking for a Vampire Child to kill for his ritual. Not only that, but he winds up being sorta-romantically-involved with a werewolf who is also conveniently old-enough-to-be-sexy-while-falling-under-the-arbitrary-sacrificing-age.

Side note: how do you even define a Vampire “child” anyway? Is it vamp age, total age, pre-vamp age?

Anyway, Valentine captures Simon and the Werewolf who fancies him (oh, by the way, in a shockingly original twist, Vampires and werewolves in Cla(i)re's mythos don't get on with each other) and locks them up in a cage without doing anything. Because, y'know, you can't rush evil rituals. Except that he did the last two times. And now he knows the Clave are onto him. He really shouldn't be beating around the bush with the whole “army of demons” thing is what I'm saying.

So Valentine prevaricates, meaning he only has enough power to raise half an army of demons, because his sword isn't fully evillified yet (so presumably at close of play he has a terrifying sword of Neutrality ... what makes a sword turn neutral?). He drains Simon of blood (which doesn't kill him, because he's a named character) but leaves the Werewolf girl untouched (named character also). This gives our heroes the opportunity to totally brock his shit ap.

Did I say “our heroes”? I of course meant “Clary”. And Jace, a bit.

But I'm a Creep

I'm going to quote something now.

“I think the Queen meant I can draw new runes that are more powerful than ordinary runes, and maybe even create new ones.”

Jace shook his head. “No one can create new runes-”

“Maybe she can, Jace.” Alec sounded thoughtful. “It's true, none of us have ever seen that Mark on her arm before.”

And something else:

A soft voice spoke inside her head: Who are you, to think you can speak the language of heaven?

The pencil moved. She was almost sure that she hadn't moved it but it slid across the paper, describing a single line. She felt her heart skip. She thought of her mother sitting dreamily before her canvas, creating her own vision of the world in ink and oil paint. She thought, Who am I? I am Jocelyn Fray's daughter.

And now something else:

She smiled slightly as she sat down on the stool, placing her left leg across her right and then placed the sorting hat on her head. 'This should be interesting' she thought. The whole hall was silenced in anticipation of which house she would be put in, each person wishing that it were his or her house.

'Strange’ said a voice in her head, 'there are parts of your brain I cannot get into.'

'For good reason'

'Care to tell me those reasons, and where and how you learned such control over your mind?'

'Lets just say there’s more to me than there seems and all will be revealed later.'

And finally:

Kuro chuckled 'kids are so funny now a days. Have to remember I’m supposed to be sixteen so I have to act like them. Damn.' Kuro then waved her had and a small section of table appeared between the Slytherin and Gryffindor tables at the opposite end of the hall from the head table. She waived her hand again and a black throne like chair appeared there. Kuro then turned to face Dumbledore.

"Is that acceptable kocho?"

"Yes it seems to work."

"As you can all see I don't use a wand,” said Kuro as she turned to face her classmates. "I hope that won't be a problem. Now I bet you all wish to eat after that long train ride so I will take my seat." With a final wave of her hand Kuro transported herself to her chair.

Okay, I know it's a cheap shot to compare published novels to PotterSues featured fics but there is, in fact, a similarity of type there. In fact, having read the last section aloud to our esteemed editor, I'd go so far as to say that you'd be hard pressed to tell which was the published work of original fiction, and which was the bad HP fic if it weren't for the specific references to canon.

Cassie Claire's protagonists are some of the biggest sues I have ever encountered. Clary has what seems to be unlimited power, constrained only by the demands of the plot and the author's wishes. If she had been a character in HP fanfic who had the ability to “cast new spells that are more powerful than ordinary spells, and perhaps create new ones” she'd be laughed off of fanfiction.net. But of course it's okay here because she's the “main character” of this totally “original” work of fiction.

I'm going to go off on a sideline here, because I find this rather interesting. Fanfiction is a strange beast, with a lot of peculiar ideas and conventions attached to it. One of the most interesting and abiding rules of Fanfiction (in my limited experience) seems to be “thou shalt not attempt to upstage thy source material”. No HP villains who are more evil than Voldemort or heroes more powerful than Dumbledore. No Lord of the Rings characters who are immune to the power of the ring. No House characters who are better at diagnosing stuff than House.

The interesting thing about this rule is that actually it can be applied pretty readily to original fiction. It's a bit more fluid, because the same person who sets up the rules gets to set up the exceptions to those rules. On the other hand, a writer who breaks the rules which they explicitly and personally created is one of the most infuriating things in the world. Cheap examples of this include Harry Potter's Magic Love Powers and Wand That Acts By Itself, Tom Bombadil's immunity to the ring, Auraya's ability to keep her powers even after the gods have abandoned her (much as I love Trudy Canavan, that one went a bit too far).

Put simply, here's a piece of advice for people writing original fiction: if you couldn't get away with it in fanfic, it probably sucks hard.

I've done the “Clary” / “Claire” / “Clare” joke to death by now, but I'm going to have one more crack at it: Clary Fray, whose first name sounds suspiciously similar to Cassandra Cla(i)re's adopted surname, is a horrible, horrible sue. Leaving aside the “name that sounds a bit like your name” thing, she gets the ability to make up new runes. This is, in fact, functionally equivalent to a Harry Potter character being able to make up new spells (indeed the runes in the Mortal Instruments trilogy – hey! I've just realised that the acronym for that is “TMI” - function rather a lot like potter spells. There's the shielding one, the fast-healing one, the one that opens doors that conveniently fails to work half the time...) it just screams “speshul” at the top of its lungs.

Of course the “defence” of all this stupid speshulness is that there are totally plot reasons for it (which is the defence that people trot out after “it's my story!” and before “if you don't like it don't read it!”). Clary and Jace (who gets awesome jumping powers I shit you not) have apparently been experimented on by Voldemort Valentine, because he wanted to ... well actually we haven't been given a reason yet (it will presumably come out in the final volume City of Glass). Either way I just plain don't care. If you make your protagonist teh super speshul it doesn't matter what half-arsed justification you give for it. You made the decision to write about a character like that. You. Not your muse. Not the harsh necessities of your secondary creation. You.

“I can create new runes that are more powerful than normal runes”. For fuck's sake.