Here is an unexpected (to me) Book Four in The Mortal Instruments series. Clare’s last book began a new planned trilogy that was a prequel to this one and called The Infernal Devices. I rather enjoyed the new trilogy’s setting, Victorian England, and was a bit put off to return to modern-day New York. But, as immortal characters cross both realms and mortal characters make choices that affect the present, I might just be okay with that.
We return, six months later, to the Shadowhunter / Downworlder love triangles that keep the teens coming back. The evil Valentine is dead. His REAL son, Sebastian/Jonathan, is presumed dead. The newly arisen Circle is dismantled. A new Accords has been written. All thanks to Clary Fray and her off again, on again, is he her brother or her boyfriend, Jace Wayland … Lightwood … Morgenstern … Herondale?
Clary’s mother, Jocelyn, once a Shadowhunter, (always a Shadowhunter?) is engaged to be married to the love of her life, Luke, who happens to be a Shadowhunter turned Werewolf / Downworlder. And everyone is busy with the wedding planning, dress altering, and party attending.
Jocelyn had raised Clary to be a normal human child despite her Shadowhunter blood, but now Clary is busy playing catch-up. She is in training to learn everything that she should have learned in order to protect herself while protecting the world from Demons.
Clary is being trained in part by her boyfriend Jace, but he is preoccupied as always. This time he is having nightmares. In his nightmares, he always ends up wounding Clary and watching her die in his arms. Jace is afraid that even though he isn’t Valentine’s son by blood, he was still raised by the man and therefore harbors a trace of his evil. This translates into Jace avoiding Clary. Clary misunderstands, as always. He must not love her anymore.
In the meantime, Clary’s best friend Simon, once a normal human teenager, now a special vampire with extraordinary powers, is dealing with his own troubles. Forget that he is a Daylighter – a vampire who can be in the presence of the sun. Forget that Clary put the Mark of Cain on his forehead – anyone who chooses to harm him is dealt the punishment sevenfold by the Hand of Heaven. Forget that the ancient vampire Camille wants him on her side; the head of the New York vampires wants him dead, and a league of gray-track-suited humans? are trying to mug him.
Simon’s primary problem is that he’s been dating Isabelle the Shadowhunter and Maia the werewolf simulataneously and unbeknownst to each other. And they’re bound to find out before the wedding. A woman’s scorn is much more painful than a demon’s attack.
She sure knows how to write them. She certainly understands tension. And there is definitely another in the works.
This is high school reading. There is still no sex, just making out in underwear – once. But there is the promiscuous Warlock, Magnus Bane. He is caught off guard when an old flame, Camille, messes with the mind of his new flame Alec. Poor guy doesn’t stand a chance.
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