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A shiny new teen franchise!
Nov. 8th, 2012 06:28 pmToday I am going to blog about not one, but five books! This is partly because I am so far behind in reviews that I will never catch up if I don't, and partly because they are all one series and I read them in one big obsessive block so I can't really remember the books separately. Oops.
The series in question is Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments, which currently consists of five titles: City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, and City of Lost Souls. (Cassandra Clare, it turns out, is the same person who wrote the Very Secret Diaries.) It is also being turned into a movie, which should be out next summer, and which features such awesome people as Lena Headey, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Jared Harris, and Jamie Campbell Bower.
Still the prettiest.
The Mortal Instruments is a modern-day hidden-world urban fantasy story. Our protagonist is supposedly ordinary teen girl Clary Fray, who lives in Brooklyn and hangs out with her transparently-in-love-with-her nerdtastic best friend Simon, when not being hovered over by her very protective mother Jocelyn and her mom's best friend Luke. Things start to get all pear-shaped when Clary witnesses what looks like a murder in a nightclub called Pandemonium, and then her mother is kidnapped.
Well, it turns out the murder wasn't a murder at all, but a demon-slaying, and also more demons show up at Clary's house and try to eat her, and she falls in with three sexy sexy teen Shadowhunters (that is the term for demonslayers), a pair of siblings named Isabelle and Alec, and their extra sexy adopted brother Jace Wayland. They find out that Jocelyn used to be a Shadowhunter herself, but quit when she was pregnant with Clary because Clary's dad was evil (magic Nazi subtype). In addition to discovering that there are really demons and there are really demon-hunters (there is a whole mythology with the Shadowhunters having angel blood and being tasked by Heaven to stop demons from overrunning the world, and are also known as the Nephilim, because "Nephilim" means something totally different in each pop culture franchise that uses it), there are also four kinds of "Downworlders"--fairies, vampires, werewolves, and warlocks. Downworlders have some sort of demon ancestry but aren't demons, and there is massive complicated political and historical stuff going on between the different kinds of Downworlders and the Shadowhunters. I adore all the elaborate mythology and politics and stuff, because I am a nerd like that.
Shadowhunters don't really have magic powers themselves per se, but they do have magic weapons (mainly seraph blades, which become infused with heavenly fire or some shit like that when you name them), and they make very heavy use of magic runes, which they draw on themselves with things called steles, which are basically halfway between a pen and a magic wand. The runes disappear when their power is used up. This is going to be inappropriately fabulous-looking to film, I think, because it means lots of well-muscled young people not only covered in tattoos, but repeatedly getting new ones.
Cast of Characters includes:
CLARY FRAY: is spunky and artsy and tends to run into things without thinking them through. Also, is Katniss-level oblivious to Simon's years-long crush on her. Will go absolutely to the ends of the earth for the people she cares about, but will usually not pack or look up directions first, metaphorically speaking. Has much in the way of family secrets and hidden powers and stuff that require dramatic discovering over the course of the series. Is pretty awesome except for an excess of internal monologue about sexy Jace is, but at least she has the decency to scold herself about it once in a while.
SIMON LEWIS: Simon Lewis is the leveling-uppiest character ever. He starts of as Clary's geeky human sidekick. Then he gets turned into a rat (temporarily). Then a vampire. Then a Daywalking vampire. Then a Daywalking vampire with the mark of Cain, which makes him basically invincible, because anyone who harms him turns into a pile of salt. He also starts off the series being unrequitedly in love with Clary, but by the beginning of book five is accidentally in over his head with a hot werewolf girlfriend, a hot Shadowhunter girlfriend, and an adorable tween girl following him around claiming to be his girlfriend because of the shitty band he is in. It is all super cute.
ISABELLE LIGHTWOOD: Tall, sassy, glamorous, well-dressed, and lethal, Isabelle is sort of half femme fatale and half just an awesome, warmhearted dork. Her preferred weapon is a whip made of electrum, which can be cunningly disguised as a pretty bracelet. She is also a comically terrible cook.
ALEC LIGHTWOOD: Isabelle's sister, kind of on the quiet and bookish side for a Shadowhunter. He is the oldest of our little group of teen Shadowhunters and is therefore often The Responsible One. He is gay, which is still sort of taboo among Shadowhunters, particularly the adult ones.
JACE WAYLAND/MORGENSTERN/HERONDALE/LIGHTWOOD: King of Having Daddy Issues. Jace manages to never run out of Daddy issues, because over the course of the series, he has racked up four different people he thinks are his daddy. Daddy #2 is Valentine Morgenstern, the Big Bad of the first three books, which is kind of hilarious because Valentine is also Clary's father, and Jace and Clary are having LE BIG EPIC STAR-CROSSED ROMANCE and there is nothing more star-crossed than when you erroneously believe you are siblings for a thousand pages. I cannot wait to see the Concerned Parents reaction when the movie comes out and gets to this part (I am assuming the movie will make the whole thing more mainstream). Jace is also obnoxiously pretty, and pretty obnoxious, in that the covers up his wounded orphan daddy-issues-having self-hating little Real Self (TM) with a brilliant Magnificent Bastard act and a flawless talent for killing things. Also, did we mention he is the prettiest? If we didn't, Jace will be happy to tell you about it.
MAGNUS BANE: The High Warlock of Brooklyn. No, that is really his title. Magnus is about five hundred years old but looks like a twentysomething Asian dude with cat's eyes. He is the fabulousest fabulous person to ever be fabulous, with extra glitter. He is bi, and has a relationship with Alec through most of the series, which results in him doing lots of warlocky things for the teen Shadowhunters' various madcap world-saving schemes without payment, which he grumbles about a lot. He has a cat named Chairman Meow. Magnus Bane's general awesomeness cannot be summarized in a measly blog post.
JOCELYN FRAY, NEE FAIRCHILD, EP MORGENSTERN: Clary's mother. Badassest mom ever, which is why she will be played by Lena Headey. While married to the series Big Bad, Valentine, Jocelyn learned the depths of his nuttery and actually led the resistance against him, while pregnant, before setting out to be a single mom, because that was easy in comparison. A talented artist, Jocelyn not only trashed her husband's political plans, she also managed to steal and hide one of the Mortal Instruments themselves, so that Valentine couldn't use it.
VALENTINE MORGENSTERN: Immensely clever, immensely crazy, and with a purity thing about how much better Shadowhunters are than Downworlders and how the Shadowhunter government is polluting itself by trying to work with Downworlders against the demons instead of just killing the whole lot (like I said, he is a Magic Nazi character type, much like Voldemort). He wants to use the Mortal Instruments to call down the angel Raziel and somethingorother involving making more Shadowhunters, I don't remember his whole Evil Plot. He is also big on sadistic medical experiments, including on babies, which spawns like four different plotlines.
LUKE GARROWAY: Jocelyn's dude friend who was basically Clary's unofficial Dad. Turns out he is a former Shadowhunter too, and also a werewolf. He and Jocelyn do the We Are In Love With Each Other But Nobody Says Anything So We Act Like Just Friends thing for about thirty years before declaring their love for each other and becoming barftastically adorable. Other than that, Luke is the least crazy person in the series.
The plots... you guys, I cannot even start telling you about the plots, they are too convoluted. People thought Valentine died fifteen years ago, but actually he faked his own death, and now he is back and trying to find the Mortal Instruments so he can give his wacky Evil Plan another try, so the good guys have to find all three Instruments first (and figure out what the third one even is) and undo whatever damage Valentine has done, and the grown-up Shadowhunter government is being all beaureaucratic and adults-are-useless-y, so the teens have to save the world while not getting in trouble with the magical government (shades of Harry Potter Versus the Ministry of Magic here). There are several romantic subplots and an endless series of big family secrets getting discovered. Clary has to find her mom, rescue her from Valentine, and then wake her up out of a magical coma, which involves several different quest plotlines. Books four and five actually end up with a different main villain and a different villainous plan, this one involving the demoness Lilith and a plot to make what are essentially demonic Shadowhunters, plus more sadistic experiments on babies. Simon tries not to get caught up in some sort of massive power struggle thingy with the other vampires but fails at it. Apparently there is one more book in this series still to be published, and I have not yet read the prequel trilogy, but I assume there is CRAZY SHIT HAPPENING EVERYWHERE.
PS I went as a Shadowhunter for Halloween! Or, more specifically, I went as a Shadowhunter to a Halloween party that happened after Halloween because it was the best thing I could pull together at the last minute without having to buy anything, since I didn't have an actual Halloween costume for this year. And there were even people there who KNEW WHAT A SHADOWHUNTER WAS, I was so happy. (At least until one of them tried to pick me up in the awkwardest way possible, but that is another story.) I am afraid I do not have pictures, which I regret.
The series in question is Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments, which currently consists of five titles: City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, and City of Lost Souls. (Cassandra Clare, it turns out, is the same person who wrote the Very Secret Diaries.) It is also being turned into a movie, which should be out next summer, and which features such awesome people as Lena Headey, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Jared Harris, and Jamie Campbell Bower.
Still the prettiest.
The Mortal Instruments is a modern-day hidden-world urban fantasy story. Our protagonist is supposedly ordinary teen girl Clary Fray, who lives in Brooklyn and hangs out with her transparently-in-love-with-her nerdtastic best friend Simon, when not being hovered over by her very protective mother Jocelyn and her mom's best friend Luke. Things start to get all pear-shaped when Clary witnesses what looks like a murder in a nightclub called Pandemonium, and then her mother is kidnapped.
Well, it turns out the murder wasn't a murder at all, but a demon-slaying, and also more demons show up at Clary's house and try to eat her, and she falls in with three sexy sexy teen Shadowhunters (that is the term for demonslayers), a pair of siblings named Isabelle and Alec, and their extra sexy adopted brother Jace Wayland. They find out that Jocelyn used to be a Shadowhunter herself, but quit when she was pregnant with Clary because Clary's dad was evil (magic Nazi subtype). In addition to discovering that there are really demons and there are really demon-hunters (there is a whole mythology with the Shadowhunters having angel blood and being tasked by Heaven to stop demons from overrunning the world, and are also known as the Nephilim, because "Nephilim" means something totally different in each pop culture franchise that uses it), there are also four kinds of "Downworlders"--fairies, vampires, werewolves, and warlocks. Downworlders have some sort of demon ancestry but aren't demons, and there is massive complicated political and historical stuff going on between the different kinds of Downworlders and the Shadowhunters. I adore all the elaborate mythology and politics and stuff, because I am a nerd like that.
Shadowhunters don't really have magic powers themselves per se, but they do have magic weapons (mainly seraph blades, which become infused with heavenly fire or some shit like that when you name them), and they make very heavy use of magic runes, which they draw on themselves with things called steles, which are basically halfway between a pen and a magic wand. The runes disappear when their power is used up. This is going to be inappropriately fabulous-looking to film, I think, because it means lots of well-muscled young people not only covered in tattoos, but repeatedly getting new ones.
Cast of Characters includes:
CLARY FRAY: is spunky and artsy and tends to run into things without thinking them through. Also, is Katniss-level oblivious to Simon's years-long crush on her. Will go absolutely to the ends of the earth for the people she cares about, but will usually not pack or look up directions first, metaphorically speaking. Has much in the way of family secrets and hidden powers and stuff that require dramatic discovering over the course of the series. Is pretty awesome except for an excess of internal monologue about sexy Jace is, but at least she has the decency to scold herself about it once in a while.
SIMON LEWIS: Simon Lewis is the leveling-uppiest character ever. He starts of as Clary's geeky human sidekick. Then he gets turned into a rat (temporarily). Then a vampire. Then a Daywalking vampire. Then a Daywalking vampire with the mark of Cain, which makes him basically invincible, because anyone who harms him turns into a pile of salt. He also starts off the series being unrequitedly in love with Clary, but by the beginning of book five is accidentally in over his head with a hot werewolf girlfriend, a hot Shadowhunter girlfriend, and an adorable tween girl following him around claiming to be his girlfriend because of the shitty band he is in. It is all super cute.
ISABELLE LIGHTWOOD: Tall, sassy, glamorous, well-dressed, and lethal, Isabelle is sort of half femme fatale and half just an awesome, warmhearted dork. Her preferred weapon is a whip made of electrum, which can be cunningly disguised as a pretty bracelet. She is also a comically terrible cook.
ALEC LIGHTWOOD: Isabelle's sister, kind of on the quiet and bookish side for a Shadowhunter. He is the oldest of our little group of teen Shadowhunters and is therefore often The Responsible One. He is gay, which is still sort of taboo among Shadowhunters, particularly the adult ones.
JACE WAYLAND/MORGENSTERN/HERONDALE/LIGHTWOOD: King of Having Daddy Issues. Jace manages to never run out of Daddy issues, because over the course of the series, he has racked up four different people he thinks are his daddy. Daddy #2 is Valentine Morgenstern, the Big Bad of the first three books, which is kind of hilarious because Valentine is also Clary's father, and Jace and Clary are having LE BIG EPIC STAR-CROSSED ROMANCE and there is nothing more star-crossed than when you erroneously believe you are siblings for a thousand pages. I cannot wait to see the Concerned Parents reaction when the movie comes out and gets to this part (I am assuming the movie will make the whole thing more mainstream). Jace is also obnoxiously pretty, and pretty obnoxious, in that the covers up his wounded orphan daddy-issues-having self-hating little Real Self (TM) with a brilliant Magnificent Bastard act and a flawless talent for killing things. Also, did we mention he is the prettiest? If we didn't, Jace will be happy to tell you about it.
MAGNUS BANE: The High Warlock of Brooklyn. No, that is really his title. Magnus is about five hundred years old but looks like a twentysomething Asian dude with cat's eyes. He is the fabulousest fabulous person to ever be fabulous, with extra glitter. He is bi, and has a relationship with Alec through most of the series, which results in him doing lots of warlocky things for the teen Shadowhunters' various madcap world-saving schemes without payment, which he grumbles about a lot. He has a cat named Chairman Meow. Magnus Bane's general awesomeness cannot be summarized in a measly blog post.
JOCELYN FRAY, NEE FAIRCHILD, EP MORGENSTERN: Clary's mother. Badassest mom ever, which is why she will be played by Lena Headey. While married to the series Big Bad, Valentine, Jocelyn learned the depths of his nuttery and actually led the resistance against him, while pregnant, before setting out to be a single mom, because that was easy in comparison. A talented artist, Jocelyn not only trashed her husband's political plans, she also managed to steal and hide one of the Mortal Instruments themselves, so that Valentine couldn't use it.
VALENTINE MORGENSTERN: Immensely clever, immensely crazy, and with a purity thing about how much better Shadowhunters are than Downworlders and how the Shadowhunter government is polluting itself by trying to work with Downworlders against the demons instead of just killing the whole lot (like I said, he is a Magic Nazi character type, much like Voldemort). He wants to use the Mortal Instruments to call down the angel Raziel and somethingorother involving making more Shadowhunters, I don't remember his whole Evil Plot. He is also big on sadistic medical experiments, including on babies, which spawns like four different plotlines.
LUKE GARROWAY: Jocelyn's dude friend who was basically Clary's unofficial Dad. Turns out he is a former Shadowhunter too, and also a werewolf. He and Jocelyn do the We Are In Love With Each Other But Nobody Says Anything So We Act Like Just Friends thing for about thirty years before declaring their love for each other and becoming barftastically adorable. Other than that, Luke is the least crazy person in the series.
The plots... you guys, I cannot even start telling you about the plots, they are too convoluted. People thought Valentine died fifteen years ago, but actually he faked his own death, and now he is back and trying to find the Mortal Instruments so he can give his wacky Evil Plan another try, so the good guys have to find all three Instruments first (and figure out what the third one even is) and undo whatever damage Valentine has done, and the grown-up Shadowhunter government is being all beaureaucratic and adults-are-useless-y, so the teens have to save the world while not getting in trouble with the magical government (shades of Harry Potter Versus the Ministry of Magic here). There are several romantic subplots and an endless series of big family secrets getting discovered. Clary has to find her mom, rescue her from Valentine, and then wake her up out of a magical coma, which involves several different quest plotlines. Books four and five actually end up with a different main villain and a different villainous plan, this one involving the demoness Lilith and a plot to make what are essentially demonic Shadowhunters, plus more sadistic experiments on babies. Simon tries not to get caught up in some sort of massive power struggle thingy with the other vampires but fails at it. Apparently there is one more book in this series still to be published, and I have not yet read the prequel trilogy, but I assume there is CRAZY SHIT HAPPENING EVERYWHERE.
PS I went as a Shadowhunter for Halloween! Or, more specifically, I went as a Shadowhunter to a Halloween party that happened after Halloween because it was the best thing I could pull together at the last minute without having to buy anything, since I didn't have an actual Halloween costume for this year. And there were even people there who KNEW WHAT A SHADOWHUNTER WAS, I was so happy. (At least until one of them tried to pick me up in the awkwardest way possible, but that is another story.) I am afraid I do not have pictures, which I regret.
