City of Bones chapter four

The night had gotten even hotter, and running home felt like swimming as fast as she could through boiling soup.

I think I hate this simile almost more than I hated John Norman's girl-fail.

Clary is RUNNING to go rescue her mother, because things like getting Simon, calling the police, calling her Uncle Luke, or even taking Murder Boy Jace up on his offer of assistance are apparently too much trouble. No. This girl who has NO self defense training whatsoever is running home where her mother is very obviously being attacked, all on her lonesome.

But for a girl totally freaked out about Mom's potential death, she's still pretty laid back. She stops for a
"Don't Walk" sign (as a vet of the no-car crowd, there are MANY alternatives to stopping at the light.) and engages in conversation with her weird downstairs neighbor, who imparts that Jocelyn was "Moving furnature" upstairs. The conversation continues for several minutes without Clary running after her Mom.

Without emparting too many IRL details, because this story does involve my mother, I had a good reason to be EXTREMELY worried when my mom didn't come home one evening. I was pretty sure she was at my (now former) stepfather's apartment, but neither of them were answering their cell phones, no one else knew where she was, and she'd given me clear instructions earlier that day that made not knowing where she was VERY, very scary for me. So I got on my bike at midnight and rode across town to my stepdad's apartment. She was there. I managed not to scream at her for not letting me know where she was, given what she'd told me to do earlier that day, and she apologized.

I was not paying attention to street signs or how my stepdad would feel with me banging on his door on a week night at midnight. I was too scared that mom wouldn't be at his apartment.

Clary? Should not have stopped for freaky downstairs neighbor. But we should have stopped expecting real world reactions from this sunshine girl a long time ago.

And of course, the house has been ransacked. Does Clary call the police? Leave the apartment? Call a responsible adult?

Does a bear shit in a porcelain commode?

Oh, and the robbers left her a surprise.

It was crouched against the floor, a long, scaled creature with a cluster of flat black eyes set dead center in the front of its domed skull.

I see that, I'd be surprised.

Now, it is established that many windows in this apartment are broken. Clary does not climb out any of them, thus establishing her as TSTL. Sadly, the creature, which talks (I think this is the Suddenly Talking Monster from Captive of Gor) does not eat her. Valentine, apparently, will be pissed. A Thing that Clary stole from Jace is vibrating like it came from a porn store, and Clary runs around the apartment while the thing mutters about how much it wants to eat her.

In other words, even the monsters only exist to explain things to Clary.

She jams Jace's Thing--a Sensor, but I don't know what that does yet--down the monster's throat, and it starts having a seizure. She races for the door, and...

Okay, she gets knocked out. She doesn't faint. Still, she still gets saved by a Big, Strong Man. She wakes up on the grass, in Jace's arms, after the "Ravener demon" shot her in the back with a magical stinger it apparently didn't have for the rest of the chase through the apartment.

You know, there was a moment there when it was behind her and she didn't know it. And it didn't do anything about it.

Suddenly I am remembering Sunshine, and how Rae was captured by vampires who were big, strong, fast, and also capable of knocking her out. She managed to keep herself alive without male assistance and I am suddenly REALLY sad I have to be reading this book, and not that.

So she's lying on her back, bleeding and dying, and she and Jace decide that exposition is more important than getting the dying girl the fuck away from the demon infested apartment. Finally, though, they get moving when it's clear the cops responding to all the screaming are demons, and oh, yeah, Clary is now coughing up blood. Jace draws magical things on her skin using a wand--oh, sorry! Stele.

So numerically identical names re: Voldemort and Valentine are iffy, but god forbid you use the word "wand" in this book. Gotcha.

So Jace and Clary fight their way through a dozen dementors, he takes Clary to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, she goes to Hogwarts and meets Dumbledore, and...woops, mind jumped books there for a second. Let's get back to this one, shall we? What does Clary actually do?

...end of chapter.