The Mortal Instruments, Cassandra Clare

I can't quite decide if this series of books is disgustingly pious or pure heresy. Either way, I would describe it as the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. I've decided to write about it as a series, as the first book has an annoying ending that encouraged me to read the next four - I haven't read the fifth one yet, because someone has taken it out the library and I refuse to actually pay for it... The sixth one comes out in 2014.

Clare is very good at creating attractive characters, and similarly good at evoking the sense of unsophisticated teenage desire. (All the evidence you need is in the book covers - by the end of the series they look like Mills&Boon novels). The plot of each novel centres on a coming-of-age narrative, with characters seeking to understand themselves as well as the world that they live in, in the face of situations that appear incomprehensible - because they have demons in them. And blood all over the place. And really, really mean people.

The necessity of killing demons and generally saving the world from eternal darkness and ruin is a sort of backdrop to a sappy teenage love drama. It is a typical young persons' story in that the teenage characters are constantly facing disastrous perils while the adults who are allegedly responsible for them are otherwise engaged. The excuses for the absence of the adult characters vary in quality, and are often less than entirely credible, but the pace of the action allows the reader to ignore that. If anything, I found that the maturity and behaviour of the characters jarred with their alleged age - these are twenty-five-year-olds masquerading as high school students. It reminds me of the latest Spiderman film, where the actors look way too old for their parts. Then again, one could argue that these are the characters we wished we could be like at seventeen: mature, muscular and impeccably witty, at least in the eyes of our peers.

The story focuses on Clary, an artistically-inclined sixteen-year-old New Yorker. As female leads go, she is actually not too irritating. She is not entirely incompetent, and appears to have a sense of humour. Anyway, in book one she discovers that she can see people who her best friend, the thoroughly friend-zoned Simon, cannot. This leads to the revelation that there is something supernaturally special about her, and that her mother has been lying to her for years, something that most teenagers at least suspect. But Clary is a good girl, so it all comes as quite a shock.

At the same time, she falls in love with Jace, the smooth loner who can make himself disappear and stab things in the neck with alarming speed, both good qualities to look for in a potential mate. He is also blonde and a year older than her, which guarantees his attractiveness. The Guardian summarises him well, in a review of the upcoming movie trailer (obviously there is an upcoming movie): 'Onscreen his character is all brood and depth, but in actuality he'd probably be the sort of person likely to borrow money from you, never pay it back and then get off with one of your friends at a party.' I found him enormously entertaining, because, after all, it was not me that he was borrowing money for, and unlikely to be my friends he would make out with, seeing as we are all too old. Disappointingly, in the later novels it becomes necessary that Jace acquire some depth, including a terribly sad back-story which manifests itself in strange habits, such as obsessive-compulsive tidiness.

But the main thing that makes the series hilarious and exasperating in equal measures is the ludicrous nature of the plot twists. Most of the revelations in the first three books are focused on the teenage main cast's parents. This in itself is really interesting: it is unusual for children's books to draw attention to parents as people with past histories and regrets, and throughout the Mortal Instruments series we watch Clary and Jace come to terms with decisions (and mistakes) their parents made before either of them were born. But the twists themselves are often just daft. For instance, a twist is required at the end of book one to prevent Clary and Jace from 'being together', because otherwise there would be no point in reading the remaining five books in the series. Do their parents disapprove? Does one of them go to boarding school in Lithuania? Does the world actually end? No. They discover that they are brother and sister. Freud must be hyperventilating in his grave.

So, one tries to take the incestuous desire in one's stride, assuming that a new love interest will be introduced in the next book, and having challenged the taboo of incest the author will move on. Because surely finding out that the object of your desire is your sibling would be a deal breaker, right? Wrong. The third book's blurb says:

'Amid the chaos of war, the Shadowhunters must decide to fight with the vampires, werewolves and other Downworlders - or against them. Meanwhile, Jace and Clary have their own decision to make: should they pursue the love they know is forbidden?'

Obviously one always suspects that there will be a larger, more dramatic twist later that will show that they are not brother and sister after all, but the use of incest as a plot device is bizarre, not to mention naive. The argument seems to be that love should be accepted and understood no matter what the circumstances, which is an admirable sentiment, but I still think incest is gross. Not that they actually do anything, they just think forbidden thoughts.

My final issue with this series is the treatment of death, grief and mortality. While it is generally a good thing that these issues are engaged with, the approach is even more naive than the series' treatment of incestuous desire. Grieving characters don't ring true, because their grief is not sufficiently pervasive. It does not dominate the narrative the way it dominates in real life. The horror of death and shock of loss function purely as a backdrop to an insincere teenage melodrama, and are quickly pushed aside in favour of more pressing issues, like what to wear, or who likes whom and whether they could be related. While it is totally unrealistic, you can't accuse it of being manipulative. It just seems like the deaths of the characters killed off are not really vital for the progress of the story, and therefore a bit gratuitous, like the quantities of blood that seem to regularly spatter every exposed surface.

 

Overall, you could not accuse these books of having literary pretensions. They were great fun to read, and I was even laughing at the lame jokes by the end. I'm just glad I didn't read them as a teenager; I don't think they would have helped me much with understanding the world at large.