City of Ashes

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Coming Back To A Cold Institute
2. The Inquisitor Takes Over
3. Simon Thirsty And Maia Wary
4. The Seelie Court Does Not Give Free Answers
5. Blood For The Sword
6. What Worked And What Wore Me Down
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up City of Ashes because City of Bones left me with a knot in my stomach. Clary had just learned Valentine was her father. Jocelyn was lying still in a hospital bed. Jace was acting like a brother who suddenly remembered he was supposed to keep his distance. I wanted to know if book two would actually deal with that mess or just hand us another chase through New York clubs. It deals with it, mostly by making everything worse for about three hundred pages before it lets anyone breathe.

This is book two in The Mortal Instruments, first published in 2008 by Margaret K. McElderry Books. The hardcover I am summarizing runs 453 pages. You can read it alone and follow the action, but you will feel the weight more if you read City of Bones first. Clary is still fifteen, still drawing to think, still new to runes and glamour and Downworld politics. Jace is still seventeen and still performing confidence when he is scared. Simon is still the funny best friend from Queens, except now he wakes up thirsty for blood and cannot go home for dinner.

The short version is this. Someone is killing Downworlder kids in New York. Valentine has the Mortal Cup and now he wants the Mortal Sword, also called the Soul-Sword, to bend it toward his own plan. The Clave sends a hard judge to New York to sort out Jace. Clary learns she can make new runes no one taught her. That skill saves Jace twice and also paints a target on her back.

Coming Back To A Cold Institute

The book opens with Clary trying to live two lives at once. Her mother Jocelyn is in a deep magical sleep in the hospital, unreachable, with Luke Garroway checking in and pretending he is fine. Luke runs a bookstore uptown and leads a werewolf pack at night, and he is tired in the way people get when they have kept a secret for fifteen years. Clary visits her mother, draws in the waiting room, and tells herself art will calm her. It does not.

At the Institute, training continues but the mood is off. The Institute is the New York base for Shadowhunters, all pale stone and long halls and weapons rooms that smell of metal and old polish. Hodge is gone after his betrayal. Maryse Lightwood runs the place now with brisk efficiency. She is tall, practical, and carrying guilt about her old ties to Valentine and the Circle. Her husband Robert is mostly absent, working Clave business. Isabelle Lightwood, fierce and funny and loyal under the sharp talk, tries to keep Clary included. Alec Lightwood is quieter, thinking about Magnus Bane more than he admits out loud. Max, the youngest at nine, trails everyone with bright curiosity.

Jace is the problem no one names directly. At the end of the last book Valentine told him he was Valentine's son. That would make Clary his sister. Jace decides the decent move is to pull away. He skips training sessions with Clary. He answers in short lines. He flirts with other girls to prove he does not care. It reads as cruel in a few scenes, and I winced, but it also reads as a teenage boy who was raised as a weapon and has no script for this.

Clary responds by trying to date Simon. Simon has liked her for years. He plays in a band, quotes movies when nervous, and shows up even when he should stay home. Dating him feels safe and normal, which is exactly why Clary tries it. She holds his hand at a coffee shop. She laughs at his jokes a beat too long. She tells herself this will quiet the pull toward Jace. It does not, and Simon knows it before she admits it.

Training scenes fill these early chapters with useful detail. Clary learns footwork, how to fall, how to hold a stele without burning her own wrist. A stele is the tool Shadowhunters use to place runes, black marks that give speed or healing or night vision. Clary should struggle like any beginner. Instead she sees lines others miss. She fixes a crooked rune from memory. She asks why certain marks sit a certain way on skin. Jace watches and looks worried rather than proud, which tells you where his head is.

One night a Ravener demon, all teeth and acid and wrong joints, tracks Clary near her apartment. It is fast and ugly and it nearly kills her. She fights it off with help and a sudden flash of a rune she never learned. She draws it from instinct and it holds. No one can name it. That moment hangs over the next hundred pages. If runes come only from the Angel Raziel through the Gray Book, how is a fifteen year old inventing them on fire escapes?

That question matters because Valentine is already moving.

The Inquisitor Takes Over

The Clave, the ruling body of Shadowhunters based in Idris, does not trust New York right now. Valentine is back. The Cup is gone. Jocelyn is silent. Jace may be Valentine's son. So they send Inquisitor Imogen Aldertree.

Aldertree arrives like winter. She is older, thin, hard eyed, dressed plain, with a voice that makes even Maryse stand straighter. She lost her son Stephen to Valentine years ago and she has never forgiven Valentine or anyone tied to him. She looks at Jace and sees a spy. She looks at Maryse and sees a former Circle member who should have known better. She looks at Clary and sees a mundane raised girl with impossible rune skill who should not exist.

Her first move is to press Jace for the Cup. Her second is to lock him in the Silent City when he talks back. The Silent City is the bone city under New York where the Silent Brothers keep records and the dead. It is quiet in a way that gets under your skin, all arches and cold light and brothers with stitched eyes who speak inside your head. Jace spends a night in a cell there to teach him respect, as Aldertree puts it. Alec wakes him from nightmares and walks him to questioning. Maryse warns Jace to bend a little, to say the right words, to survive the hearing. Jace refuses to grovel. Pride is his armor and his flaw.

Clary, Isabelle, and Alec get a distress call from the Silent City and run to help. They arrive to find the Brothers dead, throats cut, blood on stone, silence even deeper than before. Valentine has come and gone. He killed the Brothers and took the Mortal Sword. The Sword hung in the Hall as a tool for oaths and trials. It forces truth from Shadowhunters who hold it. Valentine wants it for something else entirely.

Jace is found passed out in his cell. Clary frees him with an Opening rune that is larger and louder than any Opening rune in the books. It blows the door apart. Aldertree arrives with armed Shadowhunters and sees only this. Her suspect free, her Brothers dead, her Sword gone. She accuses Jace of helping Valentine. It is unfair and it follows her logic perfectly. If you already believe a boy is a spy, every rescue looks staged.

Maryse tries to hold the Institute together while Aldertree pulls rank. Aldertree strips Maryse of command in front of her kids, which is brutal to read. Isabelle goes pale with anger. Alec stands very still. Max hides behind a chair. Maryse keeps her face smooth and accepts it because fighting the Clave in public would only confirm their guilt. Later, alone with Luke, she lets the mask slip. She knew Valentine when they were young. She followed him when his talk of strength sounded like purpose. She left too late to feel clean. Luke, who was bitten and then judged for being bitten, understands that shame better than most.

Luke suggests the obvious solution. Put Jace to the Sword. If the Sword forces truth, let him hold it and speak. Aldertree refuses at first. She wants something to trade, not clarity. She wants to trade Jace for the Cup and the Sword. She thinks Valentine loves his son enough to deal. Jace tells her plainly Valentine will not trade. Aldertree hears defiance instead of information. That misread drives the middle of the book and nearly gets Jace killed.

I found these Institute chapters slow in the best way and frustrating in the worst way. The politics feel real. Closed councils act like this under threat. They protect procedure and punish the kid in front of them because they cannot reach the villain. At the same time, three straight scenes of questioning and hallway warnings stall the hunt while Downworlder kids keep dying. I skimmed a little here on first read and did not feel lost.

Simon Thirsty And Maia Wary

Simon Lewis has the saddest plot in this book, and Clare writes it with care.

At the end of the last book Simon was lured to Hotel Dumort, the vampire nest, and fed on by Raphael Santiago and others. Now he is turning. Hotel Dumort is all marble and rot, beautiful from the street and sour inside, run by Raphael with cold amusement. Raphael is young looking and old in manner, polite the way cats are polite before they scratch. He tells Simon the rules. No sun. No invitations means no entry to homes. Blood or madness. Clan or alone.

Simon chooses to keep his mind. He refuses to feed on live people. He drinks bagged blood and hates it. He hides from his mother in Queens by saying he is staying with friends. He misses band practice. He misses late night noodles with Clary. He tries jokes and they land flat because his mouth hurts and his hands shake. Clary visits and brings food he cannot eat. She offers her wrist at one point and he nearly takes it, then hates himself for wanting to. That scene is short and it stayed with me.

Luke offers shelter. His pack has room and his house in Queens has wards and spare blankets. His wolves do not love vampires, but Luke asks and they make space. One of them is Maia Roberts.

Maia is sixteen, quick, brown skinned with gold eyes that catch light, working a coffee shop counter when we meet her. She was turned by her ex boyfriend Daniel after a fight, lost her brother to the same attack, and ran to New York to vanish. Luke took her in. She learned to fight, to run patrols, to keep her temper on a leash. She hates vampires on principle because a vampire killed someone she loved? No, because her turning felt like a theft, and vampires remind her of being hunted. She tells Simon straight out she does not trust him. Then she shows him how to pass as normal. How to breathe through thirst. How to leave a room before you lose it.

Their bond grows in small moments rather than speeches. Maia teases Simon about his band shirts. Simon makes her laugh when she is trying to stay mad. They patrol together near the park. They argue about music. They compare notes on mothers who do not know the full story. When Simon shakes from hunger, Maia stands close enough to help and far enough to stay safe, and talks him through it with plain words. It is one of the healthiest friendships in a book full of tangled ones.

Raphael keeps pulling at Simon, offering belonging with strings attached. Magnus Bane keeps watching from the side, cat eyed warlock in glitter and leather, funny until he is serious. Magnus tells Clary that dead Downworlder kids point to ritual, not random hate. A faerie child found drained. A warlock child missing. A werewolf taken. A vampire taken. Someone needs blood from each kind. Someone with old books and no morals. That someone is Valentine.

The kills are not described for shock. Clare keeps the focus on the families and the pack and the clan arguing about what to do. Luke wants to warn every pack and nest in the city. Raphael wants to hide his own people and let others bleed. Maryse wants Clave permission that will not come. Aldertree wants proof that fits her theory about Jace. While they argue, Valentine takes Maia from a patrol route and later takes Simon from a rooftop meeting. Luke blames himself. Clary blames herself. Both are right a little and wrong a lot, which feels true to grief.

I liked this stretch a lot. It gives Simon and Maia room to be people rather than symbols. My complaint is pacing. Simon's thirst scenes repeat the same beats three times. Thirst, refusal, shake, talk down, repeat. I got it the first time. The second time added Maia's past. The third time felt like marking time until the plot needed them taken.

The Seelie Court Does Not Give Free Answers

Desperate for information about Valentine's plan for the Mortal Sword, the group accepts an invitation from the Seelie Court.

The Seelie Court sits under a park pond, reached by water and oath and careful steps. Think low light, sweet smells, music that stays in your head too long, food that looks perfect and costs more than it should. Faeries in Clare's world cannot lie, but they can twist truth until it cuts. They love bargains. They love beauty. They love watching Shadowhunters, who look down on them, stumble over manners.

The party that goes in is Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and Simon. Isabelle wears confidence like armor and trades barbs with a faerie knight without blinking. Jace performs calm and watches exits. Simon tries humor and the court laughs in a way that is not kind. Clary tries to pay attention to everything at once and fails, because the court is designed to overwhelm senses.

The Queen receives them on a kind of throne grown from roots and flowers. She is beautiful in a way that feels cold, curious about Clary in particular. She knows about Valentine's experiments before birth. She calls Clary and Jace his experiments come to life, angel blood pushed in strange directions. She offers wine and fruit and petals. She answers questions with stories that almost help. Does Valentine plan to change the Sword? The Queen smiles. Can the Sword be used to call demons? The Queen tilts her head. Will she lend fighters? Perhaps, for a price.

Clary makes the classic mistake. She takes a petal, pricks her finger, puts the finger in her mouth without thinking. In Faerie that counts as taking food and drink. Now she owes. The Queen names her price with delight. A kiss from the one Clary desires most. Simon steps forward at once, hopeful and brave. The Queen laughs softly and says no, not him. Isabelle says what everyone sees and no one wants to say. Jace. Because they might share blood, the room goes still. Jace steps forward. He kisses Clary. It starts chaste and turns heated and honest in front of everyone. The court watches like this is theater. Simon looks away. Isabelle stares at the floor. When it ends, the debt is paid and Clary can leave.

That kiss breaks something open. On the walk back, Jace and Clary admit they love each other. Jace suggests they hide it. Keep it secret. Act as siblings in public. Clary refuses to lie to friends and family. She says secrets like that always surface and poison everything. Jace says he does not care about rules, only about losing her. They stand close and do not touch and the ache is obvious. I believed every line here even while I wanted to shake both of them. Fifteen and seventeen, raised on stories about duty and blood, trying to be good while wanting what they are told not to want. Clare lets it be messy without making it gross. She keeps the focus on choice and honesty rather than heat.

Back at Luke's house, talk turns to runes. How did Clary blow open a Silent City cell? Clary says the mark came to her whole. No one believes new runes are possible. Angels give runes, Shadowhunters copy them, that is the order. Jace dares her to prove it. Make one now. Name it Fearless. Clary takes a stele, steadies her hand the way she steadies a pencil, and draws. The Fearless rune burns clean and holds. They try it on Alec. He walks to his parents and starts to say he is seeing someone from the Downworld, then Magnus cuts him off with a spell that steals the memory of the name. Alec blinks, nervous, defensive, unable to recall who he meant. Maryse and Robert stare. Isabelle smothers a laugh. It worked, or it half worked, which is more frightening than failure. If Clary can invent marks, what else can she do? Who taught her blood to know these shapes?

This is my favorite idea in the book. Magic as art. Clary does not chant in old tongues. She visualizes weight and balance, the way an artist thinks about line. The stele is a pen. Skin is paper. Intention is ink. It fits her character and it gives the series a different engine than spell lists. My gripe is that Clare uses it as a rescue tool a little too often. Cell door? New rune. Fear demon? New rune. Ship hull? New rune. Wonder fades if every lock has a custom key you invent on the spot.

Blood For The Sword

Magnus puts the pieces together first and says it plain. Valentine is trying to reverse the Sword.

The Mortal Sword, the Soul-Sword, Maellartach, was made by the Angel Raziel as one of the Mortal Instruments with the Cup. Shadowhunters swear oaths on it. It tests truth. Valentine stole it to soak it in Downworlder blood and turn it toward demons. He needs blood from four kinds. Werewolf. Vampire. Faerie. Warlock. Children, because their blood is stronger for this work, or easier to take, Magnus says, and his voice goes flat. The ritual will let Valentine call a host with the altered blade and hold them to his will.

That reframes the murders. Not hate crimes. Harvest.

Valentine already has Maia. He already has Simon. He took a faerie child earlier and a young warlock too. He holds them on a ship on the East River, warded and guarded, with Forsaken Creatures shuffling the decks. Forsaken are humans twisted by the Cup, strong and dull eyed and hard to kill. The ship smells of diesel and blood and river rot. Demons circle above it like gulls.

Jace makes a choice that looks like betrayal and reads as grief. He takes Raphael's motorcycle and rides to meet Valentine alone. He wants to hear his father out. He wants to know if there is any version of this where his loved ones live. Valentine receives him almost tenderly. He offers Idris, safety, family, a place at his side when the Clave falls. He talks about blood and order and strength. Jace listens. He asks questions. He does not kneel. He leaves without agreeing, but Aldertree's spies see the meeting and report only the arrival, not the refusal. She has Jace seized at Luke's house, runes locked on his wrists to stop him running, and dragged back to the Institute to a cage built from wards in the weapons room. She plans to trade him to Valentine for the Instruments. Jace laughs in her face and tells her Valentine will not deal. She calls it loyalty to Valentine. It is actually knowledge of him.

Valentine proves Jace right on a mirror call. He appears in the library, tall and scarred and calm, and refuses the trade. He says Jace chose against him and he accepts that loss. Maryse pales. Aldertree stands very still. Robert arrives with news that waiting for the Clave will waste the night. They need to move now with the fighters they have. For once Aldertree listens, or grief makes her listen. She releases Jace with bad grace and picks up a blade herself.

The rescue runs on two tracks. Magnus, Alec, Isabelle, and Maryse work to find Maia and break wards. Jace, Clary, Luke, and later Simon push toward the ship. Magnus lifts a truck with spell light so it skims above the river, blue sparks and shouting and wind. Jace asks Clary to place the Fearless rune on him before they board, because he knows what waits. She draws it on his skin with a steady hand while Luke watches the water. On deck, a Fear demon finds Jace, the kind that wears the shape of what you dread most. First it wears Clary dying. Jace kills it. Then it wears Valentine. Jace kills that too. Fearless does not mean unafraid. It means able to move while afraid, which is a better definition than most books offer.

Below deck, Valentine has Simon strung up and pale, blood taken for the Sword. Maia is caged and snarling, bloody but alive. Jace frees Simon and feeds him his own blood to bring him back, mouth to wrist, no flinch. It is an old magic, mixed blood, and it will matter later. Simon wakes gasping and holds on. Aldertree arrives in the chaos, sees the star shaped scar on Jace's shoulder, starts to speak about his true parents, then steps in front of a demon to save him. She dies fast, hard, asking no pity. It is the only absolution she gets and she earns it. Jace holds her stare and does not look away.

Clary faces Valentine near the Sword. He holds the blade like a father holds a child, proud and sure. He tells her she could make marks that change wars. He offers teaching and family if she kneels. Clary refuses. She takes her mother's stele, the one Jocelyn carried before she fled, and draws an Opening mark on the ship's metal hull. Not on a door. On the ship itself. The rune takes. Metal screams. Seams split. The whole vessel breaks open like a cracked bowl. Demons shriek. Water rushes. The Sword vanishes in spray and smoke with Valentine. Clary falls into the river and would drown, but the nixies sent by the Seelie Queen lift her. A debt repaid sideways, very faerie.

They limp home in Luke's truck, wet and bloody and alive. Simon steps into thin morning sun by accident and does not burn. Jace's blood in him has made him a Daylighter, a vampire who can stand light. No one knows the full cost yet. Jocelyn still sleeps. Valentine still holds the Cup and now a changed Sword. The Clave still fears Clary's hand. But Maia lives. Simon lives. Jace lives. For one night that is enough.

I loved the ship fight for its mess. No clean duels. People slip. Spells fail. Luke shifts mid sentence and tears through Forsaken while shouting orders in human voice when he can. Isabelle's whip cracks and misses and cracks again. Alec shoots arrows until his quiver empties, then uses a blade badly and keeps going. Clary hides, runs, draws, gets thrown across the deck, gets up. It feels like a real brawl on a small space over dark water, not a staged arena.

What Worked And What Wore Me Down

What worked for me starts with Simon and Maia. Simon could have been a joke, the mundane friend turned vampire for shock. Clare keeps him specific. He worries about his mother. He worries about band practice. He asks for soda in fortresses. He refuses live blood even when shaking. Maia could have been only a victim to rescue. She stays sharp. She teaches Simon control, argues with Luke about patrols, fights on the ship with her teeth bared and her head clear. Their scenes together have the easiest warmth in the book. When Maia talks Simon through thirst with blunt instructions, I believed they would survive because they had each other, not because the plot needed them.

Luke carries the adult weight well. He loves Jocelyn and never uses it to excuse himself. He feeds people. He fixes wards. He answers Clary's questions even when the answers make him look bad. His talks with Maryse about the Circle land because both admit they liked Valentine's certainty when they were young and both know that liking cost lives. Maryse in particular grows here. Stripped of command, she still shows up, still mothers her kids through fear, still picks up a blade when Aldertree finally points toward the river. I respect a book that lets a mother be wrong and brave at once.

Magnus and Alec get small, good moments. Alec trying to tell his parents he loves a warlock, Magnus stopping him to protect him, the mix of relief and shame on Alec's face. Isabelle covering for her brother without being asked. These beats take two pages and do more than three interrogation scenes.

What wore me down is repetition. How many times can Jace pull away and Clary cry and Simon watch? The pattern runs through the whole middle. Jace cold, Clary hurt, Simon hopeful, kiss interrupted, repeat. I get why it repeats. They think they share parents, which poisons every touch. Still, after the Seelie kiss, I wanted either distance or honesty, not five more almost talks in hallways. The book knows this and has Isabelle call it out once, which helps, but not enough.

The middle quests also loop. Go to warlock for answers, go to faeries for answers, go back to warlock to check faerie answers, lose someone, repeat. Each stop has strong details. The Seelie food trap is great. Magnus charging for spells is funny and true. But stacked together they slow the hunt while the book tells us kids are dying. Urgency on the page should match urgency in the plot. Here it does not always.

Clare's prose stays readable throughout. Short lines for fights. Longer, softer lines for Luke's house, for the kitchen table crowded with maps and mugs, for Clary drawing to calm her hands. I like that she lets New York stay present. Subway steam. Coffee shop chatter. Hospital vending machines. The hidden world sits on top of the real one instead of replacing it. The Institute feels less like a museum and more like a crowded home with laundry and arguments and Church the cat hissing at Simon because cats know.

A note on who this suits. If you want slow court politics like later books in this series, this is not that. This is New York, packs and clans and a judge from Idris who will not listen. If you want romance without trouble, look elsewhere. The central love story here is tangled by possible blood ties and both teens know it. If you want monsters, you get them. Ravener demons with acid bites. Fear demons with familiar faces. Forsaken on a ship deck. If you want clean answers about Jace's blood, you will not get them yet. Aldertree starts to speak on the ship and dies mid sentence. That tease annoyed me and also hooked me for book three.

I closed the book thinking about Maia sharing a blanket with Simon in the back of a truck, both too tired to argue, and Luke driving with his eyes on the road and his mind on Jocelyn. Valentine is still out there with altered steel. The Clave still fears a girl who can draw. Jace tells Clary he will only be her brother now, to protect them both, and her face falls. Then a woman named Madeleine Bellefleur finds Clary and says she knows how to wake Jocelyn. Hope arrives just as hearts break. Cheap move? Maybe. It worked on me. I started the next book the same night.

FAQ

Do I need to read City of Bones before City of Ashes?

Yes. City of Ashes is book 2 in The Mortal Instruments and continues Clary's rune skill, Jocelyn's sleep, and Valentine's theft of the Mortal Cup.

What is the Mortal Sword in City of Ashes?

The Soul-Sword is one of the Mortal Instruments kept for oaths and trials, and Valentine fills it with Downworlder blood to call and hold demons.

Is City of Ashes only for teen readers?

It is shelved as young adult fantasy from 2008, but its New York pack politics, Clave trial, and Simon and Maia plot suit adult fantasy readers too.