City of Glass

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Shut Out Of The Portal
2. Alicante And The Gard On The Hill
3. Simon Lewis Walks Into The Light
4. The Mortal Sword And Valentine's Plan
5. Sebastian, The Angel In The Cellar, And The Battle
6. What Works And What Wears Thin
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up City of Glass because City of Ashes left everyone in a bad spot and I wanted to see how Clare would pay it off. This is book three in The Mortal Instruments, first published in 2009 by Margaret K. McElderry Books, and it runs 541 pages in the standard hardcover. Jocelyn still lies in a coma. Simon has fresh vampire marks on his neck. Jace thinks Valentine is his father and Clary thinks Valentine is hers too, which makes every look they share feel wrong. I wanted Idris. I wanted Alicante with its glass towers. I got that, plus a lot of Clave politics I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did.

Clary Fray is still fifteen and still drawing to think. That part I like. She sketches when she cannot say what she feels, and in this book that habit turns into power. She can see runes that are not in the Gray Book and she can place them on skin and paper and doors and they hold. No one taught her. Her blood does something extra because of Valentine's experiments before she was born. The book leans on that hard. Sometimes it feels earned, sometimes it feels like a shortcut when the plot needs a door opened fast.

Jace Wayland, or Jace Morgenstern as he fears he is now, starts this book angry and shut down. He killed his father figure in the last book, or the man he thought was his father, and learned Valentine might be his real father after all. He acts out by pushing Clary away. He tells himself he is protecting her. He is also scared of what he wants. That push and pull fills a lot of pages. It frustrated me in spots, but it fits a seventeen year old who was raised as a weapon and never learned how to ask for help.

Shut Out Of The Portal

The story opens in New York with Jocelyn in the hospital, still unreachable. Clary wants answers about how to wake her mother. Luke Garroway, her mother's best friend and a werewolf pack leader who runs a bookstore uptown, tries to keep her steady. He makes food. He answers questions when he can. He hides how tired he is. Magnus Bane, the warlock with cat eyes who helped before, says the spell that put Jocelyn to sleep needs the antidote recorded in the Book of the White, a Shadowhunter family volume held in Idris.

The Clave, the ruling body of Shadowhunters, will not help Clary. They blame her family for Valentine's return. They also forbid her from entering Idris because she was raised mundane and they do not trust her rune skill. The Lightwoods plan to travel through a Portal with Jace. Isabelle Lightwood, tall and direct and kind in her own sharp way, wants Clary along. Alec Lightwood, quieter and still sorting out his feelings for Magnus, follows rules more closely at first. Their parents, Maryse and Robert, are already tied to Alicante politics and old guilt about the Circle.

Clary refuses to be left behind. This is where her new power shows first. With help from Magnus, she remembers a Portal rune she saw and alters it. She draws a fresh mark that opens a way to Idris, grabs Luke's hand, and pulls them through. The Portal dumps them somewhere else, near Lake Lyn instead of Alicante, cold water and woods instead of a guarded arrival hall.

That scene matters for two reasons. It proves Clary can invent runes, which no modern Shadowhunter can do. It also shows how Clare writes magic as art. Clary does not chant. She visualizes lines and weight and balance, the way an artist thinks about composition. As someone who likes process details, I enjoyed that.

Luke and Clary dry off and start walking. They meet a faerie who points them on with riddles. They reach a farmhouse owned by Amatis Graymark, Luke's sister, who has not spoken to him in years. Amatis is hard and sad, living alone near Alicante, still angry about old choices around Valentine and the Circle. She lets them in because Jocelyn once protected her, but warmth takes time.

Jace, meanwhile, travels the approved way with Isabelle and Alec to Alicante. He expects homecoming. He gets cold stares. People in Idris know his last name might be Morgenstern and they do not hide their fear. Hodge's betrayal and Valentine's Uprising are still fresh wounds there. Jace tries to act like it does not bother him. It clearly does.

Alicante And The Gard On The Hill

Alicante is the capital of Idris, a small hidden country in Europe shielded by wards that keep mundanes out and confuse their maps. Clare describes it as bright and old at once. The Hall of Accords and the Gard sit on a hill above narrow streets. Houses climb in pale stone. The guard towers shine. At night the city glows because the very material in its walls reflects light. Clary sees it first from a distance and stops talking for a moment. I liked that beat. After two books in rainy New York alleys and clubs, the change in light feels like entering a different story.

The Gard is the fortress where the Clave meets, part parliament and part barracks. Inside are records, cells, meeting rooms, and the Hall of Accords where treaties are signed and trials are held. The Lightwoods have a house in town with spare rooms, training space, and a kitchen that Isabelle actually uses. Maryse runs it with brisk care. Robert is quieter, weighed by his past in the Circle. Their youngest, Max, nine years old and fond of stories, trails Jace with open admiration. That detail lands later with force.

Idris politics take up a large middle section. Consul Malachi and the Council argue about Valentine. Some want to negotiate. Some want to strike first. Many blame the Lightwoods for past ties to Valentine. Others blame Luke simply for being a Downworlder, which is their term for part demon folk like warlocks, vampires, werewolves, and faeries. Luke comes to Alicante to speak for a Downworlder council and ask for alliance against Valentine. He is the only werewolf most Shadowhunters in that room have ever seen up close. A few listen. Many do not.

Jocelyn is moved to Amatis's house under guard. She still sleeps. Clary sits with her and reads and draws. She feels guilty for every spell Magnus tried and for every fight she missed while her mother stayed still. When Jocelyn finally wakes, their reunion is awkward and tender rather than grand. Jocelyn is weak. She cries. She holds Clary too tight. She warns her about Valentine and about Jonathan, the brother Clary was told died in a fire as a baby.

Alec's plot grows here in a way I appreciated. He brings Magnus to Idris through risky means because the Clave bars warlocks from Portals. He stands closer to Magnus in public even when it costs him standing with his parents. Isabelle covers for them with jokes and sharp looks that dare anyone to comment. Their bond as siblings feels real. Isabelle teases Alec, then backs him without hesitation when the Council turns cold.

One short scene stuck with me. Clary tries to buy food in the market with mundane money and fails. A vendor laughs, not cruelly, and shows her the proper coins. It is a small moment, but it sells Alicante as a living place with shops and kids and laundry lines, not a set built only for trials.

Simon Lewis Walks Into The Light

Simon Lewis has the hardest trip in this book, and he gets some of the best lines. At the end of the last book he was turned into a vampire after trouble at Hotel Dumort with Raphael Santiago. Now he needs blood, he cannot stand sun without burning, and his mother in Queens thinks he is sick. He hides letters. He misses band practice. He misses being able to walk into his own house without an invitation.

Magnus hides Simon and smuggles him to Idris inside a larger party because Simon refuses to let Clary face Alicante alone. It is loyal and foolish, very Simon. Once there, the Clave arrests him almost at once. Vampires are not allowed in Alicante without permission, and a new vampire with unknown ties looks like a spy. They lock him in the Gard cells under the hill.

Raphael arrives with a claim on Simon as part of his clan, cold and amused and cruel in the polished way Clare gives her older vampires. The trial in the Hall of Accords becomes a test case. The Clave wants to show strength. The Downworlders watch to see if any promise of fairness holds. Luke speaks for him. Magnus speaks for him. Isabelle brings him blankets and teases him to keep his spirits up. Alec sits near Magnus and refuses to move even when stared at.

Then Simon steps into a shaft of sun in the Hall and does not burn.

This is the Daylighter turn. His blood carries something rare after his change and after Jace shared blood with him to save his life in the last book, an act that tied them in old magic. The sun does not kill him. The room goes quiet. For the Clave, this is miracle and threat at once. For the Downworlders, it is proof the old rules can bend. For Simon, it is mostly confusing and painful because everyone now wants to use him.

I liked how Clare keeps Simon funny without making him a joke. He quotes movies when nervous. He says the wrong thing in formal rooms. He asks for a soda in a fortress. But he also draws a line. He will not give the Clave his blood on demand. He will not let Raphael trade him like property. He chooses Clary and Luke and his own conscience over safety. That choice costs him. His mother forgets him after a later spell, which is one of the saddest turns in the series, and it starts here with his decision to stay in a war that is not technically his.

His friendship with Isabelle deepens in Alicante. She visits his cell. She brings gossip and food. She tells him plainly that he looks terrible. He tells her she is terrifying. They laugh. It is the healthiest bond in a book full of strained ones, and it gives the later battle more weight because you know what these two stand to lose.

The Mortal Sword And Valentine's Plan

Valentine Morgenstern stays off page for long stretches, which makes him scarier when he appears. His plan centers on the Mortal Sword, also called the Soul-Sword or Maellartach, one of the Mortal Instruments given by the Angel Raziel along with the Mortal Cup. The Sword hangs in the Hall of Accords. Shadowhunters swear oaths on it. It tests truth. It burns liars.

Valentine steals or rather reclaims the Sword through agents and old tunnels, then fills it with demon blood in a hidden place. His goal is simple and hateful. He believes Shadowhunter blood mixed with angel blood should rule, and that Downworlders with demon blood pollute the world. He also believes the current Clave has grown soft and corrupt. His Circle creed from years ago has hardened into a purge plan. He will bring the altered Sword to the Hall, call its power, and let it kill every Shadowhunter and Downworlder who does not match his idea of pure. He calls it cleaning. Luke calls it murder. Luke is right.

Clare doles out history in council scenes and in talks at the Penhallows' table. We learn how Valentine built the Circle as a young man, how Jocelyn and Luke and Maryse and Robert were drawn to his charm and his talk of strength, how the Uprising failed, how Jocelyn fled pregnant and hid the Mortal Cup inside painted cards. Some of this repeats facts from the first two books. Readers who love lore will enjoy the fuller timeline. I found these chapters slow on a first read. The trial scenes crackle, then a history talk cools the room. A friend reading alongside me skimmed two of them and missed little.

Clary trains while this unfolds. She practices with Isabelle and with Jace when they are speaking. She learns footwork and how to fall. She also tests her rune power in secret. She draws a Fearless rune that should not exist and it holds. She draws an Opening rune on Alicante's walls that shocks the wards. Each success draws attention. The Clave fears what they cannot copy. Valentine wants what they fear.

Jocelyn warns Clary that Valentine never wastes a tool. He will try to turn her skill to his use. He sends messages through intermediaries offering family and peace if Clary joins him. Clary refuses, but the offer shakes her because part of her still wants a father who is not a story about fire.

A key turn comes when Clary hides in the Hall and watches the Sword test a prisoner. The blade sings and burns. She sketches its lines from memory later and senses wrongness in its shape, extra marks like veins. She tells Luke and Jace that the Sword has been changed. Few in the Gard believe her at first because she is young and unsanctioned. That disbelief frustrates, but it rings true for how closed councils act under threat.

Sebastian, The Angel In The Cellar, And The Battle

A boy named Sebastian Verlac arrives in Alicante claiming to be a cousin of the Penhallows, polite and pale and quick with a smile. He befriends Jace and charms the Lightwoods. He spars well. He listens. Max adores him. Isabelle flirts a little. Clary feels uneasy without knowing why. His manners are too smooth, his interest in Jace too fixed.

He is Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern, Clary's brother, raised by Valentine after Jocelyn fled. Valentine fed him demon blood in the womb and raised him in hiding to be loyal and pitiless. The name Sebastian Verlac is a mask built from a dead boy's papers and a planted family story. The reveal is handled in stages rather than one shock, which I liked. Small wrong notes pile up. He kills Max Lightwood in the Hall after Max follows him into a restricted area. That murder, quiet and fast, shifts the whole book from politics to grief.

Maryse finds Max's body. Robert breaks. Isabelle goes still in a way that scared me more than tears would have. Alec holds the family together by doing small tasks, fetching cloaks and water and runners. Jace blames himself for trusting Sebastian. Clary blames herself for not speaking sooner about her unease. The funeral rites in Alicante are brief and old, with runes for the dead and names read aloud. Clare does not stretch the scene, which gives it force.

War follows quickly. Valentine moves with an army of Forsaken, humans twisted by demon blood from the Cup, and with demons called through rifts. He strikes outside Alicante where the wards thin near Lake Lyn. The Clave splits over whether to meet him in the field or hold the Gard. Luke argues for a united front with Downworlders. Many Shadowhunters refuse to fight beside warlocks and wolves and vampires. Magnus offers spells for a price and stays anyway when the price cannot be paid. Raphael brings a few vampires but keeps his own terms. Maia Roberts, a young werewolf from Luke's pack who crossed an ocean to help, fights with fierce loyalty and watches Simon with wary care that slowly softens.

Clary finds an unexpected ally beneath the Gard. In a cellar room the Clave sealed long ago, the Angel Ithuriel is held bound, a living source of rune knowledge the first Shadowhunters used. Ithuriel speaks to Clary in visions and shows her old marks, including a Sun rune and a binding that can hold Valentine's demons. Clary draws the Sun rune on the courtyard stones during the battle and light breaks across Forsaken ranks. It is one of the most visual scenes in the series, white fire racing along lines she drew with a stele while Jace and Isabelle guard her back.

Jace faces Valentine and Sebastian on the field near the lake. Valentine monologues about blood and order while Sebastian watches with flat eyes. Jace refuses him. Valentine stabs Jace with the corrupted Sword to prove even his own son fails the test. Jace falls. Clary reaches him too late to stop the blade. She holds his hand and refuses to leave while demons close in.

What saves Jace is not a kiss or a speech. Clary remembers Ithuriel's marks and the nature of the Instruments. Valentine plans to summon the Angel Raziel with the Cup and Sword and demand a blessing for his new army. Clary alters the summoning marks at the lakeside, quick sketches in dirt and on her own arms, so the Angel will hear her too. When Raziel rises from the lake, huge and unreadable, Valentine asks for his purge. Raziel sees the demon taint in Valentine's blood and in the Sword and strikes him down. Clary then asks for Jace's life and offers her skill as proof of angel favor. Raziel grants it, but marks her. Jace breathes again. Valentine dies in the water he meant to rule from.

Jonathan, now openly himself, escapes in the chaos with Vallentines's notes and part of the army. He does not mourn Valentine so much as study the loss. His last look at Clary is curious rather than loving. That coldness sets the next books better than any speech could.

Back in Alicante, the Clave counts dead and argues over credit. They thank Clary in formal words that cost them. They offer Simon freedom but bind his memory's ties so his mother will forget him for his own safety, a price he pays without being fully asked. Jocelyn and Luke plan a quiet life with Clary if the Council allows it. Magnus and Alec leave together, closer than before, with Alec finally willing to be seen. Isabelle holds Simon's hand at the memorial and does not let go first.

What Works And What Wears Thin

What works here is scale tied to people. Alicante feels real because Clare shows markets and kitchens and kids underfoot, then breaks that peace with Max's death and a battle on farmland. The Downworlder debate gives the war ideas to chew on. Luke's speech in the Hall about service and contempt is the moral center of the book, and it lands because Luke has lived both sides, Shadowhunter student and bitten outcast. Simon's Daylighter reveal works for the same reason. It changes tactics and faith at once.

The sibling tangle between Clary and Jace also finally moves. For two books they kiss and pull back and argue about blood. Here Clare lets them grieve the idea of being brother and sister and admit they still choose each other, then clears the blood question enough to let them breathe without erasing the discomfort. Some readers will still find the long middle where they avoid each other repetitive. I did. Three almost talks in a row tested my patience. But the lakeside scene where Clary refuses to leave Jace's body earns back goodwill.

Fair criticism belongs here, because the book is long and not every page pulls weight.

The middle sags under history talks. Maryse, Robert, Jocelyn, Luke, and Magnus each explain Valentine's past at length, often in rooms where the war waits outside the door. One full account would do. Four slows momentum. A reader new to politics may welcome the repeats. I wanted more scenes like the market or the training yard to break them up.

Clary's rune power solves problems almost as fast as they appear. Locked door, new rune. Warded wall, new rune. Summoning circle, altered rune. It fits her art mind, and Clare ties it to angel contact so it is not random, but the ease removes tension in two escapes. I wished for one failure with lasting cost, like a rune that scars or fails in front of the Council and leaves her doubted longer.

Valentine monologues too long at the lake while demons wait. He explains his creed to sons who already know it. It fits his pride, but it gives Clary time to redraw marks with no real guard stopping her. A tighter guard would have made her trick feel more daring.

None of that ruined the book for me. The battle at Lake Lyn, the Sun rune lighting stone, Simon standing in sun in the Hall, Isabelle joking through fear in Simon's cell, Alec choosing Magnus in public, Jocelyn waking thin and fierce, Luke refusing hate even when the Gard insults his pack, these scenes carry the slower parts. The 541 pages read faster than the count suggests, and the last fifty move like fire.

Read it for Alicante and for the alliance question. Notice how Clare uses the Soul-Sword not as a sharp object but as a test of who belongs. Notice who the Clave protects first and who they lock up. Notice that Jonathan walks away alive, polite to the end, which tells you the war did not end with Valentine in the lake. If you liked the first two for banter and New York chases, this one trades some chase for council rooms and fields. I missed the Institute's narrow halls at times. I did not miss the feeling that these kids fight alone. Here they finally fight beside wolves and warlocks and vampires, and that larger line on the field is the image I kept.

FAQ

Do I need to read the first two books before City of Glass?

No. City of Glass is book 3 in The Mortal Instruments, after City of Bones and City of Ashes. The plot picks up Jocelyn's coma, Simon's change, and Valentine's theft of the Mortal Cup.

What is the Soul-Sword in City of Glass?

The Soul-Sword, also called Maellartach, is one of the Mortal Instruments kept in the Hall of Accords. Valentine fills it with demon blood so it will kill Shadowhunters and Downworlders who fail its trial.

Is City of Glass only for teen readers?

It is shelved as young adult fantasy from 2009, but its war plot, politics in Alicante, and Downworlder alliance suit adult fantasy readers too.