 I want you to take a moment to think about the worst book or book series you've ever read. If you're having trouble, just think of your most hated movie or video game or whatever else comes to mind. Got it? Now I want you to think about why you hate it so much and how you would explain that to others. Odds are, you hate it so much due to some very specific buttons that it pushes. If watching the Beast yell at Belle reminds you of the way your parents treated each other when you were a child, then it doesn't matter how good the rest of the movie is, you probably won't enjoy it. It's completely dependent on what sort of weight you put on different aspects of the media you consume, and we all put more or less weight on different things. Oftentimes we don't even realize this ourselves. I do this as a job, and I still have difficulty explaining why The Demonada is my favorite series of all time. What I'm getting at is that I understand why the Mortal Instruments has such a, let's say, heated reputation. It's long been a punching bag of the YA sphere used as an example of the worst it has to offer. Folks have pointed out the weak characters, the lack of focus on interesting parts of the setting, and the incest, can't forget about the incest. That all makes total sense. The issue is that people are so enamored with all that which results in them outright ignoring what the books do right. Nothing gets popular without a reason. So I'm here today to tell you all about how the Mortal Instruments is 100% okay. Yeah, just okay. The good and bad kind of balance each other out, but you're here for details, so let's do that. Spoilers for the whole story ahead, and keep in mind this is just based on the original trilogy since there are about 18 shit-gazillion sequels, prequels, and spinoffs that I'll die having never read. Anyways, thanks to Campfire for sponsoring this video. Hi, Oscar. How's it going? Are you here to talk about Campfire software and what a good deal it is for writers? Really? So you're telling me that if you're a writer of any kind, you'll want to use Campfire's organization tools for all sorts of things? That it has timelines for hammering out that multi-faceted 20-dimensional storyline you want to work on, character sheets for keeping track of that massive cast, and a built-in encyclopedia for any important terms or events? Is this a subscription service? It isn't. This is a one-time purchase of $49.99? And for only an additional $24.99, you can get the World Building Pack where you can create whole new races, languages, and magic systems? Wow! It sounds like the days of making folders on a flash drive are trying to keep track of where your notebook is or over. Do you think everyone watching should check out Campfire today, or should they wait for some other time? I agree. The best time is yesterday. The second best time is today. Click the link in the description to learn more. Before the nitty-gritty, let's have a quick summary to get everyone up to speed. The premise of the series is pretty standard. In the first book, City of Bones, a 15-year-old girl named Clary sees a group of teenagers kill someone with a sword. However, no one else can see them. Later, she runs into one of the Invisible Teens, named Jace, who informs her that he's a Nephilim, aka a Shadowhunter, and that the person he killed was actually a demon. Shadowhunters are part angel and their job is to secretly protect the Earth from demons coming in from other dimensions, and if Clary can see him, then that means she's a Shadowhunter too. Not only that, other creatures like werewolves and vampires, known collectively as Downworlders, are also running around. Clary gets a call from her mom, indicating she's in trouble, so she goes off to check on her, only to discover that her mom has been kidnapped and a demon is in their apartment. Clary kills it, then meets up with Jace and a group of Shadowhunters in hopes that they can help her find her mom, and from there, the story unfolds. Turns out Clary's mother was a Shadowhunter who used to be the wife of this guy named Valentine. Valentine was a Shadowhunter who attempted to overthrow their government in a quest to kill all the Downworlders, believing them to be tainted by demons and a danger to humanity. He's been dead for years though, and with him, a powerful artifact called the Mortal Cup was lost while Clary's mom took her into hiding. All the while, Jace and Clary start to form a romantic bond, complete with super-hot make-out sessions and pining over his golden hair. They managed to track down the Mortal Cup, but Valentine, who is very much alive, appears, takes the cup, and kidnaps Jace. Clary and some allies break into Valentine's hideout to save him, only for Jace to reveal that Valentine is his father, meaning he and Clary are siblings. When he was being raised, Valentine went by the name Michael Wayland, so this comes as a surprise to everybody. Fun fact, right after I read that scene, I had to pick my younger sister up from school. Really. Valentine escapes with the cup, Clary retrieves her mother, who is in a magical coma, and that's the end of Book 1. Book 2, City of Ashes, starts with Jace being imprisoned for a trial since he's suspected of helping his father. But in a big attack, Valentine kills a bunch of Shadowhunters and steals another artifact called the Mortal Sword. It turns out that when the cup, the sword, and a third artifact called the Mortal Glass, collectively referred to as the Mortal Instruments, are brought together, it summons the Angel Raziel and you can make a wish. It's clear by now that that's what Valentine is up to. Meanwhile, Clary and Jace are trying to ignore the feelings they have. Clary by shacking up with her human friend Simon, and Jace by starting fights with strangers. Jace is kind of a dick. Clary also discovers that she has an unheard of power that allows her to draw runes that are far more powerful than anyone else can. Valentine kidnaps her, others come to her rescue fighting through a battalion of demons and destroying the ship that Valentine uses as a base. But his plans are still in motion. He has an entire army of demons under his control and two of the Mortal Instruments. Simon breaks up with Clary since their relationship is fake and she tries to hop on that J-stick, but he refuses, saying they can never be together. End of Book 2. In the finale, City of Glass, the heroes go to Idris, a hidden country full of Shadowhunters, to search for the Mortal Glass and prevent Valentine from finishing his evil plan. They make friends with a guy named Sebastian who is immediately suspicious, yet they suspect nothing. Clary and Jace go to Valentine's old abandoned manor to find a way to wake her mother from her coma. They retrieve a book and find an angel chained up in the basement who reveals that Clary received an infusion of angel blood in the womb and her brother received demon blood. They let the angel kill himself and bring the book back so their warlock friend can make the potion. This gets into Jace's head, making him feel like even more of a monster than he already did. Later, he goes off alone to try and kill Valentine. Clary's mom wakes up and tells her that while Jace was raised by Valentine, he's not his son. Sebastian is. They aren't siblings after all. And Jace didn't get any demon blood, he got angel blood too. More importantly, they figure out that the Mortal Glass is a nearby lake, so that's where Valentine is. They can't go after him though since his demon army is closing in on the Shadowhunters and Downworlders. They might be able to withstand the attack if they can set aside their own conflicts and work together, so Clary comes up with a room that allows them to share their powers, which cools down tensions. Clary makes a portal to Valentine only to get captured and tied up while he completes the ritual. Meanwhile, Jace is nearly killed in a fight with Sebastian, but he wins and runs off to save Clary. When he arrives, Valentine kills him and completes the ritual to summon Raziel. At the last second, Clary erases his name in the summoning circle and writes her own, putting her in control. Raziel kills Valentine and Clary uses her wish to bring Jace back to life. The day is saved, the Downworlders are brought up to a level closer to Shadowhunters, true love wins, and the government isn't overthrown. The end. I skipped over a lot there, but don't worry. I'll go into more details as they become important. Bad. Let's start with the roast since that's what most of you came here for in the first place, and if you leave too soon, then it ruins my watch time. Number one. The demon hunters do very little demon hunting. The whole conceit of the Shadowhunters is that they protect humanity from demons and the occasional Downworlder, yet throughout all three books, they only fight demons a few times, and all of them are minions of Valentine. Only a few of them get any screen time. Even fewer get proper descriptions or have any personality to speak of. This raises the question, how dangerous are demons really if the most they can do is serve as moops for the heroes to mow down? How often do they come to Earth? And when they do, how much trouble would they cause without the Shadowhunters stopping them? If only three demons come every year and each one kills one person, then I don't see what all the fuss is about. We never get a chance to see demons do much damage or even operate on their own. We never see a powerful demon come to Earth and the heroes have to stop it before it destroys Notre Dame or something, and that would go a long way to contextualizing things. Fuck you, it's been long enough to joke about that. Without knowing the scale of this world, we never get a real sense of how much danger there is to humanity. And without getting a sense of how powerful most demons are, there isn't as much tension as there would be otherwise. We hear that the Shadowhunters are shrinking in number since they're being killed by demons and they can't make more without the Mortal Cup, which is supposed to be scary, but well, we never get context for how scary it is. As a result, the action scenes with demons suffer, along with the tension of the plot at large. For that matter, why bother keeping all this hidden? I know I ask this question a lot, but that's because it comes up a lot. It rarely makes sense why hidden magical worlds would bother staying hidden. For thousands of years, most people believed in demons and fairies anyway. It wouldn't have been much of a shock to them to see folks with magic tattoos. In fact, it would have been a net benefit since most people would be willing to give Shadowhunters material support. Number two, the romance is dumb. I feel like this goes without saying, but the various romances in this young adult series are poorly put together, melodramatic, or just straight up unhealthy. The big one is obviously Jace and Clary. They spend the bulk of the last two books thinking their siblings and desperately attempting to suppress what they feel. On the surface, that's supposed to make it heavier and add internal conflict. For some that might have worked, for me and many others, it just felt weird. Some have said that Clare is trying to romanticize or fetishize incest, and I don't know if I'd buy into that since it's painted as being undesirable here. I will, however, point out that back before she was published, Clare wrote a Harry Potter fanfiction that featured a Ron X. Ginny incestuous relationship. You know what it was called? The Mortal Instruments. But let's set aside the accidental possible incest. Their relationship is still based mostly on Clare thinking Jace is cute and him, uh... What does she do to make him like her again? The first time she sees him is when she thinks he murdered somebody. Great impression. Then he explains the secret world to her, and while that might have assuaged some of the lingering feelings about him, things don't get much better after that. When Jace takes her to the Shadowhunter base, he puts an invisibility rune on her without knowing for certain that she'd survive. And other than one short outburst right after she finds out, she never brings it up again. I get that it was a dangerous situation, but being that cavalier with her safety robs him of any hot make-out sessions for at least a month as far as I'm concerned. Not only that, it's a matter of days before she falls in love with him so much she can't get over her feelings when she thinks he's her brother. It's just odd to see either of them fall that hard that fast with no real reason given, though not unusual for the genre. The really important part of any relationship, both IRL and on the page, is the day-to-day normal interactions, and in that area, Jace fails just as badly as first impressions. He's just kind of a sarcastic asshole, the Clary, and to everyone else around him. Then they excuse him for it because it's allegedly a defense mechanism to protect his alleged inner-sensitive side and alleged insecurities. This sort of thing works with characters like Deadpool because, one, he's meant to be primarily comedic, and two, they show him being vulnerable once in a while. Jace never gets that, he simply talks down to everyone around him, and not in a funny way. There's even a scene where she recognizes him based on his heartbeat, which, in addition to being a dumb couple of lines, is just a weird way of showing how in love they are. Is Cassandra Clare saying that if you don't recognize your significant other's heartbeat then you don't really love them? I'm not sure. The rest of the relationships aren't much better. Most of them are shallow and based solely off physical appearance, maybe one or two cute moments. They aren't straight up toxic for the most part, so I guess they could be worse. The only relationship I think is genuinely good from back to front is Magnus and Alec. They're supportive of one another, they get along without unnecessary drama, they both have identities independent of the other, and the story treats their love the same as the straight relationships. Yeah, the gay romance is better than all the straight ones, I've never seen that before, but it's a welcome change. Number three, possible plagiarism. I want to preface this bit by saying that some of this is hearsay or internet folklore, and thus its accuracy is questionable. However, a lot of it can be backed up, and that does not paint a pretty picture. Before she wrote the mortal instruments, Cassandra Clare was notorious in the fanfiction community for writing a series of Harry Potter fix called the Draco trilogy. The three books were written over the course of six years, which makes sense considering the massive length. Book one is a modest 70,000 words, then book two is 285,000 words, and book three is 537,000 words. For context, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is around 470,000 words long. My god, man. The plot is bizarre, but nothing all that notable by the standards of fanfiction. Harry and Draco switch bodies, they both love Hermione, villains other than Voldemort threaten the world, nothing worth talking about as far as I've seen. As the series gained popularity, more and more people noticed that a lot of the dialogue sounded familiar. After some investigating, they found that Clare would take quotes from popular TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and then change some of the names around for her own works. When called on this, Clare claims that it was all just a game, that the goal was for her fans to find them and identify where they came from. While that's not horrendous on its own since it wasn't being done for profit, she wasn't very good at advertising that she was, quote, borrowing from other sources. It seems like she was using the game as an excuse after getting caught. And it gets worse. Clare also took character ideas, plot points, scenes, and even entire paragraphs of description with the names changed. She took from a lot of different places, including other fanfics and old fantasy novels. Again, she claimed it was all for fun, for her fans to find and identify. You can make an hours-long video just showing all of the excerpts, but I think you'll get the point with only a few. For this, she was banned from fanfiction.net and continued publishing her work on Fiction Alley, continuing to, quote, borrow from other works until the Draco trilogy finished up in 2006. Two weeks after posting the final chapter of Book 3, she removed it to embark on her published career, making copies difficult to track down. I bring all this up so that you can have proper context for the accusations of plagiarism against the mortal instruments. Clare does not deserve the benefit of the doubt here. Back in 2016, Sherilyn Kenyon, author of the Dark Hunters books, filed a lawsuit against Clare for copyright infringement. According to the lawsuit, both series follow a group of magically gifted hunters who protect the normal world from supernatural threats. From what I've looked at, there are similarities between characters and world-building ideas too. Dark Hunters also revolves around characters being granted magic powers and hunting demons, and it's also got a huge emphasis on romance and bad boys and normal people being thrust into this dangerous new world. There are a few differences, like how Dark Hunters don't get their powers until after they're murdered, or how the lore is based in Greek myths rather than Christian ones. However, if you've read the mortal instruments, you've read Dark Hunters. Granted, there are 31 books published and it's still going. I couldn't read them all in time to write this if I wanted to. If there are more substantial differences, let me know about them. That's not enough to claim plagiarism on its own since those are universal tropes that have been around forever. The really damning part is this excerpt from the lawsuit. The Dark Hunter series and the Shadow Hunter series are so similar that Clare's own publisher mistakenly printed 100,000 copies of a Shadow Hunter book referencing the Dark Hunter mark on the cover. If a symbol is so close to another that the people working on it can't tell them apart, it's back to the drawing board for you. Even if it isn't technically copied, you want to avoid accusations of that sort of thing since ignoring it is unprofessional. Clare was even originally going to call the Shadow Hunters Dark Hunters before she changed it to avoid this exact sort of legal trouble. Should have spent a little more time on the new name, Cassandra. What I'm saying is that Cassandra Clare is kind of sort of a massive cunt who likes to profit from the talent of others. Other people's works can inspire your own creations, but they can't BE your creations. Does this automatically make the mortal instruments bad? Sort of. In the sense that it's difficult to get into something when you know the creator is an awful person, yeah, knowing all this drags the books down. As for the quality of the books on their own, the plagiarism prevents them from having their own identity. It's subtle, but if you pay attention to the dialogue and descriptions of the series, they vary in quality from good to absolute garbage. Not hard to guess which bits weren't written by Clare. It's inconsistent, resulting in a muddled mess that doesn't stand out as poetic, or grounded, or grimy, or anything else. The most I got out of it were a couple of lines of dialogue where you could tell the writer smiled smugly at how cool they thought it sounded. The mortal instruments doesn't have many original ideas in terms of plot or setting, meaning it NEEDS to search for other routes to carve out a niche, and without a narration that works, there's one more way in which it doesn't rise above the crowd. It's not even that the prose is derivative for the most part, it isn't anything long enough to give a descriptor. And since I'm not a massive cunt, I want to thank the fan critic Apocato for doing the bulk of research and compiling that I used to write this segment. Number four. God, the prose and dialogue suck. I just said most everything important about why the prose is bad and results in poor tone. What I didn't show you was how dumb it gets. When Clare learns about Valentine's views on Downworlders, she says, quote, He sounds like one of those creepy white power guys. That's not how people talk. And there's plenty of other lines like, No, you know what? I don't need any more examples. That one is dumb enough to work on its own. Next point. Number five. Clare is a dumb, pathetic protagonist. At the beginning of City of Bones, Clare is a generic normal person who discovers a magic world, nothing noteworthy about her. When she goes after her mom and finds a demon in her apartment, she manages to kill it by stuffing her phone down its throat. At first that sounds impressive, then you learn that Clare passed out and jammed the phone at it in desperation. It was mostly accidental and Clare doesn't even remember doing it afterwards. Things only get worse from there. Say what you will about the movie, at least Clare had to think fast to avoid being eaten there. She wasn't just a damsel in distress. Throughout the series, she continuously gets into trouble and must be bailed out by others, mostly Jace. Remember when she charged into a vampire nest to rescue Simon after he was turned into a rat and she dragged Jace along with her? Sure, she went to save her friend. That doesn't mean it wasn't stupid. Things can be brave and stupid at the same time. There are other examples too, like when she decides to eat food in the Faye Court and almost traps her friends there, or when she tries to attack Valentine alone in the last book. If this happened a few times and she learned from it, that would be one thing. The continuous stream is what makes it obnoxious. As for her special runic powers, they are impressive, yes. The issue is that she doesn't have to work for it at all. She literally just thinks about new runes and she can make them. They're cool and useful, don't get me wrong, but the impact isn't quite the same when there's so little effort on her part. And I'm not going to trot out that tired criticism that she'd be useless without that power, because that's a stupid thing to complain about and I see it all the time. Maybe a character would be useless without their special power, but that's irrelevant because guess what? They DO have that power. That's like saying Batman wouldn't be a very good hero without his martial arts training and array of gadgets. That's all key to who he is. Without that, we don't have a superhero. We have an orphaned billionaire and that's something totally different. Beyond that, Clary is just kind of dumb. I get that she's an audience surrogate when it comes to being ignorant about the Shadow Hunter world, but the degree to which she needs to be led along to new information is maddening. Like when she learns that her mom was married to Valentine, she's upset by it. But it takes another couple dozen pages before someone tells her that she's his daughter and she's taken completely off guard by this. Like, girl, you couldn't figure it out sooner? Despite all of this, she's still a beautiful hero who saves the day and has all the boys drool over her. Simon, Jace, Sebastian, they all show off how pretty they think she is and make some sort of advances on her. Yet Clary never lets this get to her head. She never gets an ego about it. She never even acknowledges that she's beautiful as far as I can tell. She stays humble so that she doesn't gain one of those horrible character flaws like vanity. Even the people who don't want to get in her pants get along great with her and want to be her friend. The only exceptions are villains and stuffy old fashioned politicians and no one cares what they think. I don't normally accuse characters of being author self inserts, but the author's name is Cassandra Clare and the character is named Clary. At that point, you're not even trying to fucking hide it. Number six, the racism allegory is handled as bad as it could be. The topic of racism being covered with fantasy or alien races is nothing new. The mortal instruments is one more in a long line of failures in that regard. Valentine is a pretty clear racial supremacist who is willing to even kill his own people on his way to wipe out those he sees as inferior. He's unequivocally the bad guy here. The issue with this is that it misses the core flaw with real world racism. We're all humans and any differences are either superficial or fabricated. The Downworlders are actually different species. Sort of. The Fae and Warlocks are both half demon, which gives them access to magical powers that humans don't have, making them a possible danger. Vampires and werewolves are humans that were infected with some sort of disease, which is also not how racism works. Whether you're judging people based on appearance, ancestry, place of origin or culture, those are all things that can't be helped and are with you from either birth or a very young age. Not something that infected you. I don't think there's anyone out there who thinks that if you get bitten by a Jew, then you'll sprout a Yamaka under the full moon. Maybe Mel Gibson, but that's it. Frankly, vampires have to eat humans to survive and werewolves completely lose control of their transformation sometimes, turning into rampaging animals. They are a danger to civilians and shadow hunters alike. There's a sort of brutal logic to wiping them out, not to mention that vampires are hurt by crosses and stars of David, and they can't say the word God, which seems to help Valentine's case that they're evil. If God is real and his symbols hurt someone, that's pretty clear evidence that he doesn't like them, which could easily mean that he wants them gone. Sebastian is infected with demon blood before the series begins, which gives him more powers than most other shadow hunters. Before Valentine even begins the process, the demon he summons says that the blood will burn away all of Sebastian's humanity. And from everything we see, that's true. He's violent, selfish, unconcerned with the well-being of others, and only does what his father says so that he can hurt people. This seems to suggest that humans combined with demons really are evil. That's not to excuse the actions of Valentine or any other shadow hunters who abuse the Downworlders. They still have intelligence and emotions and deserve to be treated with dignity. The issue is that Cassandra Clare set things up in a way where Valentine's morally indefensible actions makes sense. She set things up to where the Downworlders are not just physically different from humans, but mentally different as well. Ironically, this reinforces the racist ideals that the books purport to be against. Not that I'm claiming Clare is a secret Nazi or something, just that she's an idiot. Defense. But this video is called The Mortal Instruments Is Fine, not The Mortal Instruments Is Bad, so let's take some time to appreciate the good parts. Number one, it hits that sweet spot between fantasy adventure and paranormal romance. When City of Bones came out, Twilight was reaching its stride and Harry Potter had just ended. It was a time when fantasy adventure and paranormal romance were both huge, and yet they rarely mixed. Sure, stuff like Fallen has some sort of save the world plot, but there was never any doubt that that was less important than watching teenagers make eyes at one another. So if you were someone who wanted romance as a focus, but still wanted an actual story beyond that, you were SOL. Then The Mortal Instruments came along and attempted to do just that. You can say that it went too far into the romance side of things and I'd have to disagree. The majority of the story revolves around the characters investigating leads, getting into trouble, getting out of trouble, fighting bad guys, and discovering dark secrets. There are twists, conflicts, betrayals, and it all builds to a final battle. Even the romantic pining and will they won't they plot makes sense since it's more complicated than simply wondering why the love interests don't just admit their feelings. The romance, such as it is, is folded in with the events rather than the other way around. The story never loses sight of what it's trying to be or what it advertised itself as, which is beyond refreshing compared to many of its contemporaries. There are flaws and shortcomings on both sides of this, sure, but any series where the villain chains up an angel in his basement to drain its blood and make his daughter into some sort of ubermensch is at least trying to tell an interesting story. If you can look past the flaws in it, you'll probably enjoy it as the main event, not just a side attraction. Number two, the Shadowhunter powers are cool. If you've seen much of my stuff, you probably know that I'm a big fan of unique magic systems of all sorts, whether hard or soft, and the Shadowhunter powers are one more on the list. They can draw runes on their skin to give themselves new abilities like invisibility, increased strength, bravery, and so on. Runes can't go on humans, it'll kill them, so not just anyone can learn to do it, you have to be born a Shadowhunter or be made into one at a young age with the mortal cup. In addition, runes can be used to lock doors, create barriers, open portals, and a few other useful things. Clary can use runes no one else has, though she isn't creating new ones so much as remembering old ones from before humanity existed, and as soon as she shows them to others, they can draw them too. Runes all have one specific use and they're all limited in what they can do, even Clary can't do whatever she wants. In addition, the only way to draw a rune is with a magical item called a steel. If someone loses their steel, they lose their ability to use runes, giving them a major weakness. Runes also aren't much good in a straight fight, they're more for utility and preparation. So there are plenty of handicaps here, there's never a point where you're wondering why they don't just snap their fingers and save the day. Everything adds up into a solid magic system which is consistent and cool. I'd be lying if I said it was on par with something like Mistborn, that doesn't make it bad though. Number three, Valentine is a competent villain. For some reason, YA books from the aughts and tens rarely had villains that were memorable in any way. Whatever the genre or intended audience, the antagonists were treated as more of an afterthought. Oftentimes they were evil just because, and they didn't have enough screen time to make any sort of impression otherwise. Even if you like things like Twilight, The Hunger Games, or The Maze Runner, you have to admit that the bad guys are boring at best and stupid at worst. Half the time they don't even appear until several books in. Malaren from Throne of Glass is so boring you don't even remember that his name isn't Malaren, it's Arawan. He's just an evil demon dude who comes in to take over and doesn't arrive until more than halfway through the series. As an aside, Voldemort isn't that good either, people only remember him that way because of Rafe finds his amazing performance in the movies. I'll fight you on this. Valentine Morgenstern avoids these pitfalls by following really basic writing conventions. He's mentioned and built up a few times before he appears, then he spends the rest of the series advancing his evil plans. He doesn't sit back and send out progressively stronger minions to kill the heroes, he doesn't show mercy to anyone besides his children, and he's not a cowardly weakling. He fights and tricks the heroes on multiple occasions, worming his way into their minds and getting closer to his goal with every book. City of Ashes is one of the rare instances where the middle entry in a trilogy isn't loaded down with filler, and that's all because Valentine doesn't pussyfoot around. His goal is to wipe out the Downworlders and he won't stop for anything. Remember, this is the guy who murders several children to use their blood in a magic ritual. When he commits, he commits. The only time he makes a major mistake is when he doesn't kill Clary at the end of City of Glass, and that turns out to be his undoing. It makes total sense why he would spare her though, since she was both his daughter and proof that his angel blood experiments worked. And beyond that, she wasn't much of a fighter. Even if he wasn't attached to her, he didn't see her as a threat. He also stands out in that he doesn't want to just destroy or take over the world. He only wants to kill a certain subset of people, which is still evil but a little different than most villains. If the heroes decided to give up their principles, they could join him and be welcomed, which makes them seem a bit more... Well, heroic. They aren't just fighting for their own survival, they're protecting others and sticking to their ideals. In other words, the villain provides contrast for the heroes and gives them more character. How about that? Is he an amazing villain that redefined a genre and made me question my own morality? Of course not. He's still a very solid antagonist that poses a real threat to the good guys and forces them to change, and that's something worth celebrating. Number four. Clary is a driven, selfless protagonist. I know I just said that Clary sucked, but she only sucks about half the time. The rest of the time, she's useful and willing to go to great lengths to protect others. For the bulk of the series, she's focused on saving her mother, then waking her up from her coma. All the help she gives against Valentine is incidental and based on that, at least at first. She has no combat training or experience at all, but that doesn't stop her from trying to do the right thing. Remember how I said that going after Simon in a vampire nest was stupid? Well, that stands, but it doesn't mean that it didn't take balls the size of a planetoid. Even Jace brings this up at the end of City of Glass. Granted, it's done in a cheesy way where he says that love makes her stronger, but it still works. It would have been so easy to make Clary a blank slate that got caught up in all this and is forced to help the other Shadowhunters against her will. By not doing that, she winds up being a better person and a better character. Despite not knowing how to fight, she's not useless, mostly due to her special rune powers. While she never has to struggle to learn how to use them, she uses them creatively. They allow her to break out of prison, make portals faster than anyone else, even form a bond between Shadowhunters and Downworlders. Without her, both sides would likely have refused to come together and defeat Valentine's demon army. It's rare in fantasy of all stripes for the hero to be a hero in any way other than simply being good at fighting. Clary is bad at fighting, but she's good at bringing people together and utilizing her unique skills to make up for that. So, much like the series as a whole, she has some massive problems balanced out by some impressive qualities and they mix together in an amorphous mass, the quality of which varies depending on which side you look at. Number 5. The titles are kind of cool. When I hear the title City of Bones, I'm immediately intrigued. I want to know more about this city. Where is it? What's it like? What sort of magical adventures will the characters go on while they're in there? Why is it called the City of Bones? And when the next books are called City of Ashes and City of Glass, I'm even more intrigued. I want to know about these other cities and I know right away that this world is going to get bigger as time goes on. I'm also just a fan of when a series has titles that all have a common theme and escalate as the series goes on. The titles aren't like House of Night where they clearly just threw random adjectives on the covers with no regard for what happened in the story, or like Wheel of Time where they ran out of ideas halfway through and tried to make the most generic sounding fantasy schlock they could so that we could spend another three books watching Perrin be worried in the forest. That's about it. Not much to say here, the titles are just really good at grabbing attention. The marketing team probably thanked Claire for doing most of their work for them. Conclusion. Look, the mortal instruments has issues. No one is denying that. When I read it as a teen, I enjoyed it. If I read it today for the first time, I'd enjoy it less since opinions are just that. Opinions. Taste varies from person to person and that causes us to put more or less emphasis on different things. The faux incest will bother some people, not bother others, and get others twice as invested as before. They're all looking at the same thing and getting a different feeling from it. Your opinion on it is going to be determined almost completely by which aspect you personally assign importance to, and we assign importance to different things. That's why in most of my reviews, I recommend books to people who are looking for one thing or another rather than just saying, it's good or it's bad. If someone hates violent action movies, they aren't going to like the raid. It doesn't matter how well put together it is. If someone hates young adult fantasy, they're never going to enjoy the mortal instruments. I totally understand why the mortal instruments would be someone's favorite series and I totally understand why someone would despise it above all else. For me, I can't help but feel that some parts simply balance out others. If you hate this series, I hope I've convinced you to give it some credit for what it does right. If you're a fan, I hope you start giving it some side-eye. Or you could talk about how it's objectively bad and only a stupid person would enjoy it and how anyone who disagrees with you is a corporate shill. That makes more sense. 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