Shadowhunters and Downworlders by Cassandra Clare Read Free Book Online

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DIANA PETERFREUND
    Any warrior worth his salt isn’t too keen on having the secrets of his weapons revealed, but I find this essay by Diana to be an illuminating analysis of what makes Jace the Jace we know, love, and occasionally want to strangle.
    SHARPER THAN A SERAPH BLADE
    T he Shadowhunters of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series have a variety of weapons at their disposal, and most possess particular favorites. Isabelle Lightwood is fond of her golden electrum whip, Luke Garroway (when not wolfy) is very attached to the
kindjal
blade Valentine gave him to off himself with, and Clary Fray probably gets the most mileage out of her Angel-given gift of rune making—that is, when she can manage to hang on to her stele. (Honestly, she drops that thing more often than Stephanie Plum forgets her gun.)
    But Jace Wayland Morgenstern Herondale Lightwood—who, thanks to his angel blood, is one of the most powerful of all Shadowhunters, and who has more names forseraph blades than can be found in your average baby-naming book—has one weapon that trumps them all.
    Humor.
    Seraph blades and daggers and steles are all well and good (and for Jace, they’re very good indeed), but the weapon he turns to time and time again throughout the Mortal Instruments series is his wit. When things look particularly dire, that’s when his jokes get particularly harsh. Late in
City of Fallen Angels
, Simon even points it out explicitly:
    This was Jace being brave, Simon thought, brave and snarky because he thought Lilith was going to kill him, and that was the way he wanted to go, unafraid and on his feet. Like a warrior. The way Shadowhunters did. His death song would always be this—jokes and snideness and pretend arrogance, and that look in his eyes that said,
I’m better than you
. Simon just hadn’t realized it before.
    Poor Simon. Given the many times the mundie vampire Daylighter has been the brunt of Jace’s masculine swagger, it’s little wonder it took him four books to realize the truth behind Jace’s weapon of choice. Luckily, Jace knows exactly what his biting wit, mocking laugh, and arrogant amusement can accomplish, even from the very beginning of the series.
    In
City of Bones
, when Clary and Jace first return to her apartment, they are confronted by a Forsaken minion of Valentine’s—a big one, with an even bigger axe. When the formerly human creature attacks, narrowly missing Jace’s head with his aforementioned axe, what does Jace do? Does he sigh in relief ? Does he attack the dude from a distance? No; he
laughs
.
    â€œThe laugh seemed to enrage the creature,” who then proceeds to
drop his weapon
—you know, as you do if you’re a possessed evil minion who is being made fun of by a teenager—and raises his fists to the heavily armed Jace, who immediately dispatches him with a quick slice of his seraph blade.
    You know, as you do if you’re a badass Shadowhunting teenager who knows that laughing at your exceptionally large, exceptionally enraged opponent is the best way to get him to do something dumb.
    And the fun for Jace is just starting. Later, in the battle in Dorothea’s apartment, he taunts the Greater Demon Abbadon in a similar way. As the demon soberly intones about his particular prowess over other demons and hellish domain, Jace feigns disdain. “I’m not so sure about this wind and howling darkness business…smells more like landfill to me. You sure you’re not from Staten Island?”
    Jace apparently knows that one of the best ways to attack the bad guys is to wound their pride. Abbadon does not appreciate his precious Abyss being compared to an outer borough, and leaps at Jace, who stands at the ready (are you noticing a pattern here?) with a couple of seraph blades.
    Time and again, Jace returns to his signature