City of Bones

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-16

Part 2, Chapters 17-20

Part 3, Chapter 21-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 1, Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Dark Descent”

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “The Five-Dimensional Door”

Dorothea’s apartment looks like a stereotypical fortuneteller’s space, with beaded curtains and books on topics like astrology. Dorothea is the adopted daughter of a warlock and carries on her mother’s work of protecting those who require it. She reveals Clary’s mother was a Shadowhunter and then does a tarot card reading for Clary. She picks the ace of cups, which depicts a single gem-encrusted golden chalice, but the reading is jumbled, which makes Dorothea think someone put a block in Clary’s mind to make her forget things.

Jace realizes Dorothea was protecting Clary’s mom and that she also takes in refugees from the Clave. He finds a hidden five-dimensional door, which can take people anywhere on this plane of existence. Clary’s mom meant to use it as an escape if the Clave ever found them, and Clary hopes it will lead her to her mother now. She grabs the doorknob, and the portal sucks her in, sending her “tumbling through empty space” (109).

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “Weapon of Choice”

Jace jumps through the portal after Clary, and they land at Luke’s house. They sneak around back, where they find Simon watching the house. Luke told Simon that Clary went to visit a sick relative but since Clary doesn’t have any other relatives, Simon’s spent the last few days trying to find answers. Clary tells Simon everything, and the three search Luke’s house, finding a pair of shackles bolted to the wall that have signs of someone trying to escape. There’s a bag of weapons and clothes, as if Luke’s preparing to leave, and Clary finds a photo from her apartment in the bag, which means Luke’s been to the apartment since the attack.

Luke, sporting a new cut along his neck, arrives with two Shadowhunters. Jace, Clary, and Simon hide behind a decorative screen, and Jace uses a rune to make part of the panel see-through. The Shadowhunters work for Valentine, who’s kidnapped Clary’s mother to get the location of the Mortal Cup from her. Luke repeatedly tells the men he knows nothing about Clary and intends to leave town and get out of Valentine’s way. When the men threaten to make him stay, Luke says they can try and suddenly there’s “something feral behind his eyes” (129). The men take back the threat and leave, Luke right behind them.

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary: “The Circle and the Brotherhood”

Clary struggles to believe Luke doesn’t care about her or her mother. At the Institute, Jace, Clary, and Simon find Isabel in the kitchen, making soup with odd ingredients. Simon can’t stop staring at her, and Jace gets leftovers out of the fridge, all of which makes Clary irrationally upset because she feels like no one is taking her mother’s disappearance seriously. Though the soup looks nasty, Simon says he wants some, to which Jace retorts that Simon just wants to sleep with Isabelle. Annoyed, Clary breaks up the fight, telling Jace there’s “no need to be sadistic just because he isn’t one of you” (139).

While Simon eats with Isabelle, Jace and Clary find Hodge in the greenhouse, an enormous room full of brightly colored plants. They tell Hodge what happened, and Hodge is sure it means Valentine’s Circle of Shadowhunters are rising again—of which Hodge and Clary’s mom used to be members. Clary can’t believe her mom was in such a group, and Hodge says she likely didn’t have a choice because she and Valentine were married.

Part 1, Chapters 7-9 Analysis

The human and Shadow worlds collide in these chapters. Jace and Clary team up with Simon, which sparks both budding friendships and conflicts. One of City of Bones’s main themes is Being Different Doesn’t Make Someone Better, which is shown by how the Shadowhunters treat both humans and Down-worlders. In these chapters, Jace looks down on Simon because Simon is human and therefore useless to a Shadowhunter. In previous chapters, Jace didn’t look down on Clary in the same way, which implies that Jace believed Clary had Shadowhunter blood since the first time he saw her. It also shows the hypocrisy that underlies feeling superior. Jace was attracted to Clary, so he didn’t feel superior to her, even though his Shadowhunter status tells him he should feel like he’s above humans.

Dorothea is another example of the Shadowhunter and human worlds crossing paths. Dorothea is a human who was raised by a Down-worlder, which makes her unique as a human who knows of and interacts with the Shadow world. The beaded curtains and books she keeps in the front room of her apartment are a cover for the true work she performs as a Down-world protector. Any human who comes to her apartment will see the decorations and texts as a sign that she is entrenched in the psychic/mythical world, and it is likely human customers wouldn’t question anything strange that happens because they will attribute it to the mysticism they understand and expect. The cup in the ace of cups is the disguised Mortal Cup. Later, Clary discovers she can use runes to imbue her drawings with power, a trait her mother shares. Her mother drew the Mortal Cup into the card and hid it with Dorothea because, even though the psychic is tuned in to the Shadow world, her human status would keep her out of the Clave’s eye.

In Chapter 8, Luke appears to turn his back on Clary and her mother, which is one of the many misunderstandings that fuels Clary’s resentment and anger throughout the book. Having been part of Valentine’s group, Luke understands how dangerous Valentine is and how directly opposing him would only lead to more violence, possibly including harm to Clary’s mom. The meeting between Luke and Valentine’s Shadowhunters makes Clary think she can’t trust anything about her old life, and this belief leads her to trust Hodge, which later backfires when Hodge betrays her to give the Mortal Cup to Valentine. Luke’s werewolf nature also symbolizes how much of Clary’s life was hidden from her. Some of the closest people in her life were hiding in plain sight. It may be that Clary has seen evidence of her mom’s and Luke’s true selves in the past but that Magnus’s spell has made her forget what she saw. The shackles in Luke’s house foreshadow Clary discovering Luke is a werewolf and are more evidence that Luke doesn’t hide his true nature, suggesting Clary has seen and forgotten.

The interactions between Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and Simon in Chapter 9 are the beginning of shifting alliances that continue throughout the book. Up until this point, Clary and Simon have been a team supported by years of friendship. Here, Simon feels like Clary is moving away from him toward something he isn’t a part of, and he reacts to this by pulling away from Clary in an attempt to get her to notice him. Simon is also hiding his romantic feelings for Clary. He is likely attracted to Isabelle, but he also uses that attraction to keep his feelings for Clary a secret, similar to how Alec uses anger to hide his feelings for Jace. Clary going with Jace to speak with Hodge foreshadows how Clary joins the Shadow world and how she and Jace become a team, much like the team Clary and Simon have been.