Book Overview #3: Infernal Devices

So I’ve read the first Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare. She has written the most popular paranormal romances after Twilight, and sold who knows how many millions of copies. Let me show you the brilliance of her storytelling and why she deserves all the fame she has.

Before every chapter, we get a stolen passage from some poet. What a great way for Clare to show how derivative is everything she writes.

Prologue

The first line of text is about a demon blowing his guts all over the protagonist. That sets the tone of the story perfectly, as it blows really hard.

The two Shadowhunters spend several pages in infodumping dialogues, full of stuff they already know but mention anyways for the reader to get the basics. Who said anything about showing us how the setting works through their actions when you can lazily just say it and break the immersion?

The infamous smiling everyone does all the time in Clare’s books. “He smiled in a way that might have been the way Lucifer smiled when he fell from Heaven”. You know, this metaphor does not exactly explain what kind of a smile that would be. A wry one?

The heroine has a clockwork angel statue that keeps ticking for several years without needing winding. Why is she so poor? She has a machine of perpetual energy. Patent the damn thing and become stinking rich. Of course if she had done that, she wouldn’t be our little poor Cinderella we are supposed to feel sorry for.

Chapter 1

Our self-insert heroine is tortured by a bunch of cronies, before being forced to marry someone she doesn’t even know of. The fastest way for the oblivious teenage girls reading this book to care about a blank personality with no goals, is by victimizing her at the hands of heartless older people with authority.

Chapter 2

The cronies mention to Bella-clone how she will have anything she wants if she marries the magistrate. How smart of them not to say that earlier, so she wouldn’t hate what they are doing to her, or be trying to run away all the time. But then again, if they did so, the victimizing wouldn’t work on the reader, regardless of it making no sense being there.

The obligatory pretty boy arrives to save her and she immediately runs away with him. She knows she will have everything she wants if she marries the magistrate, including the release of her brother. Why is she following a complete stranger and not going along with a marriage that will at least make all she’s been through to pay-off? I mean, yeah, she hates those cronies and knows nothing about the magistrate. But they promise her the sun and the moon, while the stranger who came to save her promised nothing. There is no incentive to run away with him… Or at least there isn’t until you are told her rescuers are all pretty boys who make her smile (most overused Clare expression ever). That is magically all it takes to stop thinking logically and trust them. The Ultimate Power takes a backseat to a pretty face. Nice moral message you are giving us there, Clare.

Chapter 3

The classic “falling unconscious” trope. It’s what amateurs use when they need to skip uninteresting events, instead of somehow making them interesting and plot relevant. You make the main character fall unconscious and then you have others infodump what happened once he wakes up.

The good guys have a very secure way of knowing whom to bring into their headquarters. They read his letters, and if they sound safe they have all the proof they need for his innocence. No need to doubt a total stranger for any other reason. Such as, I don’t know, lying in the letters about who you are, or having multiple vile personalities hiding under the façade of an innocent one?

Another classic trope. Reading the pamphlet to the lobotomized askman. It’s when a rookie enters a secret society and needs someone to infodump the crap out of it. Yes, it makes sense in-story, but it sure doesn’t make it engaging when you are told everything through what is essentially someone soliloquizing a pamphlet for tourists. Also, I find it hard to believe a secret society would reveal everything and right away to a newcomer. What did Bella-clone do to deserve it? She is just a victim they saved, not a new member. Furthermore, she is a creature of darkness, the kind of which they are constantly fighting against. Why would they reveal all their secrets to what might be a spy? Because it’s a stupid story, that’s why. The only thing the teenage girls reading this are supposed to think, is the self-insert entering a magical world where she is pampered by handsome monster men who really like her right away.

Chapter 6:

The cliché of the villain leaving a warning message for the heroes, in the form of a clockwork corpse. Not only he fails to promote his goals or frighten then, he also gives them clues to figure out his plan. In effect, it was self-sabotage.

Chapters 7-9:

A fifth of the book is wasted on them just talking and getting ready to go to a vampire den. It’s not worthwhile build-up if nothing of significance happens at the same time. Getting to know each other while also infodumping stuff at the same time, has its limits before it becomes a lazy excuse for replacing world building and plot progression with long, boring dialogues.

Chapter 10:

The vampires have no way to tell if someone is polymorphed to look as one of them. How exactly did they survive all these centuries with no defense against polymorph? Any spy or assassin could wipe them out with no effort.

Bullshit plot convenience ahoy! What are the odds of Bella-clone’s brother being about to get executed in the exact same time and place she happens to be present? Winning the lottery is easier.

Chapter 11:

Despite living for centuries, the vampires have no way to tell what an explosive device is and allow everybody to enter without being searched for dangerous items first. Again, how are these people surviving for all these centuries when they fall for the simplest tricks?

No commoners saw a bunch of ninjas fighting with vampires in a flaming building, right in the center of London. How the hell did they cover this mess from the eyes of the public? Despite the author’s attention to detail, which makes the setting plausible as a Victorian era London, the population disappears from the scene or does not react to all the paranormal crap that take place in it. This makes everything self-absorbed, like an illusion or a dream, instead of showing how they are part of a living, breathing world.

Chapters 12-13:

And thus it begins. Bella-clone is revealed to be special, possessing powers nobody else does and belonging to no specific race. At the same time she makes out with Edward-clone for being such a hunk, and that is all the reason she needs to call this a romance. I know this crap is the main reason teenage girls eat these books, but it’s not any less cringy if you are a middle-aged male. Pandering self-inserts are too forced to mean anything, especially when the whole threat of the clockwork zombies is completely sidetracked from this point onwards for a bland paranormal romance I got sick of seeing getting repeated in the exact same way as Twilight.

Chapter 14:

Remember what I said earlier about the commoners not seeing the paranormal crap? If they could somehow cover up the previous battle because it took place in a closed space and away from curious eyes, this next battle has no excuse. It takes place in a public park and expands across several streets. There is not a single onlooker to take notice of a ninja running like the wind while being chased by a hundred cyborg zombies. Whatever immersion the book had, is now completely gone.

Chapter 15:

Hunk-backup reveals his tragic backdrop story, so we will get to feel sorry for him. And of course he has to infodump it with monologue and make it as edgy as possible, so the teenage girls reading this crap will find him interesting all of a sudden. I wouldn’t be biting this forced drama crap, even if I was a hungry vampire.

Chapters 17-18:

Dull surprise. Bella-clone’s brother who was brought into the secret society by being trusted right away with no real evidence, turns out to be a spy. The defenses of the secret society are also paper thin if anyone can enter as long as he finds a few drops of blood by any of its members. Anyone can breach anything in this poorly conceived setting.

Chapter 19:

The big bad can teleport when cornered. One of the laziest and most broken powers for getting out of any situation. And he sure didn’t use that to get into their headquarters so far. Also, this is the only cop-out the author is using for the villain to escape and the story to continue for two more books.

That’s it for the first book alone. Imagine how much more to shake your head there will be in the other two.