Shadowhunters and Downworlders (23 page)

I
SABELLE:
I believe it. Noted pervert, our Jace. Now fang my brains out.

I swear, my hand to God and Girl Scouts, that the events I have just related actually occur in the book, just as written (Isabelle-fanging in
City of Lost Souls
and Jace-fanging in
City of Ashes
, to be specific and precise about my fanging). I admit that the dialogue is pretty much 100 percent Sarah-produced made-up. I couldn't resist: I love a make-out scene.

I will segue from talking about making out (only briefly, I swear) to talk about family. (Family who aren't making out, guys; come on, work with me here.) The Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series abound with examples of nontraditional family units. Jace was adopted at the age of twelve, and there are strains from both sides—fear that Jace's allegiance belongs to his birth parent, parental fear from Maryse Lightwood that her sins or the birth parent's sin will taint Jace. But Maryse loves him, and sings him the song she sang the children she gave birth to, because he's hers. Charlotte, much too young to be a mother, is nevertheless placed in loco parentis to Will and Jem: While it's not motherhood, it's guardianship, and there's love and respect there on all sides. Mortmain, the villain of the Infernal Devices, clearly adored his adoptive warlock parents. Even Valentine, the chief villain of the first Mortal Instruments trilogy, whom we find out in
City of Glass
adopted Jace (OR DID HE? Sorry, no, he did, go on), genuinely loves his son:

V
ALENTINE:
My boy. My sweet boy. I could not love thee, dear, so much did I not love megalomania-cally taking over the world more.

J
ACE:
I'm going to be in therapy forever.

V
ALENTINE:
I stab you to death now. With a heart full of love! Know this: I would still totally stab you if you were biologically mine. It makes no difference to me: I am devoted to you, and immensely crazypants.

J
ACE:
Call a doctor and a psychiatrist…

V
ALENTINE:
Stab, stab, XOXOXO, Daddy.

This is borne out again by the fact Valentine does not love Clary, who actually is biologically his daughter. He blames her for her mother leaving, which, putting aside the surface crazed-demon-hunter-on-mission-to-take-over-world issue, is relatable again: the parent who resents a child for taking up the other parent's attention and affection. In return, Clary doesn't love him: In fact, she murders him for being a big boyfriend-killing world-take-overing speciesist jerk. He's not her father in any real sense: Luke Garroway the werewolf is her father, if anyone is. And it is Luke who says perhaps the truest and most important thing in the books, making explicit their message, in
City of Fallen Angels
: “Be what you are. No one who really loves you will stop.”

Love is acceptance, and treating people right. Sebastian, Clary's bio brother (whom she totally also makes out with, and who is also a bit demonish, and whose real name is Jonathan but I'm sticking with Sebastian because my motto is once you murdered someone and assumed their identity, murderous finders' keepers!), is actually related to Clary and Valentine, and in the Infernal Devices, Tessa and Nathaniel are somewhat related, and Benedict Lightwood is definitely Gabriel and Gideon's father. Doesn't really work out well! Sebastian, Valentine, and Benedict are bad people. (Except that Sebastian is my baby demon honey lamb, but that's not what this essay is about, however: Don't blame the demon-blood-infested player, hate the demon-blood-infesting game.) Simon is blood related to both his mother and his sister, but his mother rejects him in
City of Fallen Angels
and his sister accepts his vampirosity in
City of Lost Souls
. Embracing people for who they are is the key.

The portrayal of all these untraditional families and strange friendships conveys this: Blood doesn't matter.
Tradition doesn't matter, and following the accustomed forms and rules of family doesn't matter.
Love
is what matters. Love is the song you hear even while you sleep, and you know you are healed, and safe, and where you belong.

So what does all this talk about love and desire and strangeness really mean, in the larger scheme of things rather than in the personal-opinions arena? (Example of a possible personal opinion: “I Read This Book of Essays and I Really Think Sarah Rees Brennan Is a Demented Sex Fiend.”) I'm not saying: These books are a lot about desire, keep them away from children! I'm saying: These books are a lot about desire in all its forms and about not condemning it, and I think that's valuable for teenagers—for everyone.

Let's examine what Cassandra Clare has actually done, through this addressing of love and desire. She's written one of the very few (I count two
¹
) young adult books with an Asian character important enough—Jem Carstairs, via being one of the romantic leads—to get his own cover, to hit the bestseller list (
Clockwork Prince
). She has written what I would say is
the
most popular gay relationship in the whole YA fiction realm. And is popularity important? Yes, yes it is. A book is more likely to be popular if it's heteronormative; it means there are fewer obstacles in the book's way (stores and festivals refusing to stock the book, less fancy marketing for the book). Consider how nobody's gay that we know of in Twilight or the Hunger Games… consider Dumbledore being revealed as gay—but not, crucially, in the books themselves—in Harry Potter. Think about what a book being popular really
means.
(It doesn't
mean the author gets to buy a golden helicopter.) It means that a lot of people read it—a lot of people get the message that, for instance, gay relationships shouldn't exist by reading books where they don't exist. I wish none of this were true, but it is; and since it is, I'm so happy that Cassandra Clare's books are in the world, and that they have been so wildly successful and beloved.

Cassandra Clare has achieved an enormous amount, because she's been able to send out this message to so many readers: Whoever you are, whatever you want—it's okay, and you are okay. You can be better than okay: You can be a hero.

We need more scandalous books by deviant wenches to tell us that.

Sarah Rees Brennan
was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it's not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. She is the author of
Team Human
and the Demon's Lexicon trilogy. Her new book is
Unspoken
, a romantic Gothic mystery about a girl who discovers her imaginary friend is a real boy.

¹
Lili Saintcrow's
Betrayals
, sequel to her
Strange Angels
, is the other. You're welcome, curious reader!

ABOUT THE EDITOR

#1
New York Times
bestselling author
Cassandra Clare
created the Mortal Instruments in 2004 with
City of Bones
(Simon & Schuster, 2007). Since then, the series has grown to five books, with a sixth due in 2014, and been joined by two spinoff trilogies and an upcoming film starring Jamie Campbell Bower and Lily Collins. Clare's books have earned her numerous awards, including the American Library Association Teens Top Ten Title.