Hey, everyone! Welcome to our City of Bones Book Discussion! We’re so glad you could join us! Over the next ten weeks, we’re bringing on some awesome-ness to spice up your life! That’s right, we’re about to get the party started, but we have to set a few ground rules first (*trying to make a stern face*). This is how each week will play out:

• Each week we will do a detailed discussion of the plot of that week’s chapters (every Monday!). We will also highlight characterization, quotes, favorite parts, random scenes, and ask/answer questions.

• Argh, thar be spoilers ahead, matey!! While each week will be spoiler-free for the next chapters in the book, all of the previous chapters we’ve read will become free game. So to keep this discussion fun for readers who have not read the amazing series try to keep your comments spoiler-free, from the next chapters, as possible.

• At the end of each post, questions will be asked. Feel free to participate every week! We’d love to hear your opinion but you don’t have to answer everything. The questions are only there as guidelines but we’d love to read your tangents on that week’s chapters. And if you feel totally inspired about this book, as much as we are, you could always discuss your own opinion in a guest post: just fill out the form HERE.

For an entire schedule of our discussion (or just in case you’ve missed a post), you can go HERE. And we’re also giving away a copy of City of Bones, to enter the contest, go HERE. Finally, on to the moment you’ve all been waiting for. *drumroll*

Chapter 7: The Five-Dimensional Door

Madame Dorothea invited them in for tea, explaining how she knew so much about the Clave and Accords. Madame Dorothea reminds me of the Nosy Grandmother, who comes over and always tries to get in your business (I don’t know, that what she seems like to me).

Jace seems a bit more classy when he specifies to Dorothea that he’ll have tea, “as long as it isn’t Earl Gray” because he hates bergamot (100). Clary is very impressed but doesn’t say much when Madame Dorothea brings out the pickle sandwiches. Pickle sandwiches are not my thing, but Clary scarfs them down like she hasn’t eaten in three days, which she hasn’t.

As soon as Clary set down her cup of tea, Madame Dorothea went about reading her tea leaves in a I-will-tell-your-fortune kind of way. Jace thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Clary’s fortune was “confusing” (105), whereas Jace will “fall in love with the wrong person” (106). Dorothea and Jace come to the conclusion that there must be a sort of block in Clary’s mind. Or, according to Clary, “Maybe I’m just a late developer” (106).

Dorothea is not convinced and brings out the tarot cards instead. The cards were a gift from Jocelyn, who painted them herself. It turns out that Jocelyn was a Shadowhunter. Clary is shocked to find that her mother has been keeping so many secrets from her.

Jace finds a five-dimensional door, a door that can take you anywhere. You think of the location and walk through and you’re there. Clary wants to see where her mother wanted to go, to see where the door led. She opened the door and “found herself flung forward and tumbling through empty space” (109).

Chapter 8: Weapon of Choice

Clary does not make a safe landing, after falling from the sky and hitting some branches she finally reached the ground. Then Jace landed on top of her. They’re nothing that her arm or something wasn’t broken.

The door had led them to Luke’s house. Clary wasn’t even curious why Luke had been so hostile to her on the phone so she was about to just go back home. Jace wanted to find out what Luke’s deal was.

Jace found Simon hiding in the bushes next to Luke’s bookstore (I’m jealous that he lives behind a bookstore… so cool!). Simon was hoping to find Clary with Luke but “Luke told me you were off staying with some relatives upstate when I know you don’t have any other relatives” (115). Simon decided to stay around when he spied on Luke packing a bag full of weapons. Clary tries to calm him down but eventually decides to tell him the truth. After hearing the whole story, Jace is a Shadowhunter, killing demons—Simon thinks the whole thing “is so awesome” (117).

After everything is cleared up, Simon, Jace, and Clary break into Luke’s house, where it looks like Luke had left in some kind of hurry. Jace finds a chakhram and the bag full of weapons. The chakhram is Hodge’s weapon of choice.

They discover that Luke has been back to Clary’s apartment since the Ravener had been there, when they find a cracked picture of Jocelyn, Clary, and Luke. Before they can find anything else, Luke comes back with two warlocks, Blackwell and Pangborn.

Clary and the two boys spy on Luke and the two warlocks’ conversation. The two warlocks want Luke to tell them his knowledge of the Mortal Cup’s whereabouts. He doesn’t seem to know. Valentine wants it and is currently keeping Jocelyn hostage, believing that it has been hidden by her. Valentine is also looking for Clary. As soon as they leave, Clary starts to freak out. But she’s not the only one, when Jace (who is either freaking out in his own way or is just very angry) points out that “those are the mean who murdered my father” (130).

Do you think it was fair for Jocelyn to keep Clary from this world, from knowing about the Shadowhunters, warlocks, etc.?

If you were a Shadowhunter, what would be your Weapon of Choice?

REMEMBER: Please try to give a minimum of spoilers unless it is about the chapters we have read already. Also, every comment (one per post) on our discussion posts gives you extra entries if you are entered to win a copy of City of Bones.