ABSTRACT
–In Cassandra Clare's City of Ashes, the second book of The Mortal Instruments series, the reader is introduced to Maia, a teenage werewolf whose religious skepticism reflects the Millennial generation's growing cultural distance from lived orthodox religion. Clare and Taylor both make use of traditional gothic tropes: both are invested in the relationship between the human and the demonic, while Clare specifically tackles such motifs as incest and the family curse, and Taylor explores forbidden love, secret identities, and alienation. Demons have been on Earth as long as we have. They are all over the world, in their different forms – Greek daemons, Persian daevas, Hindu asuras, and Japanese oni. Clare's Valentine Morgenstern also seeks an apocalyptic aim through his literalist beliefs. Morgenstern – the biological father of Clary and adoptive father of Jace – is the gothic patriarch who plays the role of villain in the first three Mortal Instrument novels.
