ABSTRACT
The Infernal Devices trilogy—Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince and Clockwork Princess—form a prequel to Clare's wildly popular The Mortal Instruments series. This chapter explores the relationship between whiteness, Eurasian identity, and masculinity by showing how the deployment of the Victorian can reinforce, rather than critique, discourses of whiteness and racism that bleed from the past into present and, it seems, beyond the books themselves. The Infernal Devices' investment in an interracial romance draws our attention away from Tessa's development as a heroine and towards the romance of race. The Infernal Devices finds it difficult to correct by being historical when illegitimacy, deleted records or unrecorded lives, and other forms of erasure and fantasy constitute both a mixed-race archive and cultural memory. Banded together, the trio embarks on a quest to hunt down the Magister, prevent his Infernal Devices from destroying the Nephilim, and discover the origins of Tessa's extraordinary powers as a shapeshifting immortal.
