'Mortal Instruments' Author Shares The Secret Of A Good Love Triangle
"Mortal Instruments" fans who are reading this right now are either, a) counting down the hours until their pre-ordered copy of "City of Fallen Angels" arrives, b) biding time at work or school until you can rush home to read it (that's me), or c) already done since picking it up this morning and counting down the hours until "City of Lost Souls" comes out next year. In the meantime, we've got one more fun exchange between author Cassandra Clare and her friend Holly Black (whose "Red Glove" also hits shelves today). This time, Holly asked a question we gave her: What's the secret to keeping up the tension in a good love triangle?
"A lot of people are driven crazy by love triangles," Cassie laughed. "I love them, because to me, they represent the protagonist's choice about what kind of life they want to have. You're not just choosing a person, you're choosing a life path. With 'Mortal Instruments,' it was really for Clary choosing between whether she wanted to be a normal human being [with Simon], continue her normal life, or whether she wanted to be a Shadowhunter [with Jace]."
"It turns out, normal was off the table in both directions," Holly pointed out. And Cassie agreed, "But the principle remains the same: You're choosing what kind of person you want to be."
As for keeping a love triangle going through three books without making readers throw their hands up in despair, that's a little trickier. "One of the ways to keep the tension is that love triangles are a constant balance of power and focus," she explained. "As long as you keep shifting around the power and the focus, you keep shifting people's expectations of what's going to happen. In 'Mortal Instruments,' it seemed clear she was going to choose Jace, and then Jace was taken off the table. And yet still, [he was] the more compelling option, because he was the magical option. He was the gateway into another world. And then Simon joined him there by becoming a vampire. So then, once again, you're changing up the stakes, and the meaning of what the love triangle is. As long as you keep the goal posts moving, you keep the tension of the love triangle."
In "City of Fallen Angels," Simon finds himself in an entirely new love triangle, as he's juggling Shadowhunter girlfriend Isabelle and werewolf Maia. And Cassie clearly likes the construct, which she's using again in the "Mortal Instruments" prequel, "Infernal Devices," which began with last year's "Clockwork Angel" and continues with "Clockwork Prince" this September. "I'm having a lot of fun with the love triangle in that right now," she said, smiling mischievously.
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