Why are the gang going with Alrc and Magnus to Shangai
Why do Magnus and Alec’s friends go with them to Shanghai in The Lost Book of the White? (This does not happen in Red Scrolls — I’ve seen a bit of confusion!) Well, because one of the things about Magnus and Alec that is awesome, that defines who they are as a couple, that defines their relationship as a happy and healthy one, is that they have friends and those friends are important to both of them.
I gather there is some concern that if the “TMI Gang” goes with Malec to Shanghai in Lost Book (though as of yet, so little information about LBOTW has been released, I think it’s premature to worry about anything!) that it will become a book “about Clary and Jace and Isabelle and Simon” instead of “a book about Magnus and Alec.” But that is not the way books work.
Yes, Clary is the protagonist of TMI: she’s the center of the plot. The villain (Valentine, then Sebastian) is focused on her, and through her he has created his downfall, which is why she slays him in the end. (Such is the nature of heroes and villains!) Without her, the world as we know it ends (and Thule begins).
In The Eldest Curses, Magnus and Alec are at the center of the storm: they are the focus of the villains, and their abilities are what will bring them (and their friends) through, and their troubles are what will prove the greatest obstacles. But just as TMI would have been far poorer without Alec, Magnus, Simon, Maia and Isabelle, The Eldest Curses doesn’t exist in a vacuum either. I’ve never written, and don’t want to read, books about characters who have no friends or interest in friends, who have no relationships with other people, who are tumbling through a void and divorced from any relationships save their main romantic one. Just as in TMI Clary wasn’t ever going to stop loving or seeing Simon, in TEC Alec’s sister and his best friend are always going to be vital to him.
All of the TSC books are about the importance of bonds between people, of the way that no hero stands alone — those who are strong, are strong because they are surrounded by strong bonds of love: friendship love, family love, romantic love, and agape love. They are also about creating a found family, in all kinds of ways–finding blood relatives, adopting new relatives, making friends close enough to feel like family. In TMI, the characters often come together to help Clary do what she needs to do. In TEC, it is Magnus and Alec who are the protagonists, and this time their Shadowhunter friends come running to their aid! (Short answer: that is why they go to Shanghai. They want to help Magnus & Alec.)
These are Magnus and Alec’s books, so the people important to them are important. There is a hard limit to how much you can explore any character without exploring their relationships to the people important to them — beyond just their main romantic relationship — and part of what TEC is about is exploring Magnus and Alec as characters more fully: not just who they are in their romantic relationship with each other (though that’s certainly a focus) but who they are in every way. That doesn’t mean anyone else will outshine Magnus and Alec–I believe Magnus and Alec shine brightly enough that nobody could. :)
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