Cassandra Clare is the author of the #1 New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestselling Shadowhunters Chronicles. She is also the co-author, with Holly Black, of the bestselling fantasy series Magisterium. The Shadowhunter Chronicles have been adapted as both a major motion picture and a television series. Her books have more than fifty million copies inn print worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Cassandra Clare lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and three fearsome cats. You can find her online at CassandraClare.com or on Instagram @cassieclare1. You can find more of my reviews of her work here.
In the vibrant city-state of Castellane, the richest of nobles and the most debauched of criminals have one thing in common: the constant search for wealth, power, and the next hedonistic thrill. Kel is an orphan, stolen from the life he knew to become the Sword Catcher—the body double of a royal heir, Prince Conor Aurelian. He has been raised alongside the prince, trained in every aspect of combat and statecraft. He and Conor are as close as brothers, but Kel knows that his destiny is to die for Conor. No other future is possible. Lin Caster is one of the Ashkar, a small community whose members still possess magical abilities. By law, they must live behind walls within the city, but Lin, a physician, ventures out to tend to the sick and dying of Castellane. Despite her skills, she cannot heal her best friend without access to forbidden knowledge. After a failed assassination attempt brings Lin and Kel together, they are drawn into the web of the mysterious Ragpicker King, the criminal ruler of Castellane's underworld, who offers them each what they want most. But as the two descend into his world of intrigue and shadow, they discover a conspiracy of corruption that reaches from the darkest gutters of Castellane to the highest tower of its palaces. As long-kept secrets begin to unravel, they must ask themselves: Is knowledge worth the price of betrayal? Can forbidden love bring down a kingdom? And will their discoveries plunge their nation into war—and the world into chaos?
My absolute favorite part of Sword Catcher was getting to fall into and be immersed in this new world. Cassandra Clare absolutely nails it here. The maps on the endpapers were endlessly helpful to be sure, but even without them I had a great sense of the city-state of Castellane. I felt like I knew the texture of each of the different areas we explored, and how the citizens interacted in each. Clare also developed languages for this book—not only are there different languages that appear in dialogue, but even the narration has a unique texture, with words that feel familiar to us but also feel like they belong to a fantasy word (phials, waggons, etc.). This meant that every time I opened the book, I felt plunged back into the world of Castellane, and it was quite magical to have that feeling!
Unlike Clare's most recent Shadowhunter books, Sword Catcher spends 600 pages switching back and forth only between two points of view: Lin's and Kel's. Narrowing the scope of the narration was incredibly powerful. It meant we as readers really only got to view this world through two pairs of vastly different eyes, and have to make sense of all the same conflicting information they do. This really adds to the intrigue of the politics, especially at key moments when Kel is standing in place for Conor and when Lin is in places she should not be. I also felt that there were some key blind spots in place because we only have the knowledge of two characters, which meant that there was a lot of room for surprise by the ending. All-in-all, it was a lot of fun to switch back-and-forth between Kel and Lin, to learn about their worlds and try to piece together the larger narrative.
I have been reading Cassandra Clare's work since middle school, and I think Sword Catcher is a testament to how far she's come as a writer and storyteller. Sword Catcher is perfectly paced, adventurous and romantic, with lots of political intrigue and shady characters. I believe that if you love the Shadowhunter Chronicles, you will love Sword Catcher, even though they are very different (from a world building standpoint, from a texture standpoint). Nonetheless, there are some similarities as well (mostly plot element similarities, such as a sexy dance, stubborn redhead female characters, and surprising deaths). I have my theories about why these appear within the pages of Sword Catcher, but I would still absolutely argue that Sword Catcher stands on its own from Clare's body of work, while also being the beginning of a new series that die-hard Cassandra Clare fans will love.
I am eagerly anticipating the second book in this series, and hope that we will get even more works from Cassandra that take place outside of the Shadowhunter universe. Until then!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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