“Resentment was pointless. It was more than pointless. Resentment was poison.”
In Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare, Kel is the Sword Catcher, which means he was raised to sacrifice himself for Prince Conor, to jump in front of blows that would kill him. Although he loves Conor, he knows that the prince holds a power over him that will one day end in Kel’s death. Lin is a physician—a woman in a man’s field and therefore ostracized by her community—who strives to find a cure for her dying best friend.
Sword Catcher plays it too safe. Most aspects of this book could have had more bite and more commitment. The idea of a Sword Catcher is so visceral. It’s also what I most looked forward to reading when I saw the summary of the novel. Unfortunately, this premise is never seized as boldly as I believe it should have been. It carries inherent pain, and I think Clare could have taken advantage of this much more than she did.
Sword Catcher is Cassandra Clare’s divergence from the YA Shadowhunters series. I respect how she successfully wrote an adult fantasy without the gratuitous explicit content that sometimes appears in adult debuts. However, perhaps in her attempt to adopt a more solemn tone, this book is missing the pure emotional appeal of her young adult works. It is Cassandra Clare without much of what Clare does best. The feeling of attachment between characters doesn’t come across. The issues driving them apart or bringing them together are never as heartfelt as they could be. I don’t often ask for more romance in books, but for a 600-page tome to only have the slightest hints of a connection that was predictable from the beginning exemplifies this issue well: the potential between characters is held back seemingly for the sake of being held back. Sword Catcher lacks tenderness.
That being said, the protagonists were easy to like. Antonetta was especially interesting to me, a very feminine and underestimated woman who uses her perceived naivete to her silent political advantage. However, Lin and Conor weren’t especially complex, and most of the characters weren’t placed in enough truly difficult situations for me to actually understand them and what motivates them.
Overall, I think that every aspect of this book is intended to feel bigger than it actually did. Besides the restrained emotions of the characters, the workings of the plot left me more confused than invested. The diplomacy is large-scale but doesn’t make it out of a discussion. The assassination attempts on Conor are implied to be numerous, but the reason for conflict between Castellane and its neighbors is vague. The Ragpicker King is supposed to be operating a nationwide criminal enterprise, and yet we never see him do any operating, which detracts significantly from his charisma.
Sword Catcher is very much a sequel setup, which makes the reading experience so strange. I still don’t thoroughly understand the overarching plot of this book. What is the driving force behind these characters? Where is the urgency? What is pushing them to make decisions? The isolated, circumstantial dilemmas were enjoyable and easy to follow, but from start to finish, very little ground was covered.
Part of what makes Sword Catcher disproportionately long is that it was weighed down by unnecessary description, much of it contributing to worldbuilding. Despite the detail in the worldbuilding, some of the most important points were left surprisingly vague; I’m thinking specifically of Lin’s ending, in which a myth that had not had great importance to the plot of the story suddenly became a central point.
If a fictional culture or nation is analogous to a real one, ideally it should be a purposeful choice. This was done well with the Ashkar, whose treatment by the surrounding society echoes the baseless fear of Jews that still exists today, and the discrimination and hatred against Jews across history. But the purpose is much less clear behind naming a fantastical court Geumjoseon, clearly analogous to Korea, or a Shenzhou representing China, among many other such real-world analogues.
Most of my critiques boil down to a need for a few more rounds of editing: to remove unnecessary material, to clarify the driving force of the story, to flesh out the character interactions that already have potential, etc. The writing and pacing are so polished that all the novel needs is to be clearer and more concise. I enjoyed reading Cassandra Clare’s Sword Catcher, but I think it’s a bit too diluted and directionless in its current form to reach the greatness its premise is capable of achieving.
