Sword Catcher (series)

Sword Catcher is the current working title of a high fantasy series being written by Cassandra Clare, to be published by Del Rey Books (Random House) in North America and Pan Macmillan in the Commonwealth.

Installments

 * Sword Catcher
 * The Ragpicker King

Plot
Rough/early synopsis given so far:

Here, a boy is born to rule a divided city. A girl is destined to return lost magic to the world. And a prince will betray his people to win a crown. They'll discover the dark side of themselves and those they love, as their kingdom faces war, plague and the end of hope. But the blackest night comes before the dawn.

Story

 * An alternate description of two characters mentioned above, given by the author, is as follows: a young man raised to be the body double for an unworthy prince and a young woman destined to change the world.
 * There will be a host of other characters in the series: criminals, princes, magicians, warriors, and pirates. It will feature a tightly-knit group of friends, who will be surrounding the central character.
 * The series will center on a boy named Kellian, who, at the beginning of the story, is kidnapped from his family when he is about five years old. He’s brought to the castle in his city, where the king--a despised king --and queen of his country live; their son, the prince, looks a lot like Kel, minimally forcing him to change his appearance to fit the prince's more. They make Kel the "Sword Catcher" for the prince, a traditional stand-in for the prince at public events, to become the target in case anyone attempts to kill the crown prince.
 * The story will expand further from this point, but this first part will generally be "about identity and who are you if you really are just standing in for someone else and you're supposed to take the slings and arrows that come for him."
 * Kellian will grow up with the crown prince, whom he discovers is a terrible person who would make a horrible king. "He has to deal with being in this terrible position—‘My job is to sacrifice my life for this person I don’t like or respect.’"
 * The series will cover Kellian's life up until he is twenty-three, twenty-four, which is when the story really starts.
 * The series will be very different from Shadowhunters as it's high fantasy, the author had to invent the whole world instead of a secret world within our world. The world-building process included more extensive research, and the creation of a more elaborated world which includes its own religion, politics, geography, weather, food, culture, and languages.
 * Most of the characters are in their early 20s.
 * The city in which the story develops is by the ocean on one end of a massive road that goes through a continent, all the maritime and overland trade goes through there. There are 12 charter families and each deals with the trading of a good, like silk, horses, or timber, the families are always trying to have more power in the city which comes in the form of trading more goods along with different political alliances.
 * Some of the tropes that will be explored within the series will be:
 * The wise prince and evil prince trope, two princes that are heirs to the throne, one is good, and the other is bad, but at the beginning, we cannot be sure who is who.
 * The prophecy trope, there is prophecy surrounding the main female character, Lin, that says there is a very powerful goddess who would return one day and would be one of the girls from her community, possibly her.
 * The enemies to lovers trope.
 * There is a character who owns a crocodile.
 * Sword Catcher is set around the 17th century and Cassandra is partly making the clothes up and also making them somewhat accurate to the Renaissance time period.
 * There are magic eye drops that turn your pupils into any shape or color.

Others

 * As of 2017, rights for only the first two books have been bought.
 * The original plan was to publish Sword Catcher in spring 2021, however the publish date was changed to 2022 due to the pandemic.
 * The books will be edited by Anne Groell, editor of A Song of Ice and Fire.
 * This will be Clare's first solo adult series, promising “a dramatic epic of power, intrigue and magic”.
 * Sword Catcher's rights have already been sold for a TV project with Cassandra Clare as executive producer. As producer she will have more input on the project.
 * A writer is already working on the outline and pilot for the network.
 * As of 2022 Cassandra is finishing up Sword Catcher, working with conlangers to invent new languages for the different countries that make up the world, and with mapmakers to create a map of Castellane, and Dannemore.

Teasers
These snippets may or may not appear, and may be changed, in the final book.

Teaser #1

“You came with the prince, didn’t you? Monseigneur Conor Aurelian?”

“I am his cousin,” lied Kel.

“Do you like him?”

Kel was silent. To even ask such a question was treason. One did not like or not like the King, or the Crown Prince. They simply were, like the Maquis, like the dark-jade canals of the Temple Quarter, like Queensfall itself. It was like asking if one liked the gods.

“I saw my sister coming up the stairs with him and the others,” said Merryn. “House Aurelian. One cannot say no to them, can one?”

“I never have,” Kel said, feeling suddenly weary. It had been a long day, too long; he felt drained to the bone. “Maybe in play or jest, with Conor, or Bram, but not in any seriousness. No.” To his own horror, his voice shook. ''A sword-catcher does not show weakness. A sword-catcher is the strength of the Prince, his shield and armor.''

Teaser #2

“If I had not brought you,” said Mayesh, “Kel Saren would have died. That would have caused considerable unrest to the royal family. Conor’s safety depends upon him. Conor depends upon him.”

Teaser #3

Shocked, Kel could only stare as the new arrival made his way into the room. The dancers were still moving about, as were a few servants carrying bronze bowls of rosewater, apparently needed for the performance. In the gallery, the musicians tuned their instruments. No one had noticed the cloaked figure save Kel. He alone watched as the stranger — who was not at all a stranger — made his way to the shadow of an archway, and drew back the hood of his cloak.

Distance and shadows made little difference. Brown skin, tousled dark hair, smile like the curve of a scimitar. It was Conor, and he was obviously, life-alteringly, drunk.

Teaser #4

“But you should,” said the Ragpicker King. “There is a reason, you know, that the Sword Catcher ceases to be the Sword Catcher when the prince takes the throne. Because the King is a god, and no one can pretend to be a god. When Prince Conor becomes King, you will cease to be what you are. You will become an inconvenience to the throne. You will be sent some distance away, perhaps to Valderan, to spend the rest of your life inconspicuously. Is that your dream? To be inconspicuous?” His green gaze swept over Kel like water. “Everyone has a dream.”

Kel looked away before the Ragpicker King could see any change in his expression. The man already seemed to know far too much about him, and about the Palace. He did not need to guess more.

“I could help you get what you want,” said the Ragpicker King. “I am a great enthusiast of dreams.”

Teaser #5

Once, years ago, a fortune-teller had come to the palace, brought by Lilibet to enhance some festivity or other. Conor had argued that she should read Kel’s fortune, too. She had taken his hands and looked into his eyes: in that moment, he had felt she could see through him, as if he were made of glass. “You will live a life of brilliant strangeness,” she had said, and then tears had come down her cheeks. He had hurried away, but always remembered: the words, her tears.

Brilliant strangeness.

Kel watched as Conor bit into a cherry and leaned up to kiss Audeta, a curvy girl from Valderan whose lids were painted in stripes of gold and scarlet. It seemed as good a time as any. Kel rose to his feet and made his way quietly out of the salon, heading for the back stairs. On the landing two young men were pressed up against a wall, kissing; neither noticed Kel as he went by. He kept going, ever upward, until he reached the last landing and a very familiar door.

Teaser #6

The Crown Prince was dressed in steel-blue, just like Kel, with white lace at the cuffs of his jacket. He was not wearing a crown, not even a thin gold band, but Kel would have known him for a prince regardless. He was slim and tall for his age, and there was a sort of bright flame behind his eyes and the laughing expression on his face. Though he and Kel were the same ten years old, he seemed far more adult. He said,

“How was it, then? Being me?”

An ache had bloomed like a flower behind Kel’s ribcage. I want to be like him, Kel thought. ''I want to walk through the world as if it will reshape itself around my dreams and desires. I want to seem as if I could touch the stars with light fingers and pull them down to be my playthings.''

It was strange to want something you had never known you wanted.

Teaser #7

It gave off a soft but potent light, in which Kel finally saw his companion clearly. He was dressed in black. Not Merren’s rusty student black: this man’s clothes were rich and expensive-looking, from his velvet frock coat to the blackthorn-wood cane upon which he rested his left hand. A gold ring bearing the sigil of a bird — a magpie, Kel thought — gleamed on his bare left hand. His eyes were the only thing about him that was neither black or white. They were a very dark green, and seemed to hold a strange light inside them. He said, “Do you know who I am?”

He goes round all in black, like Gentleman Death come to take your soul, and his carriage wheels are stained with blood.

“Yes,” Kel said. “You’re the Ragpicker King.”

Trivia

 * Inspiration for Sword Catcher came to Cassandra Clare when she was traveling in Thailand and watching a reality show where a body double for Saddam Hussein’s son Uday was interviewed. It’s a job where you have no identity and are pretending to be another person and for Cassandra it was interesting to ask herself what this means for the body double.