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I didn't particularly enjoy this book. It was an OK thriller marred by some careless writing, and a fairly predictable plot. For example "In addition to the 2,500 euro per head ticket price, the tables arranged outside in the casino gardens, under awnings of silk studded with thousands of tiny lights to give the impression of a canopy of stars, cost upwards of two hundred thousand euros each." What cost 200,000E? The tables? The canopy? In what sense is that "in addition" to the cost of the tickets (a cost borne, presumably, by entirely different parties)? This sentence is characteristic of the writing: far too many subclauses and sub-subclauses to add flavour and enhance characterisation. And despite that, hardly any of the characters have much substance. Even Argylle, the protagonist, feels a bit thin. I did like Coffey though, she's an interesting character.

There's a part at the beginning of chapter 16 where the book jumps back and forth between the characters being on a helicopter or on a bus. Not in a "narrative being told out of order" sort of way, more in a "forgot to turn this reference to bus into chopper during a rewrite" sort of way.

But those gripes aside, it's an easy read and will keep you entertained for a while.

Cassandra Clare takes her time here to build a rich, if fairly conventional, high-medieval fantasy setting. The book can drag in places as Clare's main tactic for building tension is to have something dramatic happen to one character and then have several chapters focusing on boring things happening to the other characters. I understand that a lot of the boring parts are building the world, allowing events in the latter half of the book to have their proper impact, but I certainly found my mind wandering during some of the earlier parts.

The main characters are Kel, a bodyguard for the crown prince, and Lin, a healer from a shunned and excluded minority group. Kel is quite a boring character. There doesn't seem to be much inner life to him for a lot of the book. He goes around and events happen to him. Lin is a little more interesting, a woman determined to be a doctor in a society where only men can train to be doctors.

I did enjoy this book up until the point when I realised that the book was not going to have a satisfying ending: it was going to end on a cliffhanger to set up the next book. Now, I like a book series, I love the time and space you can have to build a rich, interesting world when you don't have to do it all in under 600 pages or whatever; but that is not an excuse to simply stop your book without providing any kind of satisfying closure. Of course, some plot strands can remain unresolved to give you some interesting tension going into the next book in the series, but Sword Catcher just kinda stops? None of the plot arcs have reached any kind of conclusion really. It is quite unsatisfying. I'm complaining about this because it's a bit of a bugbear of mine, but it doesn't prevent me from recommending this book, at least to the kind of people who know that they're going to have to finish the series to have any kind of closure.