Cover Reveal: ‘The Ragpicker King’ coming on March 4, 2025!
Good morning, afternoon or evening! It has once again been a while since our last post, but today I am thrilled to be back with the cover reveal for Cassandra Clare’s The Ragpicker King! Sword Catcher, the first installment of The Chronicles of Castellane, was published in October 2023 and thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we now have a cover for Cassie’s second adult novel.
Here’s the US cover:
And here is the slightly different UK cover:
Both covers look great, don’t they? Sword Catcher‘s red cover was very vibrant, so I bet this blue cover will be the same!
Cassie also sat down with Entertainment Weekly for an interview and here’s a short snippet.
Sword Catcher’s cover showed us the two halves of Castellane. What are the top and bottom represented here?
On the cover of Sword Catcher, the Black Mansion, the Ragpicker King’s home and center of power, was the reverse/bottom image. Now it’s on top, and there’s a carriage out front, which I think means Kel is visiting him! On the bottom is the place known as “drowned Tyndaris” — a city off the coast of Castellane that was covered by a tidal wave hundreds of years ago. Now at low tide you can still see the ruins above the water. We do visit Tyndaris in this book and it’s really fun.
In addition to the cover reveal on EW, newsletter subscribers got a new issue with lots of pre-order links.
You can pre-order The Ragpicker King (US hardcover) online:
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million / Indiebound / Book Depository / Indigo / Amazon Canada.
Other Amazon links: Germany / Brazil.
The ISBN for the US hardcover is 9780525620020 in case you want to pre-order your book at a local/indie book shop.
The UK edition (ISBN 9781529001433) is available from
Waterstones / Waterstones exclusive edition / Amazon UK.
A word from Cassie:
preordering is really really helpful for books. It helps the publisher know how many to print, whether to send the author on tour, and tells bookstores to order more copies if preorders are good.
Since the book is now available for pre-order, we got a synopsis from Cassie’s publisher:
In the epic follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Sword Catcher, praised by George R. R. Martin as “everything I look for in fantasy,” Lin and Kel must chart a perilous course between love and lies.
Kel Saren, body double to Conor, crown prince of the dazzling city of Castellane, is caught between two worlds. In order to protect his beloved prince, Kel must find the culprits responsible for a massacre at the royal palace—and the only clues are held by the Ragpicker King, the notorious criminal who rules Castellane’s underworld. The trail Kel follows leads back to the Hill, where among decadent nobles and glittering parties a dark conspiracy to destroy the royal family has taken hold—a conspiracy headed up by the monstrous Artal Gremont, the man engaged to marry the woman Kel adores.
Meanwhile, Lin Caster must face the aftermath of the greatest risk she’s ever taken. To save the life of a dying friend, Lin has falsely claimed to be the Goddess Reborn, the legendary heroine destined to save her people. Now the terrifying—but strangely magnetic—leader of her people has arrived to test her powers. The price of failure is exile, and only through her alliance with the Ragpicker King can she continue to access the magic that may save her.
Then Prince Conor reappears in her life, demanding that she use her healing powers to cure the madness of his father, the King. Lin soon realizes the King is gripped by an ancient and terrible magic, one whose lure she cannot deny any more than she can deny her growing passion for Conor.
As the simmering tensions in Castellane reach a fever pitch, Lin and Kel must decide who to trust when any false move means death—or worse.
This sounds amazing! 😀
The first snippet is from Cassie’s tumblr:
“Gremont is not a good man,” said Kel. “It is why he was exiled.”
“I know that. Of all people,” Antonetta added, in a low voice, “I thought you, at least, did not believe me completely foolish.”
A feeling like despair seized him. She was so close he could see her pulse beating in her throat, the rise and fall of her locket with her quick breaths, yet she felt as distant as she had ever been.
“You pretend to foolishness,” he said. “It is your armor.”
She raised her head at that, and looked at him. Her blue eyes so dark they seemed black in the low light. “We all have armor,” she said. “As if you do not have yours, Kel Anjuman.”
He choked on the words he could not say. I am the Prince’s armor. I cannot have my own.
“Antonetta —”
She took a step back. “You are not my father, not brother or lover,” she said. “You have no rights here.”
And the second one is from a past newsletter:
“I always thought that living on the Hill would be freedom,” said Ciprian, “but it is its own sort of prison. Once they get their claws in you, they never stop squeezing.”
Lin blinked at him. “Who? The Charter Families?”
But Cabrol did not answer. He shook his head as if to clear it and wandered off back into the crowd, moving carefully.
Very strange, Lin thought, and turned, meaning to return to the curtain and Antonetta. But she had not looked behind her; she stumbled into someone immediately, spilling the contents of her wineglass all over the front of a fine silk shirt.
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh — I’m so sorry — I —”
“What an interesting way to greet your Prince,” said a horribly familiar voice, “Lin Caster.”
Whatever words Lin had intended to follow her apology died before she could speak them. She looked up into a pair of cold gray eyes, her heart sinking.
It was Prince Conor.
I love that both snippets are rather confrontational.
In her newsletter about the cover reveal, Cassie also shared new character art by Sasha Colman:
Let’s welcome Princess Anjelica of Kutani, who makes her debut in Ragpicker King. She arrives because she is engaged to Conor, but this one turns out just as complex as the last time. He doesn’t have the best luck in betrotheds!
Head to our Twitter/X to see Anjelica; I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Last but not least, I do have a Matthew Fairchild snippet from the current newsletter (June 20):
From “A Sea Change,” the Kickstarter novella about Matthew.
Matthew sat up with a gasp. The afterimage of the dream still burned in his mind: the long grassy meadow without features, the boy in the grass turning slowly into a skeleton. He kicked his covers back, hunching over, his hands pressed against his stomach, which ached as if he’d been kicked.
He felt as if he might be sick, but knew he wouldn’t be. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the dream. Nor the fourth or fifth. He had it nearly every night, and had since Christopher died.
There was a soft whump, and something landed on his bed. A moment later a warm, furry shape was burrowing into him, and he could hear the sound of a worried tail thrashing back and forth.
“Oscar, you twit,” Matthew said, and reached to stroke his dog’s head. Oscar’s tail thumped again, now with pleasure. It didn’t take much to make a dog happy.
What do you think? I cannot wait for the second book!
The Ragpicker King is published on March 4, 2025! Make sure to pre-order your copy now.
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