Five stars to ‘The Ragpicker King’ by Cassandra Clare

It has become tradition to share a review when there’s a new Cassandra Clare book, and although I’m a bit late, here it is. There are no spoilers, but I sometimes changed the tense. Sorry, not sorry 😉

Cassie Clare delivered an incredibly strong sequel with The Ragpicker King, and I couldn’t be more thrilled!

It was very easy to get back into the world – Cassie did a good job of recapping the main points from the first book at the beginning – and many other things from Sword Catcher came back to me while I was reading.

Linguistically, Cassie just knows what she is doing. She is an absolute pro because the world was described wonderfully vividly, and you just wanted to pop in and wander the streets of Castellane. It was nice to have a map of Dannemore this time, but I wouldn’t have minded if Kutani had been included. Maybe in the next book then.

I enjoyed the plot a lot and was immediately hooked: We once again followed Kel and Lin, but in short chapters we also got glimpses into the minds of other characters.
The Ragpicker King was very political, which is not very surprising after the brutal ending of Sword Catcher. The royal house had to act and it did. So a big focus of the plot was on Conor and the decisions he made. At the same time, of course, we still had Kel working with the Ragpicker King to protect Conor, which wasn’t technically a bad idea, but then again it was because he was doing it in secret. We all know that it never ends well when characters have secrets.
Not only was the political plot line very appealing, but also the magical one, which was already there in Sword Catcher but was much more present now. I think the magic aspect will be much more developed in the third book and I’m really looking forward to that. The revelation regarding the king didn’t come as a surprise to me because Cassie had sown enough breadcrumbs beforehand. Still, I’m very excited about what’s to come, partly because there’s another (evil) person who resembled the King in some ways.

Love/romance wasn’t neglected in the book either. We had several potential couples, some of whom were further along than others. There were also two sex scenes, which I think were written quite tastefully and not too explicit.
The ship I wasn’t in favour of in Sword Catcher evolved a lot in its sequel and although I’m not a shipper (yet), I did find the couple quite sweet.
My main ship faced a lot of trust issues, but I have full confidence in Cassie that these two will their way. 😊

I generally liked most of the characters.
Conor grew on me, I’m not ashamed to admit that. I was pretty on the fence about him in the first book, but you could tell that he had matured a lot in this book.
Kel was great again, I just like him and want the best for him.
I really liked Lin’s friendship with Kel again. The two of them were a good, platonic team. But I also liked Kel’s friendship with Merren and Ji-An; you could tell how well the three of them got along.
The friendship between Kel and Conor has changed quite a bit in this book, which does sadden me. However, I have faith in Cassie that everything will be okay in the end. I won’t accept any other ending!
Of course, there were also a few new characters, 2/3 of which I didn’t like, but that was probably Cassie’s intention. The princess from Kutani was interesting, but in the end, I didn’t like her that much because of her actions.
I hated the two antagonists with relish and am glad that at least one of them will no longer be a problem.
I would also like to emphasise the Exilarch, the Ragpicker King and Mayesh: The Exilarch/Aron was an interesting new character. He seemed a bit conflicted at first, but that changed towards the end. I hope/think we’ll see a lot more of him in the third book.
Although the book is called The Ragpicker King, Andreyen didn’t feature that often, which I thought was a bit of a shame. However, there was one revelation about him that was really interesting. Let’s see where we’ll go from there.
Mayesh acted like a real grandfather to some extent in this book, which I really appreciated! There was a surprising twist for his character at the end of the book; we’ll see if or how long this will last.
I could write/rave so much more about individual characters and also their relationships, or mention smaller storylines, but that would be a bit too much. 😊

I devoured The Ragpicker King and found it hard to put the book down! I would have loved to have read it in one go, but common sense told me to get some sleep and finish it after work. Now I’m a bit annoyed that I’m already done, because we don’t yet know when the third book will be published. Hopefully it won’t take too long, as The Ragpicker King ended with several bombshells. I’m particularly excited to see what happens next for Kel and Conor, as their relationship is very special.
Antonetta’s story is also sure to be very exciting. I already liked her a lot in the first book and after a surprising revelation, her character has become even more interesting. I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to Antonetta.
I’m not too worried about Lin at the moment, she’ll definitely pass her upcoming trial somehow and then we’ll see what happens to her and whether her fate will change again.

Overall, I was so pleased with The Ragpicker King! It was such a good book with surprising twists, some humour and a lovely touch of romance. Five out of five stars!