TL;DR - Boring and derivative. I felt like I was reading an inexpert mashup of Six of Crows, Game of Thrones, and the Hebrew Bible, but with most of the heart and/or stakes stripped away. There’s a lot to break down. Spoilers ahead.

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The Book Overall:
Character Motivations and Fake Stakes - We are told that Kel's whole raison d'etre is to act as body double and bodyguard for Prince Conor. But for the majority of the book, Kel is off doing his own thing, not shadowing Conor, and not attending courtly duties in Conor's stead. We are told that Conor is One of The Good Ones, a prince who understands and despises the corruption of politics. Buuut for the majority of the book, he's a drunk, violent, rapey monster, who bullies and belittles everyone around him (mostly for sport). And we are TOLD that everyone on The Hill is conspiring against Kel, possibly against the crown, but we are not SHOWN any obviously guilty parties yet, so the warnings come across as tepid and vague. All together, this seems like the kind of story where the majority of the conflicts wouldn't have happened at all if the main characters had just TALKED to each other. But since they keep acting counter to their character, they manufacture dangerous circumstances. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, that something bad is going to happen, because everyone is behaving badly.

Queer-Baiting - Kel and Conor are LGBTQA, but the detail is only used as set dressing or shipping fodder, not in any subplot-relevant way. Androgynous attire, a fleeting hookup, but nothing that effects their romances or political intrigue. The world itself is allegedly more progressive, allowing for queer couples as rulers... but they still have to make heirs the old-fashioned way, which seems.... old-fashioned. How is the conflict of this book about who Prince Conor is going to marry and procreate with? It's cheap, for the book to sell itself as a queer ally, but not REALLY make queer space. The book's main ships, and world-building, are all heteronormative.
((Also, sidebar, but Sword Catcher sounds like a gay slur. It's a terrible title for an allegedly woke book. XD))

Technical Writing - There were a lot of typos, mixed metaphors, incorrectly used words, and long unnecessary lists. It really seemed like this book's editor wasn't reading critically enough.

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Six of Crows:
I know that Leigh Bardugo doesn’t have a monopoly on the band of merry thieves trope, but there were too many similarities between The Ragpicker King’s entourage and The Crows to be merely coincidental. Two rival crime syndicates, one spearheaded by a gentlemanly crook, the other by a tycoon who buys up all he can get. The “gentleman” in question dresses all in black, walks with a cane, and appears to know everything about everyone. The gentleman’s business is overlooked by the crown. He has a right-hand gal who is proficient with knives, acrobatics, intimidation, interrogation, and discretion. She has a purple-and-black aesthetic, and a tragic backstory (from which gentleman saved her and earned her undying loyalty). Joining them is a cherubic chemist with a vendetta against a merchant lord, and a redheaded mage with the ability to magically heal people (even, it is foreshadowed, to reanimate the dead). Redhead is brazen, passionate, and has the audacity to spit in the patriarchy’s face… but regardless, she falls for the enemy. Now… Did I just describe Andreyen, Prosper Beck, Ji-An, Merren and Lin? Or did I describe Kaz, Pekka Rollins, Inej, Wylan and Nina? Even their names sound/look too similar!

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Game of Thrones:
Similarly, GRR Martin certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on historically-inspired fantasy with tons of political, theological, and fantastical suspense. BUT Game of Thrones IS in pop culture now, it happened, we all know of it, the back of our collective brains can’t help but compare. So it’s hard not to see a massacre at an engagement party and think, “The Red Wedding did it better.” Or, to hear a scheming queen (with obviously more loyalty to her home province than the kingdom she married into) profess disdainfully to anyone not of her blood that she would do anything to protect her spoiled, violent child, and NOT think, “OK, Lannisters, why don’t you Lannister a little harder for the people in the back!” Even the family colors and mascots are too familiar. Really? Red and gold lions for the royal family? Gee, where have I seen that before. Lin especially is often just a weak Daenerys ripoff XD. Coddling a magic stone/petrified egg; Being both attracted to and repulsed by a violent, self-entitled prince/Dothraki warlord; Claiming to be a goddess/queen reborn from a fire. It's pathetic how many crutches are there, leaning on pop culture and nostalgia, rather than standing on Clare's own storytelling. Too often, Sword Catcher comes across as Clare smugly nodding at the audience, "Did you like that scene? Watch me write my own!" No... It doesn't compare. It's not far enough away to compare. It's only far enough away to not call it plagiarism.

But I think my bigger problem with Sword Catcher’s attempt at Game-of-Thrones-ing is a twofold lack of finesse and stakes.

Let’s start with finesse. In GoT, there is a huge cast of characters to remember, and two continents to memorize, including ruling families and their allies/rivals. But GRR Martin took the time to introduce each faction in chunks, allowing us to spend time with a particular group of people, or in a particular area, and come to understand their culture and motivations. Contrastingly, in Sword Catcher, Cassandra Clare always mentions all factions in a giant list. If there is a description of a drinks bar, there will be an alcohol from every corner of the map. If there is an impressive receiving room, there will be ornamentation from every corner of the map. If Prince Conor is discussing marriage prospects, he goes down a list of women from every corner of the map. If there are foreign dignitaries arriving for dinner, there is an ambassador from every corner of the map. If Kel goes into the city to snoop for shady dealings, there will be a market stall, or a restaurant, or a burough, from – you guessed it – every corner of the map! Mentioning all nations, instead of highlighting one place at a time, means that all the cultural descriptions just bleed together, and I ended up not remembering a one. What this book needed were more scenes devoted to one or two players at a time, to show how they relate to each other, and to intrigue the reader. Or, it needed a world map and possibly an appendix with each nation/royal family and each trade charter family, and then maybe Clare wouldn’t have felt the need to describe every single one in every single scene. Too many lists instead of immersive lore.

Now… stakes…. In GoT there is an imminent threat: Foreign enemies are at the border (which is poorly manned, by traitors and felons), and the king is dead, leaving two big power vacuums at opposite ends of the country, and our heroes spread too thin trying to solve the concurrent crises. It’s a bloodbath, as rival factions take advantage of the chaos to bend the world to their whimsy. “When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die.”
Sadly, in Sword Catcher, the world-shifting conflict is: The crown prince owes money to a crime lord. Not for having done anything criminal, just because this crime lord bought the prince’s debts from other businesses... Economics... Riveting. In the immortal words of Cloudy June, “That sounds like a you problem.” But anyway… Not wanting to owe his debt collector any favors, Prince Conor enters a hasty engagement, and uses the dowry to pay off the crime lord. Embarrassing as it is, that seems like a resolved conflict to me. Book over? Nope. This is a 600 page setup!!! Within the LAST 30 PAGES OF THE BOOK, shenanigans ensue at a quasi-engagement party for the reluctant couple, that ends on a cliffhanger implying that the aftermath of the party will be the beginning of a war with the bride's home nation. Much bigger stakes, for sure, but it took too long to get there, and it never reaches the same gut punch as, “The Lannisters send their regards.” There is no surprise; Castellane was always going to go to war with Sarthe, this tragic party was just the catalyst that finally kicked it off. And there is no reward for super-sleuths trying to read between the lines for who is scheming against whom, because all we're left with is a big, "Tune in next time, folks!" It was too much setup, and too boring a setup, to realistically expect the audience to be intrigued enough as to come back for Book 2 (which may also be too long, too cryptic, and not deliver any answers or satisfying conflicts!).

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Jewish Representation and Exoticising The Other:
The Ashkari aren't literally Jewish, but they pull A LOT from Jewish religion, culture, history, and folklore, and for that reason I found Clare's depiction of them to be extremely tone deaf. This is not like how Shadowhunters featured Christian iconology. No one TODAY is searching for the Holy Grail, or is traumatized by literal angelic appearances. But TODAY, right this minute, there ARE Jewish people who are displaced, their homes destroyed. There are real people being hunted down in the street. There ARE women who are denied positions of power, or denied education. And within the last 100 years (short enough that there are still witnesses/survivors of the event), Jewish people were segregated for their religion, massacred, made pariahs, and denied basic civility in their own countries. Exoticisizing that trauma by making them MAGICAL is obscene and disrespectful. Change their name all you want, we know who you're talking about, and we know you're cashing in on their trauma. Further twist of the screw, Lin is eroticized by Prince Conor, her otherness and untouchability making her enticing. Whether that is meant to be a character flaw of Conor's, or the beginning of an enemies-to-lovers arc, is unclear. But the inclusion AT ALL of "Your foreignness makes me horny" is gross, and makes Lin's RECIPROCATION of Conor's lust feel dirty and disingenuous. What upsets me about Lin's PoV as a whole is that you can tell that Clare thought she was being inclusive, thought she was giving us something fresh and special, and that just makes it even more tone deaf.

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Final Thoughts:
There are characters here. Dumb ones, knockoffs of other stories, but here nonetheless. There is a plot here. It takes 600 pages to really pick up any momentum, and then it immediately stalls itself by forcing you to wait for the next book. If you're patient, good for you. There is something to invest in here. But the consistent over-reliance on outside knowledge (be it pop culture or history) to make up for a lack of creativity, coupled with the under or poorly represented marginalized people this book is claiming to champion, means that I am unwilling to invest. I am unwilling to give Cassandra Clare the benefit of the doubt. This book failed me, in every way.