As she's torn between two parabatai who love her, the search for a clockwork villain forces impossible choices on them all.
- Score
- 82.7
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- third
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Clockwork Prince is widely regarded as the strongest entry in the trilogy and one of Clare's best books overall — readers praise the exceptional prose saturated with Victorian literary references, the deepening of Will Herondale from frustrating enigma into one of YA fantasy's most beloved heroes, and a love triangle that is genuinely agonising because Jem Carstairs is just as worthy a choice as Will. The found-family warmth between Tessa, Will, Jem, Charlotte, Henry, and Sophie draws consistent praise, with Charlotte Branwell frequently highlighted as an under-celebrated feminist icon. The most common criticisms centre on uneven pacing — the middle act is deliberately slow and relationship-focused rather than plot-driven — and some readers find Will's curse-justified cruelty from book one hard to forgive even after the explanation lands. A minority flag Tessa as a passive protagonist who is acted upon more than she acts. Goodreads ratings hover around 4.4 stars across hundreds of thousands of reads, making it one of the higher-rated YA fantasy sequels in its era.
Read it if
- · Readers who found Will Herondale frustrating in book one and want to see his full redemption arc pay off
- · Fans of emotionally devastating slow-burn love triangles where choosing feels genuinely impossible
- · Anyone who loves historical fantasy with lush Victorian atmosphere and wall-to-wall literary allusions
Skip it if
- · You need plot momentum — this volume is primarily character and relationship work with a slow-burn mystery
- · Will's cruel-boy-with-a-secret archetype is a hard pass even with a satisfying explanation
- · You want explicit romance — this is closed-door YA throughout
If you liked this
- · For fans of Clockwork Angel — this is widely considered a major step up in emotional complexity and prose quality
- · For fans of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows — morally textured characters, found-family dynamics, and intricate plotting in a historical-adjacent setting
- · For fans of Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone — lush, literary prose; a heroine caught between two worlds; identity mystery at the core
- · For fans of Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Mist and Fury — middle-book revelations that reframe everything and leave you needing the finale immediately
In this series
Part of The Infernal Devices — read in order:
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