When laced into his clothing, Laurent's dangerous grace lent him an almost androgynous quality. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it was rare to associate Laurent with a physical body at all: you were always dealing with a mind.
---
Oh boy... I've read some really terrible books over the years, but I've always found some redeeming quality in even the most despicable of novels that I've read. But every once in a while you get a book that's so terribly written, so dull, so poorly put together, that even I can't find anything redeeming about it. This year's low, unfortunately, is Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat. This novel is... it's so bad I don't know where to begin. The plot of the novel involves a prince sold to a neighbouring, enemy kingdom after his brother steals his birthright, to act as a pleasure slave to the prince-in-waiting. This "captive prince", Damen, can't reveal his identity to anyone, because he killed this kingdom's former crown prince during a war fought between the two countries. As such, he is left to the cruelty of Laurent, prince of the enemy state, as he learns about this new, hedonistic culture he's been thrown into. It's been named "slave erotica" although, it's hardly erotic at all.
First off, I don't tend to read erotica, I had just heard good things about this series and wanted to check it out for myself. And now I wish I hadn't.
The biggest problem I had, right from the get go, was the writing. It's written at a grade-school level. I honestly thought I was reading one of those beginner chapter books that you read in, like, grade 5, that's how poorly written it was. And throughout it, I was very confused about who the target audience was, because, the writing was so simplistic, dull, and poor, but it was filled with sex and brutalism and well, rape.
After reading this novel, I went to Goodreads to read some of the reviews posted on the site, and a lot of people were shocked about how explicit and disgusting some of the scenes were. Some people were mind-blown at how degrading and disturbing the content was... but... where exactly was all that content? Yes, there was a scene of rape... sort of, and Damen, the main character, was beaten, degraded, and flogged... but this novel was hardly disturbing. Last year I read Let the Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist, now THERE'S a disturbing novel. Maybe it's because the writing was so poor, but I was never shocked, never disturbed by the content, if anything the writing was disturbing enough.
And then there's the world building and the characters. I've heard that the world building does get better, so I'm looking forward to that, but in this novel we're thrown into these lavished, hedonistic cultures, but we only ever learn about their sexuality, that's it. Nothing else seems to matter in these books except for the devious sexual appetites of every, single, damn culture. Give me a break, throw me some actual fantasy world building, not just the sexual adventures of these cultures. And the characters are as dull and single-minded as the world. Damen, the main character, the "captive prince", is the dumbest character I've ever encountered, and Laurent, the chauvinistic, coniving prince who ends up owning Damen, isn't much sharper. The whole scheming plot of this story was so easy to unravel, and it took these characters FOREVER to get to the conclusion that I had suspected from the first few chapters. There's nothing appealing about either character's personalities, no evoking emotions that kept me reading, no chemistry between the two that amounted to anything... this was just a poorly thought out book from front cover to back. And I hate to say that, because I wanted SO badly to enjoy it. It promised to be a unique take on fantasy and world building, but it turned out to be dull, middle-grade fiction written for horny teenagers.
That being said... I will be finishing this series. I suppose it's my vice. I can't stop something, no matter how terrible it is. Luckily this book was so short that it took me a couple of days to get through. I'm hoping the other two novels will be the same.
