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A review by huckleberryrk
Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.75
I'm gonna review this the way I would do for work, so let's bang this out.
I picked this book up because there was a lot of chatter around it. I'm always on the hunt for good gay rep and full disclosure: if you are an LGBTQ+ person looking for good representation... look elsewhere. You won't find it here. This book is disappointing at best and triggering at worst if you are here for that sort of thing. That said...
Trigger warning for: sexual assault, pedophilia, violence, corporal punishment.
Initial thoughts: Meh? Some good, some bad. Sorta boring. I don't really care for political intrigue, and I was promised a queer novel but this is really painfully obviously written by someone who lacks queer nuance. My main problems with the book lie in the hyper-focus on the slavery aspect. I'll definitely get to that, but I HAVE to mention it right upfront.
A note: I identify as a queer man (bisexual, to be specific) who is masculine. I am also white if that bears noting.
Logline: A prince is betrayed by his half-brother and sold as a slave to the prince of the kingdom they are at war with. He is forced to deal with this subjugation at the hand of his rival royal, who has no idea who he truly is.
Characterization: 2/5
I wasn't exactly spellbound by this cast. Some of the characters did stick out to me, but I don't think any of them are memorable enough for me to recall fondly years later. The names confused me a lot, I have a hard time with fantasy names in general, but some of them were kind of low-level ridiculous. How am I supposed to care about characters if I can't remember who the fuck they are?
I liked the protagonist, but I do wish that I knew more about him. He wasn't quite flat, nor fully developed. I always felt strangely disconnected from him. I never really knew what he was feeling, even if I did know what he was thinking. The character of Laurant was built up to be more than he was, in my opinion. He was a manipulative dick, but the protagonist talked about "the maze of his mind". It didn't strike me as all that complicated.
Dialogue: 4/5
Slapped pretty hard at points. The strongest times were the banter when the Damen was playfully rebellious against Laurent, as well as the conversations between Damen and the other slaves.
Technical proficiency with the language: 4.5/5
Very well written. Rich descriptions. Read fluidly and easily. Definitely a page-turner in that respect. Easy to get through in an afternoon if you hoof it, you can very much let the language wash over you and it's very nice. Some of the best parts were the action/fighting sequences. I'm docking my grade a half point because the ambience surrounding horrendous sex acts wasn't *romantic* exactly but it was still unpleasant to read.
Story structure: 1/5
Structure? What structure? Three acts? Five acts? Character arcs? The dark night of the soul? Growth and development? What are those? There is some, sure, but it felt like the characters were just wandering around doing whatever. Additionally, it feels like the writer got to the halfway point of the book and was like "huh, maybe I should talk about things that AREN'T slaves and/or sex" and decided to try and write real stakes into the story.
Romance: 1/5
Nil. None to speak of, despite me being informed otherwise (before I read warnings on here to set me straight).
Sexiness: 2/5
Nice descriptions for the scenes that were kinda sexy, but it didn't get me hot under the collar.
Additionally, the casual treatment of rape and sexual assault was offensive. I didn't like that. Hope you're okay with pedophilia, too. I'll be clear; the rape/assault/pedophilia was viewed through the lens of a character who was repulsed by it and it wasn't outwardly romanticized, but it was absolutely there and there was a veneer over it that made it seem less morally hideous. More on this on the "politic" section.
Storyline: 2/5
I'm sure there were events happening, but blow me if I could try and figure out the significance of any of them and how they connected to one another. The story did start to get interesting to me... at the 3/4 point. Too little, too late. Before that, I honestly didn't really enjoy what was happening story-wise. The ending was strong. I wish the book was half as long as it was.
Worldbuilding: 2/5
Names were dumb. I have no idea what the landscape of these places is like. Spent WAY WAY WAY too much time talking about the slave politics, which I really didn't love. Other than that, it had the same sorta crap high-fantasy politics that nobody cares about. Some of the aesthetics were interesting, but that's all I have to say.
Politic: 1/5
I can't get around the obvious. I touched on this in the beginning-- the amount of sexual assault, fetishization of slavery (with a healthy underscore of colonialist racism, hooray), and straight-up homophobia is... a lot. Even if we knew these acts were "bad" in the lore of this world, I didn't enjoy reading about them.
I felt creepy and gross reading about the way gay men were talked about in this book. It was pretty disgusting. It was very obviously written by a straight woman. As a bisexual man, I felt very much like this was what a straight woman would imagine us to be in an ideal sexy world (but not even that sexy tbh).
Final review: 2/5
Boring and offensive. Has its moments and it started to get good towards the end. It looked at things that should be looked at realistically with a strange rose-coloured tint. It was obviously a fetish project that took off and had more high-fantasy elements peppered in. As I noted earlier, if this book was half as long it would be pretty decent.
My conclusion is that everyone who is dragging this book through the mud is right and anyone praising it for being good fantasy is also right. It has both-- but the politics of it and the wandering plot aren't my taste.
I picked this book up because there was a lot of chatter around it. I'm always on the hunt for good gay rep and full disclosure: if you are an LGBTQ+ person looking for good representation... look elsewhere. You won't find it here. This book is disappointing at best and triggering at worst if you are here for that sort of thing. That said...
Trigger warning for: sexual assault, pedophilia, violence, corporal punishment.
Initial thoughts: Meh? Some good, some bad. Sorta boring. I don't really care for political intrigue, and I was promised a queer novel but this is really painfully obviously written by someone who lacks queer nuance. My main problems with the book lie in the hyper-focus on the slavery aspect. I'll definitely get to that, but I HAVE to mention it right upfront.
A note: I identify as a queer man (bisexual, to be specific) who is masculine. I am also white if that bears noting.
Logline: A prince is betrayed by his half-brother and sold as a slave to the prince of the kingdom they are at war with. He is forced to deal with this subjugation at the hand of his rival royal, who has no idea who he truly is.
Characterization: 2/5
I wasn't exactly spellbound by this cast. Some of the characters did stick out to me, but I don't think any of them are memorable enough for me to recall fondly years later. The names confused me a lot, I have a hard time with fantasy names in general, but some of them were kind of low-level ridiculous. How am I supposed to care about characters if I can't remember who the fuck they are?
I liked the protagonist, but I do wish that I knew more about him. He wasn't quite flat, nor fully developed. I always felt strangely disconnected from him. I never really knew what he was feeling, even if I did know what he was thinking. The character of Laurant was built up to be more than he was, in my opinion. He was a manipulative dick, but the protagonist talked about "the maze of his mind". It didn't strike me as all that complicated.
Dialogue: 4/5
Slapped pretty hard at points. The strongest times were the banter when the Damen was playfully rebellious against Laurent, as well as the conversations between Damen and the other slaves.
Technical proficiency with the language: 4.5/5
Very well written. Rich descriptions. Read fluidly and easily. Definitely a page-turner in that respect. Easy to get through in an afternoon if you hoof it, you can very much let the language wash over you and it's very nice. Some of the best parts were the action/fighting sequences. I'm docking my grade a half point because the ambience surrounding horrendous sex acts wasn't *romantic* exactly but it was still unpleasant to read.
Story structure: 1/5
Structure? What structure? Three acts? Five acts? Character arcs? The dark night of the soul? Growth and development? What are those? There is some, sure, but it felt like the characters were just wandering around doing whatever. Additionally, it feels like the writer got to the halfway point of the book and was like "huh, maybe I should talk about things that AREN'T slaves and/or sex" and decided to try and write real stakes into the story.
Romance: 1/5
Nil. None to speak of, despite me being informed otherwise (before I read warnings on here to set me straight).
Sexiness: 2/5
Nice descriptions for the scenes that were kinda sexy, but it didn't get me hot under the collar.
Additionally, the casual treatment of rape and sexual assault was offensive. I didn't like that. Hope you're okay with pedophilia, too. I'll be clear; the rape/assault/pedophilia was viewed through the lens of a character who was repulsed by it and it wasn't outwardly romanticized, but it was absolutely there and there was a veneer over it that made it seem less morally hideous. More on this on the "politic" section.
Storyline: 2/5
I'm sure there were events happening, but blow me if I could try and figure out the significance of any of them and how they connected to one another. The story did start to get interesting to me... at the 3/4 point. Too little, too late. Before that, I honestly didn't really enjoy what was happening story-wise. The ending was strong. I wish the book was half as long as it was.
Worldbuilding: 2/5
Names were dumb. I have no idea what the landscape of these places is like. Spent WAY WAY WAY too much time talking about the slave politics, which I really didn't love. Other than that, it had the same sorta crap high-fantasy politics that nobody cares about. Some of the aesthetics were interesting, but that's all I have to say.
Politic: 1/5
I can't get around the obvious. I touched on this in the beginning-- the amount of sexual assault, fetishization of slavery (with a healthy underscore of colonialist racism, hooray), and straight-up homophobia is... a lot. Even if we knew these acts were "bad" in the lore of this world, I didn't enjoy reading about them.
I felt creepy and gross reading about the way gay men were talked about in this book. It was pretty disgusting. It was very obviously written by a straight woman. As a bisexual man, I felt very much like this was what a straight woman would imagine us to be in an ideal sexy world (but not even that sexy tbh).
Final review: 2/5
Boring and offensive. Has its moments and it started to get good towards the end. It looked at things that should be looked at realistically with a strange rose-coloured tint. It was obviously a fetish project that took off and had more high-fantasy elements peppered in. As I noted earlier, if this book was half as long it would be pretty decent.
My conclusion is that everyone who is dragging this book through the mud is right and anyone praising it for being good fantasy is also right. It has both-- but the politics of it and the wandering plot aren't my taste.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Slavery, Torture, and Kidnapping