Review: Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat

I recently read Captive Prince, which I previously never thought I would read because of its contents. This is one of those novels that gets a trigger warning from almost everyone who has read it. I knew what I was getting myself into. After hearing Whitney (WhittyNovels) talk about the entire trilogy, I felt that it had sparked my interest. Especially the next two books, but obviously, to get to those, I’d have to read that first one. And so I did, and it wasn’t as triggering as I had expected it to be.

The GoodReads synopsis for Captive Prince reads:

“Damen is a warrior hero to his people, and the rightful heir to the throne of Akielos. But when his half brother seizes power, Damen is captured, stripped of his identity, and sent to serve the prince of an enemy nation as a pleasure slave.
Beautiful, manipulative, and deadly, his new master, Prince Laurent, epitomizes the worst of the court at Vere. But in the lethal political web of the Veretian court, nothing is as it seems, and when Damen finds himself caught up in a play for the throne, he must work together with Laurent to survive and save his country.
For Damen, there is just one rule: never, ever reveal his true identity. Because the one man Damen needs is the one man who has more reason to hate him than anyone else…”

Overall:

Honestly, it does sound quite interesting when you read that, doesn’t it? I don’t know how to word this correctly, because saying I “enjoyed” this feels a bit strange, due to all the (sexual) violence in this novel. I understand why people are so divided about this story, it’s brutal. I’ve seen that people usually love it or hate it, but personally, I’m more in the middle, which is why I gave it 3 stars on GoodReads.

Characters:

I loved Damen. I just have no other way of putting it. He is a great main character to read from. This entire novel just left me wanting to know more about him, how his brain works, what his life has been like, everything really.
I also liked Prince Laurent… in a way. He is a difficult character, because he is such an enormous douche, but there are moments where something else shines through. His character also left me thinking about what else there is to him.
Another character I loved was Erasmus, one of the pleasure slaves. He just seemed so sweet and innocent, and I just wanted to save him from that world.
Then there obviously were several characters I disliked or even hated, which was good, because that was their whole point. Most of these characters are not good people, and for them to spark such utter dislike within me just means they’re well written.

Setting:

The basic setting itself is one I gravitate towards more often; rivalling countries, on the verge of a war (again), interesting kingdoms and courts. These two main kingdoms, however, have sex slaves, and they have them very openly. In most fantasy novels, the men in the stories tend to have multiple people whom they are involved with in some kind of way, but it’s not always this talked about. In this novel, everything is, very graphically, out in the open. That was tough at times, because, due to the nature of one of the courts, there are some scenes that involve (sexual) violence. The thing with this is incredibly tricky. I usually can’t read or watch anything with rape scenes in it, due to personal past experiences, but somehow this was a little different. In this novel, the main character constantly remarks that those actions are wrong, disgusting, horrible, and just plainly put: not okay. I must say that that doesn’t happen too often in books. Usually rape is there to further someone’s story or for shock value. Usually, it’s also glossed over; there’s no real aftermath, everyone just moves on like nothing happened.
While it was arguably for added shock in this story, I think it’s also part of the world building. This is how this country works, it’s absolutely sickening, but this is what they see as entertainment. Nowhere in this novel does our main character think this is normal or okay. Neither does the other major character, which is clear from most of his (private) actions (he makes some questionable public decisions). While this setting is certainly not for everyone, I still thought it was interesting to see such a country and to see how our main character tried to survive in it.

An interesting side note to this: in one of the countries, Lords only take male slaves, while Ladies only take female slaves. I thought this was a nice spin on things. It’s refreshing to read about people having very openly gay relationships and no one batting an eye.

Writing:

I personally don’t think too much of the writing in this. It was easy to read, quite quick as well, especially for a slow reader like me. It’s nothing extremely poetic or beautiful, but it also wasn’t so horrendous it was unreadable.

Trigger warning:

I will give trigger warnings for this novel, because it is helpful for this story. Had I gone into this not knowing, being blindsided by those scenes would’ve triggered me into things I’d rather not think about. So if you do ever think of picking this up, there are multiple accounts of sexual assault, sexist/creepy comments, graphic violence, rape, pedophilia, and sex slavery. Knowing this beforehand made it possible for me to prepare myself for what was to come and to deal with it better. I’ve also seen people give this a 'trigger warning' for ‘gays’, but honestly if you are triggered by any LGBT+ people, then please leave my blog. *waves*

Thank you for reading!

I hope you’re all doing well and you’re having a lovely day.

Love,

Sharon