Captive Prince

By: C. S. Pacat

Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies

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.

©2013 C. S. Pacat (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

awesome story

i really enjoyed listening to the characters come alive and how much angry they have for one another how they keep lieing to each other on who the prince (slave)is. great story to listen too

great story

loved it. page turning. can't wait for the sequel. narrator had a good strong voice.

Doesn’t live up to the hype

This one did not hit for me. The story leans on taboo topics like sexual assault and pederastic themes, but they feel more like shock value than meaningful commentary. The writing style also made it tough to get through at parts. The vocabulary is sometimes needlessly complex while repeating the same rudimentary ideas. On the topic of repetitiveness, the author fixates so much on blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes that it came off more like an author’s personal fetish than useful description. You’d think there were no other traits worth even mentioning with how often someone’s eye, skin and hair color were described. The worldbuilding explanation that “men avoid women because of bastards, so everyone defaults to homosexual sex” also felt lazy and fetishistic. I enjoy a good MLM story, but here the writing and setup didn’t carry it. The audiobook narration was fine, but the voice sounded a bit too mature for how young the characters are supposed to be. Overall, I get why the series has a reputation especially for folks looking for MLM, but it just wasn’t good. I’m interested in where the story goes but if I had to read this instead of passive listening, I’d have to return it.

Lots of build up for what's to come.

I've been wanting to read this trilogy for so long- I'm not sure why I held off on it but I'm glad I finally bit the bullet! This first book is mostly background and build up for what's to come, and it has me completely intrigued.
It's definitely graphic and made me uncomfortable in parts. I more than likely would have passed on this if it was a contemporary read, but I don't mind so much when it's an historical read. I just kept imagining it as similar to one of my favorite television series, Spartacus.
I kept wanting Damen to just blurt out who he was, but I understand why he couldn't- it was just frustrating! So it's on to the next one to see how things start to come together.

The narration was fine. I admit I was expecting there to be some kind of an accent so it was kind of surprising to hear plain ol' english being spoken. I think Joel Leslie would have done a great job performing this series, but you can't always get what you want.

A true enemies to lovers

Normally in other enemies to lovers romantic books, you’ll see the “couple” absolutely hating each other, but there is always undertones of like sexual tension. For example, the the MC inner dialogue their like “Omg I can’t stand them, but damn they’re so hot and sexy. They’re my enemy but I have fantasies and wet dreams about f***ing them , but I hate them”. In Captive Prince there is no sexual tension and the two just are enemies, the only reason why they are even working together or even helping each other is for their own gains. Honestly it’s really refreshing. 10/10 will be buying the own trilogy 😌