Captive Prince (Captive Prince #1) - C.S. Pacat

Title: Captive Prince

Series: Captive Prince #1

Author: C.S. Pacat

Publisher: Viking: Penguin

Rating: 5/5

Pitch;

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 epitomises the worst of the decadent court at Vere. But in the lethal web of Veretian politics, nothing is as it seems, and when Damen is caught up in a dangerous play for the throne, he must form an alliance with Laurent to survive and save his country.
For Damen, there is just one rule: he must never reveal his true identity. Because the one man Damen needs is the one man who has more reason to hate him than anyone else . . .

(Goodreads)

My review: 

I wasn't expecting to like this book as much as I did. Seriously, this was FAR from what I was expecting. I heard a lot of things about it and I got the wrong idea from it. I thought I was going to read something in the vein of Captive in the Dark (which I hated with a passion) but not at all! 

In this world, we have Damen, a prince betrayed by his half-brother, sold as a slave to Laurent, the prince of the country enemy to his. 

I loved the world building, the characters, the plot... I loved everything about it. Damen is strong, wild and mature. A real soldier-minded prince. But he knows better than to be reckless. Laurent (I dislike that name, it's my uncle's so the whole gets really weird for me) is just amazing. I love his character. I honestly do. The way he talks, what he does, his mastermind, twisted mind... I love it. It's unique and different and he is far from what I was expecting of the owner of Damen. 

I was expecting an erotico-romance and I got a fantasy novel with barely any romance but a lot of politics and treason and plot twists. It's way better done than a mere m/m romance. I know where we're going to go but the author is building it up so well that it seems believable, that we have time to warm up to the characters and their ways. It's really amazing. It's definitely not one of those pure erotic "romances" that uses insta-love and an overload of sex. There is sex in this book but not what I was expecting. It's just part of the world-building.

Actually, as I write this, I'm already almost done with the second book and I won't stop the compliments from flowing because the second is even better.