Prince's Gambit

I enjoyed the read but....the character of Laurent and several of the descriptive phrases are copied from another authors work. Laurent is almost a pure copy of Francis Lymond the blond, blue eyed hero written by Dorothy Dunnett. It's really very obvious ....the roof top chase scene that's in Dunnets book, the flogging also, Laurent's ability to flay someone with words is Lymond as is his appearance.

I have no words! At the end of the first book Prince Laurent's uncle, the Regent, has ordered him and a small group of his troops to the border to ostensibly fight the Akielons but, truly, to be killed in any number of ways on the journey. As Laurent and Damen, the true King of Akielos who was deposed by his half-brother and sold as a bed-slave to the Veretians, travel there are plots and machinations and twists and turns that I just never saw coming. If the first book was perhaps mistaken for some kind of m/m slave-porn this one surely puts the reader right. It's a delicate courting dance between two princes, one a slave to the other, one a straightforward soldier, the other a clever, manipulative politician. No-one is ever quite what they seem and I have seen friends turn to foes and back again so often I think I've got reader's whiplash. It's epic yet taut, brutal yet sensual, simple yet also complex. I loved it and I am twitchy because I have a full day of work ahead of me before I can start the third book. Oh, and what a cliffhanger! And does that mean ...?

I kept smiling while reading the last two chapters because I foresaw how the ending was going to be before I read it... And I was still amazed! Long live Prince Laurent and King Damianos!!! XD