Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Kings Rising

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Kings Rising by C.S. Pacat

39 reviews

kmarie341's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

at the core of this story is a boy who had his brother withdraw from him because of his childhood and a boy who had his childhood taken from him with the death of his brother. the long-building intensity of the regent and laurent’s political maneuvering and the way this represents

laurent’s fight for personhood and escape from his abuser as he reclaims his sexuality, his sense of self worth, his vulnerability, and the respect of the people of his court that the regent isolated him from

built so satisfyingly to its conclusion. love getting to see my babygirl laurent get everything he deserves. this book fixed something in me and kept me hooked and for that i can give it no less than 5 stars

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ciuli's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The affection you might feel towards the characters can only take you so far if not supported by a good plot and here... It didn't take me very far. At all.

I pushed through these books because in my mind I was like "it will get better, I just have to wait a bit, the action is coming, war is coming, it's about to get exciting!" but then it never did.
Like, the main focus of this series was supposed to be the fight for the kingdoms and the war and the tactics and in the end literally NOTHING happened. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed plot-wise by a book ever.
Even the antagonists felt completely useless. The Regent only existed to antagonist his nephew, literally no other goal in his life other than that, Kastor was always mentioned but appeared in 3 pages out of 3 books.

I had read a review of book 2 where someone described it as overcomplicated erotica and honestly, they were so right. Joe do you expect me to take the plot of this book seriously, when the characters are on the brink of a war who could change the futures of their lives and their kingdom's lives, but they couldn't give a rat's ass about it because they were too busy having sex to care about any of it.

The worst part is that in the end, even the romance felt flat, I expected some kind closure in the end but the way it ended felt like it was missing and entire chapter. I do love Laurent, he is the only reason I pushed through and read the books till the end, while everytime Damen did something or talked I went "uuugh please shut up", which you can understand is a difficult feeling to have towards the person who is narrating the book.

Overall a very disappointing ending to the trilogy and and the only reason I left 2 stars is because Laurent deserves them and no one else

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divine529's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This is the third and final book in the Captive Prince trilogy and once again it picked up right where the previous one left off with Damen's reveal to the people around him and war brewing.

This was the best of the three by a lot. I still consider it all to be "book candy" and like with the previous books, so much telling, not a ton of showing, but it was a stronger book than the previous two by a lot. The reveal of Damen to everyone really helped a lot of things, and getting to unpack all the trauma both he and Laurent went through was good. It definitely needed to be unpacked further, but I'm glad we got what we did. Some of the side characters ended up being a good voice of reason and conscience for all of that (Nikandros is the best). There were some absolutely fantastic scenes - sparring scene and whatever they hell they were doing with the disguises was hysterical to read. It was great getting to see everything come together and wind up, but I didn't love how rushed and abrupt the ending was.

All in all, this was my favorite of the three. I still had problems with the book and series as a whole, but it was entertaining overall.

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foxclouds's review

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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nitzanschwarz's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

81 | B- | 3.8 ★ | Good

Not gonna lie, I'm sad it's over! Partly because this book doesn't feel complete. More on that in a second. I will warn you - I will focus on some things that frustrated and annoyed me. I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed seeing Laurent and Damen's story conclude. I have enjoyed them as a couple and would like to read more about them. But I also had a lot of things that I was not particularly happy about, and I needed to let them out, simple as that.

This book picks up right where the last one ended when Damen regains his name. And I suppose it goes the best it could.

When we learned that the Regent had known of Damen's true identity all along, I had suspected that Laurent did, too. It wouldn't make sense that he wouldn't, and it would explain so much. And I was glad to be right because it meant he consciously made all his choices.

Although he does not react well to having to admit to that.

I loved Laurent in this, even when he was frustrating. This man is capable beyond his years. I love that his last play hinges on

trusting Damen to come, even when he told him not to

. I'm not sure he believed it would work out, but perhaps that's exactly what I find so compelling about it. I think Laurent would be a good king.

Damen, however? I am not so sure about it. I don't think he actually has what it takes—oh, sure, he'll be a great military general. But a king? I have my doubts. Being kind and righteous does not a king make, and this man is kind of DUMB. Like, he lets himself be provoked into stupid actions. A King should not be this easy to get a rise out of. He fails to see subterfuge when it's right in his face, and had Laurent not counted on that--counted on his stupid straightforwardness--they'd both be dead.

It's lucky that

, apparently, he won't be ruling alone

. Not that I can tell you exactly what the political arrangement is going to be, because the book ends right after the climax, and I guess I'm too dumb to figure out how his political (and romantic) arrangement with Laurent is going to work in practice.

I still love Laurent and Damen, and I wish we got to see them happy at any point in this series. We don't. All we get to see is them struggling against, quite frankly, horrible people. Part of my issue with this novel is that I wanted more from how we dispatched these people.

Damen

fucking trusted Kastor again. For all that is holy and good. Why, oh why, would you leave someone willing to murder, lie, and destroy you for the throne alive? This is the same man who waxed in his head about what a mistake leaving Govart or whatever his name was alive would be. And here he is, refusing to do what he should because it's "his brother." Give me a break. And you give him honor after his death! The man who murdered the previous king, the man who sent you to be a sex slave, the man who left your country open for a tyrannical megalomaniac because he was so hungry for the throne it didn't matter if he had to bow to someone else's authority to have it, gets an honorable burial as a member of the royal family.

Are you fucking kidding me??

Not only was I not happy about the showdown with Kastor, I wasn't thrilled about the showdown with the Regent, either! It all felt so hollow. All it took was...

two witnesses? That's it? We took down this larger-than-life predator with a single letter from someone who claimed to have killed the previous king under the Regent's orders. Are we being for real right now? Was he simply a fly the whole time, easily slapped away? There should have been more. More witnesses to make it believable that he would be put down this easily. More resistance. More something. I get that it might have seemed appropriate - that for all his bluster and confidence, he was not, in fact, the big deal he thought he was. But it took a parade of witnesses and hours of interrogation to reach Laurent's verdict... and 15 minutes to kill the acting King

.

We also never really talked about Laurent's past. We have a discovery and an outburst, and then... nothing. It deserved more than that. For a series that spent so much time in the first book dishing out sexual abuse, it has a remarkable lack of content dealing with or acknowledging the consequences of such abuse...

Overall, I thought the climax was a disappointing end to the series (and it is quite literally the end; the book closes seconds after the climax), that it didn't deliver on some of the things that it set out, and it didn't even have the decency to cushion some of the hurt with fluff at the end LOL. I am very curious to read Pacat's newest series and see how and where she has developed as a writer and a series planner since this one!

Plot - 17/20
Characters - 18/20
Relationships - 18/20
Writing - 14/20
Reading Experience - 14/20
Final score: 81

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mint_frog's review against another edition

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emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

The ending felt simultaneously cathartic and in part a bit underwhelming. The plot point of Damen's potential child irritated me a little bit, because I just can't understand why it would matter that much, even it were 100% his child. Royal bloodline I guess, but it seems kinda stupid.

This is where we finally fully get to the "lovers" part of "enemies to lovers", and it's done incredibly well. I can fully understand why the characters behaved and felt the way they did in the beginning, and also exactly why the nature of their actions and feelings gradually changed.

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