Captive of the Horde King
Zoey Draven
Overall: 3/5
Plot and themes: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing style: 3/5
Attention-grabbing: 3/5
I avoided reading Ice Planet Barbarians during the hype phase only to read this one a couple of months later so like I don't know. It was pretty decent, gave me real Golden Dynasty vibes but without the amazingly and astoundingly horrible depictions of romanticized sexual assault. This one runs the line more cause you're like yeah uh that was consent but also if these were real people uhm it's literally called captive of the horde king so that's not okay. Basically, Luna's brother was an idiot and lit a fire when it's very illegal and he would've been killed if she hadn't sacrificed herself. She thought she'd either die or you know become a slave but instead the king marries her and so on and so forth.
I think it was much better at the beginning when she was figuring out whether she should hate him or not. The end was just a predictable amalgamation of tropes used to make us feel like we had seen a resolution. Like I understand it's hard to find a rise and fall on books like these when the central conflict is getting the romance to work, but it was a bit of a disappointing progression.
But I was a big fan of the king not being the biggest jerk on the planet. Like I said, these books run a thin line of okay and not-okay when it comes to the male protagonists and this one was pretty tolerable. Probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone who I didn't know liked this kind of world but if you do it's definitely a fairly well-written version.
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