TBR Challenge: ‘THE PIRATE PRINCE’, by Gaelen Foley

The topic of this month is Favorite Trope

Published: Aug-1998

Genre: Historical Romance

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: The Ascension's Principality Trilogy #1

In July we have to look for a novel with a favourite trope. As I said last year, I have several of them: beta heroes, friends to lovers, best enemies, second chance at love, amnesia, disguise....

In my database, I’ve got this book as one of those with the topic ‘Best Enemies’.

‘The Pirate Prince’ is a book that I bought in paper, and not as an e-book. I’m not sure why it was in my TBR pile. I must have seen a good review somewhere.

The main character, Lazar di Fiore is a man in search of revenge. While he was young, and heir to the throne, he saw all his family butchered. He had to fly away to save his life. Awful experiences followed his flight. And he’s back to take his revenge. He has got this idea of killing everybody in the Monteverdi family, because that man was a traitor to his father the king Alphonse and is nowadays the governor.

He will start abducting and killing his beloved daughter, Allegra. But one thing is that name and another, a very different one, this young woman herself. She’s beautiful, a good person, and has her own dreams about the legend of the missing prince.

In order to talk a little bit about Allegra, I have to tell you about this imagined kingdom of Ascension, an island with a Spanish name that is supposedly somewhere in the Mediterranean, to the West of the Italic peninsula. As all the islands in Western Mediterranean Sea, it belonged to the Romans, then to Barbarians, the Muslims, afterwards… Spanish people and later on they had their own royal family, the Fiore. But there was this coup d'état, instigated by the Genovese, and the king Alphonse was killed, with everybody else in the royal family but Lazar, who survived and went away. But everybody thinks he died, and therefore his existence is the matter of legends.

Allegra is the daughter of the governor, a Genovese. But she dreams about this fantasy prince. She wants the people to be freed, and shows her commitment towards the people of Ascension. She helps in whatever form she can do it.

When she is kidnapped by this handsome stranger, a pirate, little does she know that he is the lost prince of her dreams. And that he wants to kill her in order to have his vendetta.

But of course when Lazar sees this woman in the flesh, and hears about her ideals, it would be rather difficult to kill her and everybody else in her family.

This was an entertaining book with a complex mixture of old and new skool of historical romance. I had the same feeling I had while reading a Pamela Clare’s historical, with that mixture of old and new.

It has the length of those old stories, I think I’d love it more if it had a hundred pages less! And the plot itself was very old-skoolish, revenge, a pirate ship in the ocean, the hero as a direct danger towards the safety of the very young and very virginal heroine. She, of course, has never had a lusty thought in her life until she meets Lazar.

The sexy scenes are very few and apart, although there’s this sexual tension all through the novel. Sometimes it sounds like a joke, it looks like they are going to do it, but then something happens.

But on the other hand, there are traits of more recent historical romances. The point of view is not only that of the heroine but also we know, in every detail, what Lazar thinks, and decides, and is afraid of, his thoughts, his feelings, everything is there, on the page. Lazar looks like the rapey hero of the bodice rippers, but in the end, he will never had sex against her will.

Lazar di Fiore is the character you remember more of this book. Allegra is more your commonplace idealistic woman that wants everything to be better and, although she does not know, at the beginning, that he is the lost heir to the throne, once she accepts this fact, she wants him to change and be a better person, accept his inheritance and becomes a new and bright king for the island.

But Lazar is a more complex character. His life has been rather difficult, he has had terrible experiences that have damaged his soul. He expects nothing, he has made no plans beyond his revenge, and never in his wildest dreams has thought about claiming the throne.

He considers himself a cursed person, which he cannot love because everybody he loves is going to die sooner or later. So even when he finds himself in love with Allegra, he rejects any future together because he does not want her to die.

In the end, it was a lovely book, rather entertaining, although some parts were very long for me, and I skipped them.

I see this is the first book that Gaelen Foley published so, all things considered, it was a great achievement.

I thought that this was my first book by Gaelen Foley. But then I saw that the second book in the trilogy, Princess, is on my shelves, translated to Spanish. I must have read it more than a decade ago. I don’t remember anything about it. Perhaps I should re-read it.