After Prince’s Gambit I am now officially a die-hard for this series. Where the first one established a lot of the rules of the world and wove the foundational tensions between Damen and Laurent, this one gets the two protagonists out of the palace at Arles and lets their relationship deepen. A lot of Captive Prince focused on the few moments where Laurent and Damen came together, their interactions bottlenecked by palace politics as much as by the ornate and labyrinthine Veretian rooms Damen was captive in. In Prince’s Gambit Damen and Laurent are around each other about 80% of the time so it is a different feel and the best direction for the series to grow in. I hate to make it sound like I prefer this book over Captive Prince; I don’t. Each is necessary in its own way. Each is close to perfection.

As with the first book, Pacat has a firm grasp on each of her characters and they never act in a way that feels unrealistic to them. She never sacrifices her thorough character-building for the sake of moving things forward. And if Damen and Laurent are brilliant OP gods then Pacat is careful to fit them into the Regent’s world, where the threat they face is actually bigger, stronger, and smarter than them. Again, I’m wary of the way the Regent is easily characterized as villainous because he has pedophilia (as always: people with pedophilia and sex offenders against children are two different circles in a Venn diagram with some but nowhere near total overlap). However, Pacat continues to gradually introduce us to the Regent as a man who has created a meticulous facade of reasonableness in order to hide his cruel and violent machinations. She suggests that he is evil not simply for being attracted to young boys, but because to him they are just items to be used and discarded (often violently). She suggests there might be a difference between these things. I’ll take it, I guess.

To end on a note that proves I am Pacat’s thrall, I’m so glad that I found this series (thank you p). It is non-stop tactical maneuvering in a fantasy landscape with extremely well-written characters who represent some of my favorite archetypes. Almost every page, and I mean honestly like one page in ten, Laurent or Damen does or says something that makes me want to hoot like an audience member at a Larry the Cable Guy show. And not just some brilliant tactical move; there are so many epic relational interactions here which I don’t get in 99% of media. I love these men. This feeds me.