Fair warning; this is a big fat 'just freaking ends' book. Don't get me wrong, I sometimes enjoy tension, even a bit of a cliffhanger, if done right. No, my problem is this is the sort that ends almost mid sentence. It doesn't have any sense of the book being done, the king asks someone a question and then the book just finishes. I like my book to actually be clear it has just finished, not hanging there in a way that leaves you wondering if you lost a page or something.
Now, the book itself. It does have some issues of which to gripe about as well, but it also has enough story to keep be interested and wanting to go on. Really it all boils down to the royals; they pretty much suck. And I mean re-he-HEALY suck. Even the good guy, King Aric, pretty much thinks with his cock at first when it comes to Joron. Other than Joron and his sister the royals in this book are out for themselves and will kill, maim, demean, and break anyone who gets in the way of their greed, power, lust, and lust for power. They are a convoluted and despicable lot and you want the kingdoms to get them gone because it seems they are pretty much screwing everything up.
Well, in comes Joron. He is a saint. Almost literally. The guy knows he has it good and is trying to make it good for everyone in the kingdom. He goes undercover around his father, the king, to make things right. Then he plans to continue it when his brother takes charge and really hopes to be able to bring his brother in on it. My only problem was his beauty. Joron is a strikingly beautiful man, so much so that everyone pretty much falls in love and wants to possess and protect him. It just irked me that he has absolutely no clue he was beautiful. That can sometimes work, having a naive innocent, but the man genuinely didn't even know he was good looking, or that people would look at him sexually, or anything. That seemed a bit too much. If you were that beautiful you could realize it while still being humble- this just made him seem like an airhead, which he really wasn't.
There is a lot of focus on sex, as well as on everyone wanting to do Joron. Really a good chunk of the first third of the book is him almost getting raped. But at the same time it really built up the tension and did seem to work well for the story. But fair warning, if that is going to bother you, this book is going to bother you.
There are lots of lines of thought going on in this book, each character working their own machinations to get what they want. It has an interesting Gordian Knot thing going on and I really want to read the next book to see it all slowly get untied. There is a fair amount of intrigue mixed into the sex, as well as a desperation to make things right. I hated that it ended so inexpertly, but I am interested in finding out how the interwoven stories of these two kingdoms come to pass. There is something there and it is enough of a story that I am still on board for more.