This could be the start of a beautifully romantic fantasy series.
Jaime Buchanan was captured by slavers during one of the darkest periods in his life. Reeling from grief, he contends with horrible abuse before being rescued by a twist of fate. That twist brings him to the Angharad Palace and eventually into the arms of the youngest Prince, Maxim.
The story actually begins after Jaime is rescued, and the reader/listener is only given slight anecdotal glimpses of the cruelty he lived through. When Jaime perceives a threat through a small misunderstanding he runs, but is found and elevated quickly from a kitchen boy back to a healer apprentice.
S.J. Himes and Joel Leslie continue their audio partnership and it serves them both well. They complement each other greatly with Joel bringing out a lot of nuance to S.J.’s stories that might be missed by simply reading. Joel’s rich character voices, accents, and timing serve this audio beautifully.
The story moves quickly and has some time jumps, and while it has an interesting premise and world building, it suffers a teeny bit from too much telling and not enough showing. The romance is insta-love, and while I personally like instant romances I prefer to see a reason as to why the characters fall for each other so quickly, and I feel like this was missing that component.
In the end there is a lovely HFN and the story itself is a setup for a potentially much larger series. I enjoyed it overall and will definitely be back for the next installment, which I believe will follow a different couple before eventually circling back to Jaime and Maxim in a later book.
It’s a fun, wonderfully narrated fantasy romance listen, that’s lovely and quietly romantic, with low angst, and a HFN ending. It’s a sweet beginning, but it’s obvious this is mostly to set up for a series.