Not what I was expecting at all. Honestly, I expected something more sexy and sensual, something erotic and more of an alpha-vs-alpha turned dom and submissive or something. But this is just dark with no reward in my opinion. 
 When the blurb tells you this is about a man who was a prince turned pleasure slave by his traitorous brother (really half-brother), that's really what you get. You see it unfold, you see the cruelty, and you see the insane court he's sent to. One where public rape is sport. And while I will say our main character was never forcefully penetrated, the whole thing sickened me. I was so unprepared for what this novel really was. 
 And there was no romance! No hint of it between the slave prince and his new master. Maybe there was a smidge of sexual tension once or twice, but "tension" is a strong word to use for what little there was. By halfway through the novel, I was only rooting for a romance between the characters because the novel had nothing else going for it for me. I never really cared for the characters and was never given a real reason to. 
 Another thing that bugged me was the narration. The third person was not well down, in my opinion. Sure, I liked the flow and sentence structure in some places, and it's clear there have been revisions for word choice and such, but the narration still felt so ambiguous and detached at times, I really struggled to connect to anything at all. There was just nothing for me to latch on to. 
 What befuddles me the most is just how popular this novel is, being what it is. I really thought this was going to be the royal, gay Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm not sure what everyone is raving so much about, but I completely missed it here. 
 So, two stars. Not because I found something redeeming enough to earn another star, but because as a rule, I never rate books I've finished below two stars.