Reviewed by Elizabetta

TITLE: King of Dublin

AUTHOR: Heidi Belleau & Lisa Henry

PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing

LENGTH: 375 pages

BLURB: Twenty years after a deadly pandemic ravaged the world, Darragh Fergus Anluan and the people of his village have carved out a hard but simple life in the Irish countryside. But with winter comes sickness, and Darragh must travel to Dublin in search of medicine. What he finds there is a ruined city ruled by a madman, where scavenging is punishable by death . . . or conscription.

Ciaran Daly came to Ireland with aid and optimism, but instead was enslaved by the so-called King of Dublin. After months of abuse from the king and his men, he has no reason to believe this newcomer will be any different. Except Ciaran finds himself increasingly drawn to Darragh, whose brutish looks mask how sweet and gentle he really is.

The tenderness Darragh feels for the king’s treasured pet is treason, but it’s hardly the only betrayal brewing in this rotten kingdom. Rebellions and rival gangs threaten the king’s power, but not nearly as much as Darragh and Ciaran—whose only hope for freedom is the fall of the king.

REVIEW:

If you are looking for an bleak dystopian read, the King of Dublin, set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Ireland, delivers. It is relentlessly dark and disturbing. Unfortunately, the title leaves me confused about the intention of it all… is it a horror story or a romance?

This is a Mad Max-ian kind of world where a crazy, rat-bastard slum thug proclaims himself king of the mountain. Boru holds total dominion. He leads a gang of fellow thugs who keep a stranglehold on the starving people of Dublin. Boru and his men control everything: storehouses of food and potable water, and gas-powered vehicles left over from when the lights went out almost two decades ago. He holds the focus of the story, he is the title character, the King of Dublin. The reader enters a long difficult journey with a madman who is evil simply for the sake of it. So… a horror story.

Boru holds the beautiful, golden-haired Ciaran as political hostage and his personal sex slave. He repeatedly rapes and humiliates Ciaran systematically stripping him of his humanity. Ciaran has learned to do whatever it takes to reduce the torture and survive. He has learned to lie, seduce, submit and manipulate, all the while suffering the shame of it. Reading on is to wonder what will become of him.

One day, Darragh, a seemingly simple country boy, stumbles into Boru’s enclave in search of meds for his people back home on the farm. Maybe Darragh will be the one to take pity on Ciaran, show him some kindness in the living hell his life has become. But Boru soon gets his hooks into Darragh too, holding his morality hostage, making him another pawn. How much of his soul will Darragh sell to get those much-needed meds and will this supercede Ciaran’s lure?

Boru is so awful that I become numb to him. Any power he had over me is reduced because he becomes a caricature, a cardboard boogie man. There are no shades of grey to him, no nuance, he’s completely corrupt, sadistic and evil. The story’s title further confuses because while much of the focus is on Boru, my guess is that the authors really meant this to be about Ciaran and Darragh.

This has the bones of a good love story, but it is weighted down with the steady degradation of it’s lead characters. Just when Ciaran and Darragh can find a moment with each other, they don’t know what to do with it, they have been so beaten down and traumatized. The few times hope is dangled in front of them, it is snatched away again. It’s exhausting and depressing.

It’s really Ciaran that keeps me reading. His character arc is the deepest and easiest to glom on to. It’s like watching a car wreck, seeing him struggle with his dilemma. I can’t look away, and I want him to rise out of the ashes. But I feel removed from any blossoming romance. I read for Ciaran’s sake and to see if Darragh can redeem himself, but the warmth is elusive.

Now, I can appreciate dark and edgy, but maybe the problem is in the expectation… is this a romance? Or is it a study of how easy selling your soul can become if you’re pushed hard enough. If you are looking for well written torture porn then this is for you, but if rape and physical violence are triggers (the blurb goes nowhere near covering it), you will want to proceed with caution.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Riptide Publishing