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The Royal Curse

Twilight Mages, Book 1

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The Royal Curse

By: Eliot Grayson
Narrated by: Kirt Graves
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About this listen

Dawn mage. Twilight mage. Cursed, useless, damaged, dangerous…

His birth magic leaves Prince Nikola with nothing but bad choices: live as another man's possession, subject to his whims and his desires, or remain dependent on a potion that stunts his powers and prevents him from knowing love.

Andreas vows to protect the prince with his life—whether Nikola wants him to or not. After all, the queen pays his soldier's wage. Nikola's nothing but a job to do.

But when they find themselves stranded, with Nikola's potion running out, Andreas has to… improvise. Because what Prince Nikola needs to survive is the opposite of a lowly guard's respectful protection.

It should've been only one night. Just until the potion's refilled. But since Nikola had Andreas's touch, he craves Andreas again and again. He shouldn't. But he—and his magic—can't live without it…

©2023 Eliot Grayson (P)2024 Podium Audio Action & Adventure Fantasy Romance Royalty Wizardry Magic Users

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The middle of this is basically a shag-fest and I'd have liked a bit more plot, but I did like the set up. Nico is a particular type of mage, one whose magic will kill him unless he either takes a carefully brewed potion to subdue it, or has a regular diet of sex. He chooses the potion because he doesn't really believe he'll ever find a man he can trust not to manipulate him through his biological need for sex - but he's recently noticed a slow dropping-off of the efficacy of the potion and is worried that it will fail completely. He wants to attend a conclave of mages being held up in the mountains, in the hope that perhaps they might be able to help him, but his over-protective mother refuses to allow him to go. The author does a great job, in this part of the story, of conveying Nico's sense of isolation and frustration, his loneliness and despair at being starved of the comfort of touch and companionship - and for a family who is supposed to love him, his mother and sisters are remarkably insentitive.

His newly-appointed bodyguard, Andreas, is the one who finally persuades the queen to allow the expedition to go ahead - but when disaster strikes on the road and almost the entire stock of Nico's potion is destroyed... well, yeah, it's up to Andreas to step in and do his duty (and his prince *snort*) - to save his life and sanity of course.

Kirt Graves delivers an engaging and well-paced performance, with clearly defined voices for the two leads and the secondary cast. The romance is a bit insta, but he conveys the attraction and connection between Nico and Andreas well, and he does a good job with the sex scenes (just as well, because there are a lot of them!)

The Royal Curse was a fun, undemanding listen - a bit too sex-heavy perhaps, but I enjoyed it enough to be thinking about listening to book two.

Fun and undemanding, if a bit sex-heavy

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I enjoyed the book and there was a lot of things I really liked. plus, it was kind of a Mate or Die trope and I loved that!
But I would have preferred a bit more plot/worldbuilding and a bit less smex because the mages gathering (or whatever it was called in the book) was basically a MacGuffin.

Enjoyable

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