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In Pursuit of the Crown
He had a lot to contend with. The King on his deathbed. Plotting noblemen. A Goddess's demands. Assassination attempts. Secret conspiracies. The last thing Prince Raylan needed was a distraction...but the former bandit in his royal guard was too tempting to ignore.
- GenresFantasyLGBTM M Romance
600 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 15, 2017
6 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 26, 2026
Reread 28/4/22: still adore this mammoth of a book. Sad that it doesn’t appear available anymore and Fitzgerald has seemed to disappear
A book with 600 pages and takes 5 days to read yet never loses my interest? It deserves nothing less than 5 stars
A book with 600 pages and takes 5 days to read yet never loses my interest? It deserves nothing less than 5 stars
September 13, 2018
I absolutely adored reading this! I wish I could write a million reviews for this author because I love their work so much. Great characters, good plot, and it’s very easy to get attached to the characters that by the time I finished the book I was actually sad it was over. I highly recommend giving Pursuit a try, it’s definitely worth it.
January 12, 2020
Did not finish.
The good thing first:
I liked the protagonists. Both Raylan and Sahal had a nice chemistry going and their relationship developed very organically. Raylan struggled with his love and his devotion to his supposedly good and wise goddess, who forbids such love. Sahal feels alien in Raylan's society, having been recruited to the palace from the dungeons and being a former bandit.
Their relationship is this books saving grace and the only reason why I'm not totally tearing it apart.
Also, the cover is really pretty. Great job artist!
Now the bad:
The worldbuilding makes zero sense. It doesn't feel like the kingdom and gods were planned out, it feels like everything was created to fulfill mutually exclusive roles.
The book (and protagonist!) go on and on how good, wise and enviable the goddess (only named Divine She) and women in general are when there is nothing in the book to justify it.
Let me take the entire situation apart for a moment. The kingdom behaves like a matriarchy: women have all the power. They can dictate everything that happens, tell their men how to vote, can divorce their husbands when they don't please them and the priesthood (also all women) have a disproportionate amount of influnce on the government. Every woman is treated as an avatar of the Divine She and therefore automatically worthy of worship.
And men still do all the work. No, I'm not kidding. Women apparently *could* run the government except they don't because they feel that it is beneath them. A single woman attends meetings and if something important happens they tell their husbands how to vote the next evening. Our protagonist, the prince, even tells us that a lot of the kingdom's problems could be solved if the self absorbed women could be bothered to pay attention to tax law or crop problems. But the ladies are too lazy to attend to the day to day drudgery of running a kingdom, which is why the situation is out of control (the king is dying and the prince is only a figurehead). All they do is annouce a new holiday.
I was confused why a prince and an almost entirely male council rule a matriarchal nation until the character roles crytallized. Women are supposed to be shown as wise, strong, benevolent and worthy of leadership while men are either shortsighted (council), undiscliplined (our protagonist), outright incompetent (council again) or just plain evil (the villain). However, women are also supposed to be victims. If we had an actual matriarchy men would have no power to fuck anything up and women would have to shoulder the blame for everything that goes wrong, so men need to be in leadership positions.
This is how we ended up in this schizophrenic kingdom.
The goddess, meanwhile, is evil. Evil with a capital E. Not only does she have a less than positive view of our protagonist for being gay (How dare he not want to offer his body to a woman whenever she wants!), she's a complete and unrepentant sociopath. She send blights, plagues and discord to the nation she supposedly loves (including letting the king die despite likely knowing what causes his disease) because they don't want to wage war against an island nation that did absolutely nothing to them. She's vain, cruel, tyrannical and so self-absorbed it's not surprising her divine ex-husband grew to hate all women.
Oh, her divine ex-husband is the patron deity of the island our protagonist is supposed to raze.
I didn't finish the book so I can't actually comment on him at all. For this supposedly evil god of hedonism he's a complete non-entity. I skipped to the end and he apparently had nothing to do with the current conflict at all.
Oh, I don't doubt he'll be really evil. He'll probably live in a temple with lava pits, black spikes everywhere and beheaded women at the wall for decoration.
Because the only way to justify any worship of this narcissistic goddess is to make the opposition cartoonishly evil.
Oh, and the prince had to marry a woman he didn't love and only views him as a way to make money by plundering the aforementioned island. Yay forced heterosexuality?
The good thing first:
I liked the protagonists. Both Raylan and Sahal had a nice chemistry going and their relationship developed very organically. Raylan struggled with his love and his devotion to his supposedly good and wise goddess, who forbids such love. Sahal feels alien in Raylan's society, having been recruited to the palace from the dungeons and being a former bandit.
Their relationship is this books saving grace and the only reason why I'm not totally tearing it apart.
Also, the cover is really pretty. Great job artist!
Now the bad:
The worldbuilding makes zero sense. It doesn't feel like the kingdom and gods were planned out, it feels like everything was created to fulfill mutually exclusive roles.
The book (and protagonist!) go on and on how good, wise and enviable the goddess (only named Divine She) and women in general are when there is nothing in the book to justify it.
Let me take the entire situation apart for a moment. The kingdom behaves like a matriarchy: women have all the power. They can dictate everything that happens, tell their men how to vote, can divorce their husbands when they don't please them and the priesthood (also all women) have a disproportionate amount of influnce on the government. Every woman is treated as an avatar of the Divine She and therefore automatically worthy of worship.
And men still do all the work. No, I'm not kidding. Women apparently *could* run the government except they don't because they feel that it is beneath them. A single woman attends meetings and if something important happens they tell their husbands how to vote the next evening. Our protagonist, the prince, even tells us that a lot of the kingdom's problems could be solved if the self absorbed women could be bothered to pay attention to tax law or crop problems. But the ladies are too lazy to attend to the day to day drudgery of running a kingdom, which is why the situation is out of control (the king is dying and the prince is only a figurehead). All they do is annouce a new holiday.
I was confused why a prince and an almost entirely male council rule a matriarchal nation until the character roles crytallized. Women are supposed to be shown as wise, strong, benevolent and worthy of leadership while men are either shortsighted (council), undiscliplined (our protagonist), outright incompetent (council again) or just plain evil (the villain). However, women are also supposed to be victims. If we had an actual matriarchy men would have no power to fuck anything up and women would have to shoulder the blame for everything that goes wrong, so men need to be in leadership positions.
This is how we ended up in this schizophrenic kingdom.
The goddess, meanwhile, is evil. Evil with a capital E. Not only does she have a less than positive view of our protagonist for being gay (How dare he not want to offer his body to a woman whenever she wants!), she's a complete and unrepentant sociopath. She send blights, plagues and discord to the nation she supposedly loves (including letting the king die despite likely knowing what causes his disease) because they don't want to wage war against an island nation that did absolutely nothing to them. She's vain, cruel, tyrannical and so self-absorbed it's not surprising her divine ex-husband grew to hate all women.
Oh, her divine ex-husband is the patron deity of the island our protagonist is supposed to raze.
I didn't finish the book so I can't actually comment on him at all. For this supposedly evil god of hedonism he's a complete non-entity. I skipped to the end and he apparently had nothing to do with the current conflict at all.
Oh, I don't doubt he'll be really evil. He'll probably live in a temple with lava pits, black spikes everywhere and beheaded women at the wall for decoration.
Because the only way to justify any worship of this narcissistic goddess is to make the opposition cartoonishly evil.
Oh, and the prince had to marry a woman he didn't love and only views him as a way to make money by plundering the aforementioned island. Yay forced heterosexuality?
April 2, 2019
I adored the author's previous work (even if I had serious reservations about this one important element of its world) but it was not so with this one. And I had - yet again - one serious problem with this one element of the society in the book - The Divine She and the implications she had, the rules she made and how it impacted the lives of the characters.
Because this is fiction! I want to get things I/we don't have around here! And a matriarchal (the word was never mentioned but it's the closest term) society? Gimme!!!! I'd love that!!! But this was definitely not what was supposed to happen. That's a little too "realistic" way of it, for me.
Really, the way woman are supposed to be treated in this land, not just rules but the whole philosophy surrounding it - I would love seeing it in... well, a whole array of books. And maybe that was it - because in a gay romance, this whole aspect with so much potential was wasted. Trampled, even. There were glimpses - the lady that always attended court meetings and such but it felt just as restricting, if not even worse, then the current system we live in. And sorry, I don't care if that is supposed to be some literal expression or political statement - I wanted this system where women rule to be better than what we live in.
Like making a novel where the LGTB issues were... nonexistent. A society accepting of difference, of different religions and colours... if I want to see that society, I want to see it shine. There are other ways to make conflict in a book that seems "perfect". Or just so better than ours.
So this one element really bothered me (especially Lillian girl).
The relationship also did not dazzle me.
The prince left his reservations but, unlike in the previous book, stayed very true to the religion - and for good reason too.
Del had much more potential - or, his relationship with the prince had.
There was not as much "enemies". In the book before, it felt like it was them against the world and this set of characters were much more varied and fleshed out and had more space.
And I can see why the world was on a great level and the writing was also one of a professional writer - I just did not connect with it or the relationship and I know exactly why and how I would change so... the book is not for me.
But I know there are many who would love this.
Because this is fiction! I want to get things I/we don't have around here! And a matriarchal (the word was never mentioned but it's the closest term) society? Gimme!!!! I'd love that!!! But this was definitely not what was supposed to happen. That's a little too "realistic" way of it, for me.
Really, the way woman are supposed to be treated in this land, not just rules but the whole philosophy surrounding it - I would love seeing it in... well, a whole array of books. And maybe that was it - because in a gay romance, this whole aspect with so much potential was wasted. Trampled, even. There were glimpses - the lady that always attended court meetings and such but it felt just as restricting, if not even worse, then the current system we live in. And sorry, I don't care if that is supposed to be some literal expression or political statement - I wanted this system where women rule to be better than what we live in.
Like making a novel where the LGTB issues were... nonexistent. A society accepting of difference, of different religions and colours... if I want to see that society, I want to see it shine. There are other ways to make conflict in a book that seems "perfect". Or just so better than ours.
So this one element really bothered me (especially Lillian girl).
The relationship also did not dazzle me.
The prince left his reservations but, unlike in the previous book, stayed very true to the religion - and for good reason too.
Del had much more potential - or, his relationship with the prince had.
There was not as much "enemies". In the book before, it felt like it was them against the world and this set of characters were much more varied and fleshed out and had more space.
And I can see why the world was on a great level and the writing was also one of a professional writer - I just did not connect with it or the relationship and I know exactly why and how I would change so... the book is not for me.
But I know there are many who would love this.
do-not-read
April 24, 2021Sounds like crap. Shitty world building. See Ireyon’s review.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews