{"id":996,"date":"2017-04-17T13:33:20","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T17:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=996"},"modified":"2017-06-13T18:18:18","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T22:18:18","slug":"the-eclectic-prince-by-caspar-vega-a-short-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/17\/the-eclectic-prince-by-caspar-vega-a-short-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eclectic Prince by Caspar Vega &#8211; A Short Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back on March 14<sup>th<\/sup> 2017 I reviewed favorably Mr. Vega\u2019s novella <a href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/14\/the-pink-beetle-a-short-book-review\/\">\u201cThe Pink Beetle\u201d<\/a>.\u00a0 That was the third installment of his \u201cThe Young Men in Pain Quartet Book Series.\u201d\u00a0 The Eclectic Prince is the first installment but the grouping is only thematic and not sequential so you may sample in any order.\u00a0 As I noted in my earlier book review, Mr. Vega has a very distinct writing style.\u00a0 He makes sudden transitions and violent plot shifts.\u00a0 His characters are not introspective but very impulsive and action oriented.\u00a0 The plot progresses rapidly but rarely linearly.<\/p>\n<p>The first piece of information to convey is that this is an adult book.\u00a0 There is a fair amount of sexual content that would be entirely inappropriate for even teenagers (in my opinion).\u00a0 And there are some situations that are fairly disturbing from the point of view of conventional social mores.<\/p>\n<p>Now for some personal information as a point of reference on my taste in books.\u00a0 Full disclosure, I\u2019m not typically a consumer of dark fiction.\u00a0 I mostly inhabit the sunnier climes of story-telling.\u00a0 I will indulge in something like Red Dragon or Silence of the Lambs if it\u2019s very well written but it\u2019s not my usual fare.<\/p>\n<p>The Eclectic Prince is relatively dark.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t any good guys to cheer.\u00a0 The protagonist at various times indulges in violent assault of a stranger and murder of a family friend.\u00a0 And there are even darker doings that I will not mention so as not to spoil the story.\u00a0 Suffice it to say he\u2019s not such a nice guy.\u00a0 And he\u2019s not even justified in the sense that he\u2019s getting revenge on someone who committed a terrible wrong against him.\u00a0 He\u2019s just a sociopath.<\/p>\n<p>The outline of the story is episodic and consists of different vignettes that are tied together by the fantasy mechanism that underlines the story.\u00a0 This mechanism isn\u2019t entirely clear from the text and this vagueness adds to the seeming randomness of the plot.<\/p>\n<p>Let me sum it up.\u00a0 It\u2019s a dark disturbing story of an unsympathetic protagonist, a kind of story that I would not typically choose to read.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s well written, original and engaging in a transgressive way.\u00a0 Once again Mr. Vega is in the tradition of a noir type story with a fantasy framework to remove the bizarre story from the realm of reality. \u00a0This allows some justification for suspending a very heavy bias against such a disagreeable protagonist.\u00a0 For those who seek out this type of story I can wholeheartedly recommend it.\u00a0 It is not for the faint of heart.<\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t decided whether to delve deeper into his quartet.\u00a0 This type of story is, as I stated above, not my typical choice.\u00a0 But maybe when I\u2019m in a darker mood I\u2019ll venture in again for another dose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back on March 14th 2017 I reviewed favorably Mr. Vega\u2019s novella \u201cThe Pink Beetle\u201d.\u00a0 That was the third installment of his \u201cThe Young Men in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,237,4,242],"tags":[68,142,141,44,59],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-book-review","tag-caspar-vega","tag-gab","tag-sci-fi","tag-urban-fantasy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - 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