The Sin Eater’s Prince by Keta Diablo

Title: The Sin Eater’s Prince
Author: Keta Diablo
Publisher: Ravenous Romance
Buy the book: Publisher

Blurb:

Owen Rhys, the sin eater of his village in Wales, has been shunned by the local villagers his entire life–except by Andras Maddock, the local physician. In love with the one man he thinks will never return that love, Owen is shocked when Andras saves him from death at the hands of a vampire and admits he cares deeply for Owen. Dagan, son of Traherne, the vampire Andras killed to save Owen, will stop at nothing to avenge his father’s death and obtain the Prince of Wales’s mystic sword from Andras. The divine claymore holds the power to grant immunity from the sun’s harsh rays-the one exemption the dark Lords of the Underworld has sought for centuries. Star-crossed love, sorcery, and bloodlust collide on a vengeful path where only one side can remain victorious. Revenge and redemption Dark versus light Good versus evil The Sin Eater’s Prince

Review:

Every so often a book comes along that I take a strong dislike to. So while there are very few redeeming qualities about The Sin Eater’s Prince, it did evoke a strong reaction. Unfortunately it is a negative reaction to the poor writing, badly clichéd plot, flat characters that are seriously too stupid to live, and several moments where I literally threw the book. The biggest crime in my opinion is that the characters always took the weak, stupid way out to prolong the drama instead of using intelligence and ingenuity to solve problems. However this is just my opinion and apparently others enjoy this book and there is a pretty lushly descriptive setting employed. Other than that, I recommend skipping this offering.

The story is about paranormal being, Owen Rhys, who absorbs the sins of the dead and dying so they can go to heaven in peace. Hated and feared by his small town village, Owen is the quintessential outsider. Not helping matters is his attraction to the local doctor, Andras Maddock, who just happens to be a vampire. Andras saves Owen from a vampire attack by using a special sword one night which leads to a revenge plot against them by rival vampires. These rival vampires set the local town against Owen and Andras must race to save Owen against first the town then the other vampires.

The plot is heavily contrived as it relies on stupid actions and coincidences to carry the plotline forward. Part of this problem is that the paranormal aspects are ill described. The story seems to rely on exaggerations instead of subtly, which unfortunately don’t always work very well. The evil vampires are the oldest, most powerful in the universe – and described exactly like that – while they can read minds, alter time, walk invisibly, and turn into mythical creatures. Yet for all their phenomenal cosmic power, they persist on a somewhat ridiculous revenge scheme using Owen against Andras to get the historical, magic sword. It’s difficult to buy into the plot when these great creatures could end the problem anytime they wanted as dozens of uber powerful vampires would seem to be an adequate offensive against one man and a magical sword.

A similar issue arises when Owen is attacked by the world’s oldest and most powerful vampire and Andras manages to kill the vampire despite being a weakling half breed vampire. Supposedly Andras refuses to drink human blood which robs him of his natural vampire power. The explanation is that the magical sword is enough to aid Andras yet there are several scenes later when Andras has longer sword fights with less powerful vampires, barely winning. This particular exaggerated fight scene also comes on the heels of a largely foreshadowing comment, which practically guarantees Owen will be attacked but of course Owen ignores the warning. This is the first of many too stupid to live moments for Owen making him a thoroughly unlikable and uninteresting character. However the plot itself relies heavily on Owen’s poor choices and drags the drama out even when common sense and intelligence would solve the problems.

The characterization of Owen is problematic because the story relies so heavily on him constantly getting into trouble. Owen has several –way too many– martyr moments where he takes it upon himself to die or sacrifice himself for others. The first is for his ridiculous small town, which doesn’t like him or care about him, but Owen’s non-existent self esteem is such that he decides to let them kill him anyway. Why he does this is pretty questionable and doesn’t help Owen’s characterization except to show he has no pride in himself whatsoever and no real intelligence either. He is a walking cliché that allows himself to be put into danger several times while offering himself up each time to an evil, lying, powerful vampire in a “deal.” These kinds of clichés frankly drove me crazy while reading. Whenever Owen has a chance to be cunning or intelligent or sly, he always picks the weak sacrificial answer. This also isn’t helped by his almost instant love and sexual relationship with Andras. There is some question about Andras bound to protect Owen but other than mentioned once, this is dropped and the two are instantly in love. Their depth of feeling and supposed intensity feels artificial and forced without the accompanying action and emotion to make their connection real.

None of the characters are well developed and tend to be stereotypes. From the very typical evil villains to the townsfolk, and even the one rare supporter, none of the cast stands out as unique and terribly interesting. The villains all make classic evil mistakes such as explaining their plan or falling in love with Owen for no real reason. This ties into the completely ridiculous ending that involves more paranormal creatures and contradicts itself. The spell placed on Owen suddenly goes away with no explanation and the affects – rather severe – totally ignored in a huge, superpower laced ending. The setting itself is very classic historical with a witch-hunt atmosphere while adding in a wealth of foreign terms. Some of the descriptions are lush and evocative but lumber under wordy and overblown prose. Often the writing tries too hard such as in these examples:

Owen Rhys felt the inexplicable portent in his marrow and wondered if prophesizing death was an inherent curse of being a sin eater.

He didn’t dwell on the thought for long. The magnificent view from his summit obliterated the dismal musings from his mind.

The prose and dialogue just attempts to be more wordy than necessary and doesn’t add any additional texture or depth. Instead this makes reading slightly laborious. Unfortunately this story just fails to deliver on any level. The characters are unattractive with too many classic cliché antics while the dialogue and prose tends to be clumsy. The weak characterization, improbable and ridiculous plot combines with an incomplete world building and elements that don’t make sense nor are explained to any satisfaction. Even the romance aspect fails with weak chemistry and characters that offer little to each other. The setting does have some nice authentic touches and comes across as dark, dreary, and gray. So that at least is successful but ultimately I can’t recommend this book.