Lost Prince

Lost Prince
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Borderlands Press
ISBN: 978-1-880325-98-8
Fiction, Historical Horror
Reviewed by Shannon Frost

In the year 1564, the Church rules Spain as much as the throne, and they do so by fear through the Inquisition. A woman accused of heresy and witchcraft, curses King Alonzo II with her remaining strength as she’s being led to the stake to burn, allowing all her hatred for the injustice committed against her and the pain of the torture she’s suffered at the hands of the Inquisition, to mark all innocents of his line so that they should suffer. Nineteen years later, Don Rolon, the Infante Real, recognized heir to the throne, begins to feel the effects of the curse every month on the night of the full moon. On those nights, his memory of his actions leave him, he awakes in the morning with scratches and bruises, his clothing ripped to shreds, feeling exhausted as though he’s run for miles. Those mornings following the full moon, bodies are often discovered, their flesh mauled as if by a wolf.
With only the help of his dwarf jester, Lugantes and his valet, Ciro, Don Rolon struggles to understand his curse. As matters at the royal court worsen, he must also endure his father, who’d rather see Don Rolon’s half brother, Gil del Rey, in the place of heir. When his only ally at Court is burned for heresy and the Inquisitor General, the Dominican Monk Padre Juan Murador, sets his suspicions on Don Rolon as being influenced by the Devil, Don Rolon must prepare to face a force far more deadly and frightening than the curse that afflicts him.
Acclaimed for her renowned novels of the Count Saint-Germain, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro diverges from vampires to another creature of dark fascination, the werewolf, in Lost Prince. The attention to historical detail in this work is stunning. The characters, how they speak and interact, court life, the Church, methods of interrogation by the Inquisition, are all flawlessly created and recreated. Of the characters, though Don Rolon may be the main focus, it is Lugantes who commands the reader’s attention in every scene he enters. His wit and bravery make him more of a heroic figure than the somber Don Rolon. When the priests begin extolling their beliefs, their twisted zealotry in the righteousness of burning supposed witches carries the weightiness of a true text of the period such as the Malleus Maleficarum, making for an even more authentic feel to the story. It is because of this close attention to historical accuracy that Lost Prince is that much more dark since while the characters are fictitious, the events are based in truth from that black period in European and Christian history when thousands of people were tortured and burned as heretics and witches. By the time the book hits Part III titled The Inquisitor General, the intrigue is rolling to a point where it’s difficult to put down.
Lost Prince is truly a worthy read. It’s dark and haunting, making it a horror novel in the finest, not only for the supernatural workings, but for the inhumanity it explores.