Review: The Virgin King by John Michael Curlovich (2020)

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Well, folks, I read The Virgin King and I would like to know what I just read. I started, then I stopped and looked up who the protagonists are supposed to be again, because the prologue set up one story and the first chapter set up a different one. 

The whole book is, like, 150 pages, and: 

• The King of Bulvania is a 19 year old monk who’s lived isolated on a mountain since he was 14.
• He makes friends with a 102 year old relative who was passed over for the throne because he was gay.
• His predecessor was (probably, definitely) murdered by the queen, her lover, and maybe also the Archbishop.
• The Queen, her lover, and the Archbishop are holy wow homophobic.
• The Royal Guard is extremely important, primarily because they have loads of gay orgies.
• Washington, DC is the gayest city in America (??? Is this true? I have never heard this and I’m from there.), and the State Department is the gayest department in the government (again ???? What is even happening here?), which is relevant solely because Logan is being forced to leave what is apparently gay nirvana. 
• Logan is primarily important because he has aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the sex aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the time with aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the men.
• Logan’s dad is low-key homophobic, and he’s been tapped by the Republican administration to be the ambassador to Bulvania, so he forces Logan to go with him. Because if he’s going to be miserable, he also wants Logan to be miserable. Alternatively, he wants Logan to settle down and be happy. IDK. 
• Logan makes friends with the Royal Guards. (You know what I’m saying.)
• The King wants to reform an isolated country, mired in tradition, with rampant homophobia, in, like, three months.
• The American Mission is probably the worst trained diplomatic corps in the history of diplomacy. 

Okay, also, the latent homophobia in this book is bananas, from Logan’s dad to the King believing he’s “deviant” to the queen and her cronies being righteously vitriolic. And Curlovich uses “gay” as a catchall for everything queer, which, I didn’t realize until I started reading this book, I have not heard for years. Furthermore, it’s written in such a way as to imply that all gay men are pretty much always DTF in wild, public orgies, as debauched as possible. I probably wouldn’t have minded this if it felt like this was just how Logan enjoyed pleasure, and how he sought out other like-minded souls. But that was just so not what was happening. So. Way to boil down the gay experience to some problematic stereotypes. 

Anyway.

This book would have benefited from some pretty serious development editing, considering that it tries to do about 50,000,000 things, and therefore does none of them particularly well. And if the story had been better developed, I might have been able to overlook the other editing errors, but it wasn’t, so I couldn’t. We only get the briefest glimpse of the King in the prologue, and then don’t hear anything from him until 30% into the book. I mean, Logan and the King don’t even meet (I kid you not:) until almost 60% of the way through the book, and even then, Logan refuses to have anything to do with the King because the King isn’t hot enough for him. What. Even. Is. That. 

I will summarize this book for you with this quote (and no, you don’t need additional background to understand it, this is just the essence of the whole book):

Their white trousers showed the bulges in their crotches perfectly, even stunningly. Hanging at the top of his pole, Logan had a furious erection.

I read this WTFery. You don’t have to. You’re welcome. 

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

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Buy Now: Amazon

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Looking for something similar, but maybe with less WTFery? (If you want WTFery, the buy link is right there.)

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