The Henchmen of Zenda

by KJ Charles

May 15, 2018 · KJC Books

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The always-reliable K.J. Charles outdoes herself with The Henchmen of Zenda, a retelling of the 1894 pulp classic The Prisoner of Zenda from a secondary character’s point of view. It looks like a m/m romance, and to a certain degree it is, but it has a more unconventional ending than most romances (I’ll address that in more detail later). On the way to the ending there is swashbuckling, double and triple crossing, intrigue, a moat, a castle, smart women, and hot sex. What’s not to like?

Here’s the plot. There’s a lot of plot in this book. The names and the basic premise are from A Prisoner of Zenda.

The prince of Ruritania, Rudolf Elphberg (hereafter referred to as Rudolf E.) is a horrible person who commits his various crimes and misdemeanors in public. Everyone hates him. His half-brother Michael (a Duke) is a horrible person who commits his various crimes and misdemeanors in private. As the king ages, the country waits to hear which of the brothers will be made king. Michael hires henchmen to hang out with him and await developments. The book is narrated by one of the henchmen, Jasper, who is gay. While Michael sneers at Jasper, he also puts Jasper in charge of guarding Michael’s mistress, Antoinette, figuring that Jasper will be immune to her womanly wiles. We’ll get back to Jasper and Antoinette in a minute.

The king picks Rudolf E. to be the king. Michael concocts a plan to drug Rudolf E. in such a way that Rudolf E. will embarrass himself at the coronation. This, Michael believes, will lead to an uprising that will unseat Rudolf E., leaving the throne to Michael. However, when the henchmen go to follow up on the action, they discover that Rudolf E. is unconscious and has been replaced by a doppelganger named Rudolf Rassendyll (Rudolf R.). The henchmen take Rudolf E. back to Michael’s castle and lock him up while everyone tries to figure out how to handle the doppelganger who is now running around calling himself the King.

And now for a word from our double-crossers. In addition to preventing Michael’s half-brother from becoming king, Jasper is also supposed to stop Michael’s abused mistress Antoinette from running away from Michael, who has also stolen Antoinette’s baby daughter to hold as a hostage against Antoinette’s ‘good behavior.’ The baby is hidden with an unknown family in an unknown location.

However, Jasper has actually taken the job as a favor to Antoinette, who is known to Jasper (and henceforth to us) as ‘Toni.’ Jasper owes Toni a favor due to her helping him out some years ago. Toni wants to escape from Michael but first she has to find her daughter. Jasper’s job is to find the kid and get both Toni and her daughter out of the country.

But guess what! Toni is also working with Flavia, the fiancée of Rudolf E., to permanently replace Rudolf E. with Rudolf R. Then Flavia can marry Rudolf R. and use him as a puppet king under her rule. This means that Jasper is also working against Michael and Rudolph E. by helping Rudolf R. in the short term with plans to give Flavia full power in the long term.

AND, despite Michael’s explicit orders against sleeping with coworkers, Jasper is sleeping with a fellow mercenary, Rupert (thank goodness, not another Rudolf) von Hentzau. Hentzau has a whole different agenda, one that is known to no one. For all Jasper or we know, Hentzau is working against everyone in favor of making a king out of a potted plant. He’s an enigma.

All the moving pieces here work. The plotting is complicated enough to be fun but not so complicated that I couldn’t keep up with it. The characters are a lot of fun to spend time with, even evil Michael, except for when Michael is menacing Toni, in which case we simply loathe him with all our being. The sexual chemistry and the personality differences between Jasper and Hentzau are interesting and exciting. Toni’s outfits are to die for – literally, in the case of certain characters.

My favorite thing about this book was Jasper’s crass yet clever voice and his sardonic sense of humor. For instance (prepare for profane language):

My name is not Jasper Detchard. Obviously it is not. I had another name once, but I stained it at school with various crimes, culminating in a sufficiently serious indiscretion that my parents declined to give me the opportunity of being thrown out of a university too, and disposed of me via the Army and a posting to India. This suited me well, since England is too small for my fancy and too moralistic for my tastes. Unfortunately, the Army brought Englishness with it, and to cut a long and doubtless shocking story short, I was cashiered. I left the Army with a reputation for cheating at cards (justly earned), another for indulgence in the fuck that dare not speak its name (ditto), and a request from my family that I longer claim kinship with them. I did them that service, and named myself Detchard after the first time where I sucked a man off, and Jasper, because if one’s lot in life is to be a Victorian villain, one might as well play the game properly.

You should be able to gauge whether or not you’ll like the book based on this paragraph alone. Perhaps you think it’s too crass or you think it’s hilariously clever. This tone is pretty consistent throughout the book. I adored it.

As far as romance goes, this one is unusual in a way that I very much enjoyed. Jasper is older than Hentzau, has more sexual and worldly experience, and has a greater sense of his own mortality. Hentzau is bisexual but most of his previous sexual experiences have been with women. He is enthusiastic about everything – sex, fighting, travel, whatever. He probably takes delight in filling out tax forms, especially since he probably fills them out while drunk. He’s old enough that the age difference between him and Jasper isn’t creepy but young enough to have that “I’m immortal!” quality about him. It’s easy to picture them as a life-long couple.

If you are looking for a romance with a traditional HEA, this might not work for you. However, as an adventure story it’s great, and the HEA is fine if you are able to be a little bit flexible about what that means.