And I Darken, Kiersten White, Penguin Random House, ISBN: 9780552573740
BRUTAL, gritty and utterly compelling are a few words that can aptly summarise the fantastic tale created by Kiersten White.
The book, as she describes in her notes, is fictional history. She has taken strong historical figures, Vlad the Impaler and Mehmed the Conqueror, during the height of the Ottoman empire and blended them seamlessly into her novel.
White has also reimagined Vlad as a female, renaming her, Lada. Her brother, Radu, also takes up one of the protagonist roles.
It felt strange to be reading a fantasy without any hint of magic or the otherworldly. Strange, but oddly welcoming. In a market that is saturated with youthful characters coming to grips with their unbridled powers while facing off against a monster king, this hefty book boldly sets itself apart in more ways than one.
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Lada and Radu are loathed by their father and are easily pawned off to the Sultan to keep control of his throne in Wallachia and to ensure his compliance.
The siblings, while not particularly close, only have each other and would go to the ends of the earth to protect one another. This is put to the test time and time again as they are forced to live and try survive in enemy territory.
The subject matter is gruesome in parts but relevant to the story, character growth and plot development. White refuses to shy away from religion and the atrocities carried out in the name thereof.
It may be a bit of a slow starter, but the action scenes will have your flipping through the pages, the characters are vibrant enough to keep you glued to the page and each character’s story arch, only seems to expand as the end of the book arrives. What does White have in store for Lada, Radu and Mehmed?
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