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karinapplesauce 's review for:
And I Darken
by Kiersten White
3.5-4 stars. I haven't quite decided.
This has been languishing on my to-read list for more than a year, and I finally bit the bullet and picked it up. I really didn’t have any idea of what to expect because I didn’t remember what about the description had grabbed me in the first place. I’m glad I picked it up.
Maybe I’m a total idiot, but I absolutely didn’t get that this was a retelling or faux-history until Mehmed mentioned Constantinople, because hey, that’s a real city. Then I googled Edirne, which is also a real city, and I was surprised to find that it was West (not East, like I assumed) of Constantinople, watched a video on how the Ottomans conquered the surrounding areas until finally Constantinople fell. Oh, Mehmed was a real person? So was Radu. That left...Lada, but it says here that Radu was sent to the Ottomans with his brother Vlad, not a sister a sister named Ladislav. Oh. OH. The whole book premise is reimagining Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) as a woman. WELL THAT’S INTERESTING. Good thing I was drawn to the book besides what should obviously have drawn me. So there’s a public service for those who might be as dense as me.
Lada is a dark and twisted, and I related a lot to her. This made me a little uncomfortable once I figured out that she’s actually Vlad Tepes, but you know.
The military campaigns and plots didn’t exactly interest me, but the love triangle did. And I hate love triangles. But love triangles involving siblings? Yes. That was interesting. So...since a large chunk of the novel involved politics, it got a little slow in the middle.
This has been languishing on my to-read list for more than a year, and I finally bit the bullet and picked it up. I really didn’t have any idea of what to expect because I didn’t remember what about the description had grabbed me in the first place. I’m glad I picked it up.
Maybe I’m a total idiot, but I absolutely didn’t get that this was a retelling or faux-history until Mehmed mentioned Constantinople, because hey, that’s a real city. Then I googled Edirne, which is also a real city, and I was surprised to find that it was West (not East, like I assumed) of Constantinople, watched a video on how the Ottomans conquered the surrounding areas until finally Constantinople fell. Oh, Mehmed was a real person? So was Radu. That left...Lada, but it says here that Radu was sent to the Ottomans with his brother Vlad, not a sister a sister named Ladislav. Oh. OH. The whole book premise is reimagining Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) as a woman. WELL THAT’S INTERESTING. Good thing I was drawn to the book besides what should obviously have drawn me. So there’s a public service for those who might be as dense as me.
Lada is a dark and twisted, and I related a lot to her. This made me a little uncomfortable once I figured out that she’s actually Vlad Tepes, but you know.
The military campaigns and plots didn’t exactly interest me, but the love triangle did. And I hate love triangles. But love triangles involving siblings? Yes. That was interesting. So...since a large chunk of the novel involved politics, it got a little slow in the middle.