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ceeceewills23 's review for:
And I Darken
by Kiersten White
Okay, first of all, let's address the elephant in the room. I was under the impression that this was a gender-bent, Vlad the Impaler retelling/reimagining/what have you. There is one, very brief scene of people being impaled in this book that the main character witnesses. This is not portrayed as some life-altering moment for her, but merely just people who she does not know and couldn't care less about dying in some way or another. Basically, no indication is given that she will in the future adopt this as a method of killing people, thus making her "Lada the Impaler". Therefore, I feel cheated because I did not get what I came here for.
What I did get was the world's most boring and drawn out journey through teen angst, the miscommunication trope, and lots of violence for violence's sake. It took me F O R E V E R to make it through this book. I got 200 pages through it in my first attempt, then put it down for over a year before deciding to pick it up again on audiobook. However, even having the audiobook did not help, as I still struggled to get through the story and found several excuses to avoid continuing to listen.
In my opinion, the only thing this book had going for it was the potential deeper relationship between Lada and Radu. When they were together and bonded in their weird moments of camaraderie, it was like a bright moment in the dark sucking void that is the rest of this book. But then, inevitably, something would drive them away from each other again, and I'd be stuck wading through the mire once more. Most of the time, the wedge between them is caused by Mehmed, who I hate as a character and wish they would stop trying to save. Both of these characters could be so much more, and I know this is a series, so I can't expect all of the character development to occur in the first book. But it would've been nice if these two fantastic characters were at least moving in a more positive direction in regards to their views on one another.
I'm torn about continuing the series. If it were a duology, I wouldn't hesitate. But the fact that there is yet another book to get through where things could be as bad as they were in this one makes me not want to put myself through it. I just don't know if the resolution of the story is worth the journey to me after struggling so much with this first book.
What I did get was the world's most boring and drawn out journey through teen angst, the miscommunication trope, and lots of violence for violence's sake. It took me F O R E V E R to make it through this book. I got 200 pages through it in my first attempt, then put it down for over a year before deciding to pick it up again on audiobook. However, even having the audiobook did not help, as I still struggled to get through the story and found several excuses to avoid continuing to listen.
In my opinion, the only thing this book had going for it was the potential deeper relationship between Lada and Radu. When they were together and bonded in their weird moments of camaraderie, it was like a bright moment in the dark sucking void that is the rest of this book. But then, inevitably, something would drive them away from each other again, and I'd be stuck wading through the mire once more. Most of the time, the wedge between them is caused by Mehmed, who I hate as a character and wish they would stop trying to save. Both of these characters could be so much more, and I know this is a series, so I can't expect all of the character development to occur in the first book. But it would've been nice if these two fantastic characters were at least moving in a more positive direction in regards to their views on one another.
I'm torn about continuing the series. If it were a duology, I wouldn't hesitate. But the fact that there is yet another book to get through where things could be as bad as they were in this one makes me not want to put myself through it. I just don't know if the resolution of the story is worth the journey to me after struggling so much with this first book.