My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow well, that was NOT what I was expecting at all.
This is a history retelling of Vlad the impaler (gender switched to Lada) along with the Sultan Muhamad and Radu (Lada's brother.) Lada grew up in a household where boys were treasured and girls were seen as useless. Lada strived to be vicious, fierce and cruel. She held her father, Vlad, in high esteem and despises Radu for being a weak cry baby, too petite and beautiful to be of any real use.
Their sibling bond is soon put to the test when their father trades them to the Ottoman Empire. There they meet Mehmed, the third son of the Sultan who changes their lives forever in terms of power and love.
And I Darken really was not what I expected. I thought Lada would be way more girly, Radu more princely, and Mehmed more upright. None of those things happen. Lada is a bad-ass bitch who is far more wicked and cruel than any female character I read about about hitherto. Props Kiersten White, props.
Radu was by far my favorite character. It seems that not a lot of people like him, but I loved that he he never fought with his fists, but rather with his mind.
Mehmed didn't really hold my interest. He was mostly important to me because of the way he affected Lada and Radu. He was the sun and his every move was his light or a shadow cast upon them, often times one for Lada and the other for Radu.
I am so incredibly impressed with Kiersten White's writing here. It was almost poetic, sometimes when she described our favorite characters' anguish. Especially Radu's deep-felt connection to Islam and his one-sided love. I had never seen it before in her other books, But White proves, without a doubt, that she is a master of prose and I cannot WAIT to get my hands on the next book.