And I Darken by Kiersten White

TL;DR Vlad the Impaler but as a girl

TBR #1332, added Jul 18, 2015

finished 1/13/17

I ended up liking this a lot more than I expected. I'd been pretty interested in the book beforehand, but this is definitely one of the more enjoyable books I've read in a while. (For comparison: the last book I rated 5 stars on Goodreads was Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine on October 20th.)

The first thing that drew me in was definitely the narration. I think the majority of YA books have first-person narration, especially when the MC is a girl, so the third-person narration was a nice break in that. It also allowed for focusing on multiple events happening concurrently or with different characters. Radu's influence on the story was crucial to me and I definitely enjoyed being able to focus on more than one character over the course of the book.

I also liked seeing how Lada and Radu differed even though they had (mostly) the same upbringing. The book starts with Lada's birth so we get to see their character growth over the course of their lives and how they adapt to what happens. There were a lot of nuances that were interesting to think about - especially the decision to diverge from history and make Lada a girl.

I think part of the reason I enjoyed this so much is because the plot felt very character-driven even though so much was out of their control. They had to be a lot more reactive than they were proactive but I was still very invested in what was going on. I also have very little background knowledge in what historically happened (other than a quick check on Wikipedia halfway through my read) so it was more like speculative-fiction than historical-fiction. If that makes sense.

(Side note: the love triangle was also interesting. I'd like to see more of this type, of the MC(s) competing instead of being competed over.)

I read this just before I read The Gathering Storm, and surprisingly they do have a little bit of common ground in terms of history. Reading And I Darken first definitely helped me have some more background knowledge and understanding than I would've had otherwise.

TL;DR I liked this a lot even despite not usually liking historical fiction, and I'm looking forward to continuing with the series.

CWs: war / death / injuries / blood, abuse / neglect from parental figures