I am very happy to have been given the opportunity to read Kiersten White’s And I Darken, the first installment of her new Conqueror’s Saga series. This title will be published on June 28th of this year, and I’m super excited to be able to read it and give you all my opinion, before then!

What I’ve gotten from it so far, is that Ladislav is what White believes Vlad the Impaler would have been if he had been a woman! This is definitely a new spin on the story, and I’m really enjoying it so far.

Summary: NO ONE EXPECTS A PRINCESS TO BE BRUTAL. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.

Lada despises the Ottomans and bides her time, planning her vengeance for the day when she can return to Wallachia and claim her birthright. Radu longs only for a place where he feels safe. And when they meet Mehmed, the defiant and lonely son of the sultan, who’s expected to rule a nation, Radu feels that he’s made a true friend—and Lada wonders if she’s finally found someone worthy of her passion.

But Mehmed is heir to the very empire that Lada has sworn to fight against—and that Radu now considers home. Together, Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that strains the bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point.

The fact that I was born in Transylvania and that I grew up with Vlad the Impaler, also really drew me to this story. I feel as if I never see books around, which are set in Romania (current or historical), and I really appreciate the amount of detail which White has put into describing the landscapes of my homeland.

White’s depiction of the cities, villages, and landscapes of Transylvania, cast a spell which sends the reader back into historical Transylvania, and makes them feel as if the struggle of these people to resist the Ottoman empire and keep their culture in tact, is their own fight.

I have not yet finished this book due to having started an internship at a magazine, and I have been reading the submissions which are to be published in the next issue. But every time I have a bit of free time, I open my tablet and read a little more! I have no idea where this story is going, but it sure sounds promising!

If you think that you’ll enjoy this book as much as I am, you can pre-order it on Amazon.ca and Amazon.com (links provided below).

Pre-order on Amazon.ca: And I Darken
Pre-order on Amazon.com: And I Darken