Review: And I Darken by Kiersten White

I finished the audio book of And I Darken the other day, and it was pretty different to my usual reads, but I really loved it!

TL;DR Lada (a female Vlad the Impaler) is strong and feisty while her brother Radu is soft and gentle. They are taken from Wallachia and their father by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and grow up with his son Mehmed, who loves them both fiercely and selfishly. There are secret plots, assassination attempts, and just enough romance to balance all the stabbing!

I hadn’t heard of Kiersten White before And I Darken, but she is a New York Times bestselling author with a hugely popular trilogy, a duology and several standalones. After reading this, I’m definitely adding some of her other books to my wishlist!

And I Darken puts a fascinating spin on the original Vlad the Impaler/Dracula story, and I’m so excited to read the sequel, Now I Rise, which is due out this June! According to Kiersten’s blog, there will be three books in the series.

It’s going to be difficult to review this book without giving much away, as we all know some version of the Dracula story, so I’ll try to keep it brief!

Lada is the firstborn child of the Prince of Wallachia, who initially dismisses her for being female, but as she grows and becomes more feisty and spirited he soon realises that she, rather than her gentler and softer brother, Radu, is the heir he hoped for.

‘If Lada was the spiky green weed that sprouted in the midst of a drought-cracked riverbed, Radu was the delicate, sweet rose that wilted in anything less that the perfect conditions.’

When they are still only young, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire demands that the Prince hand Lada and Radu over to him, as a sort of tithe. They grow up in the Ottoman courts, alongside the Sultan’s youngest son, Mehmed. With two older and stronger brothers, he is a spare to the throne, and is ignored by his father who takes no interest in him. The three soon form a water-tight bond that strengthens as they grow older.

Lada: “If anyone is going to kill you, it will be me. Understand?”
Radu nodded, snuggling into her shoulder. “Will you protect me?
“Until the day I kill you.” She jabbed a finger into his side, where he was most ticklish, and he squealed with pained laughter.’

News soon reaches court that both of Mehmed’s brothers have been killed, and that the Sultan wishes to retire, leaving Mehmed to take the throne. Young, inexperienced and untested, Mehmed does not have his subjects’ respect, so his father decides to come out of retirement until Mehmed is ready.

Years later, the three are in their late teens, and have begun to drift apart. Lada trains with the soldiers and hopes to join them one day, despite being a girl. She is a formidable fighter and is well respected by most of the men – again, despite being a girl.

“She would never be the best Janissary, because she would never be a Janissary. She could never be powerful on her own, because she would always be a woman.”

Radu has become popular among the courtiers due to his natural charm and good looks, and is close with the sons of some of the highest ranking officials. Mehmed has now been groomed for his role as sultan, and as a result has spent a lot of time away from court and his friends, but on his return things change dramatically for all three.

Radu: “You have both been so busy learning tactics and studying battles, you have failed to see the truth of where thrones are won and lost. It is in the gossip, the words and letters passed in dark corners, the shadow alliances and the secret payments. You think I am worthless? I can do things you could never dream of.”

THEMES

One of the biggest themes throughout And I Darken is power. Lada visualises power as threads strung between people, showing who receives their power from whom. She understands from a young age that as a girl in a man’s world she has no power, so she must take it by force.

“Lada had a sense for power–the fine threads that connected everyone around her, the way those threads could be pulled, tightened, wrapped around someone until they cut off the blood supply.
Or snapped entirely.”

There’s a great scene where Lada is invited to tea by the Sultan’s harem, including Mehmed’s mother, Huma. Huma is not like Lada’s own mother – weak and cowed – she is proud and manipulative, and she advises Lada that women can have power, but they must be willing to sacrifice something in order to gain it.

“So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power?”

Huma opted to give up her freedom in order to gain the power granted to the wife of the sultan. She gives Lada another option than violence and aggression, but will Lada take Huma’s advice?

Another big theme in the book is religion. It’s presented in a very open-minded way, from the strongly differing perspectives of Lada and Radu. They are both initially raised as Christians in Wallachia, but the Ottomans are Muslim and Radu soon discovers that Islam speaks to him in a way that Christianity failed to do. This angers Lada, as she refuses to accept any of the customs of the people who stole her from her country of birth, which she refers to as her mother.

Lada: “I love Wallachia. It belongs to me, and I belong to it. It is my country, and it should always be mine, and I hate any king or sultan or god or prophet that proclaims anyone else has any right to it.”

There are also themes of love, family, sexuality (Radu is gay, as are several secondary characters) and of course gender. I am really excited to see how the story develops in the next two books, and how Lada being a female will change the Vlad the Impaler story.

SUMMARY

I gave And I Darken 5 stars because it is a really interesting concept, and so well executed. The main characters are all three dimensional, they have flaws and complex personalities that made me love them one minute and hate them the next – sometimes both at once!

There actually isn’t all that much action in the book, it’s definitely character driven, but personally I didn’t feel like that took away from the story. I was fascinated by the dynamic between Lada, Radu and Mehmed, and the historical setting of the Ottoman Empire was well researched and beautifully described. The romance element was down-played, and I wouldn’t describe it as a love triangle so much as a polygon!

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction with a twist, fantasy that doesn’t feature magic or mythical creatures, and books with incredible female characters and a healthy dose of diversity.

Have you read And I Darken? What did you think? If you’ve read any of Kiersten’s other books please give me your recs in the comments!

Lyndsey

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Review: The Muse by Jessie Burton

I just finished listening to the audiobook of The Muse by Jessie Burton, and thought I’d do a little (read: long) review. Read on, my friends…

TL;DR it’s an interesting culture clash between a Trinidadian girl in Sixties London and an English girl in Thirties rural Spain. Key themes include art, war, love and death.

I bought The Muse in the Audible sale after Christmas. It was 99p and had good reviews on Goodreads, so I thought I’d give it a chance. I’d never read any Jessie Burton previously, but I’d heard a lot of buzz around The Miniaturist and The Muse.

The Muse is a Sunday Times Number One Bestseller, and The Miniaturist is a million-copy selling bestseller too, so I knew I was in good hands.

Split between two POVs and two very different settings, the novel focuses on Odelle, a woman in her mid-twenties from Trinidad who has been living in London for the past five years, working in a shoe shop and sharing a flat with her best friend Cynthia. Cynth is now getting married and moving in with her new husband, leaving Odelle alone.

Odelle dreams of being a writer, so when she is invited for a week’s trial as a typist at the Skelton art gallery she jumps at the chance. There she meets the enigmatic Marjorie Quick, co-director of the gallery and a woman with many secrets. She immediately takes Odelle under her wing, encouraging her writing aspirations and taking her into her confidence.

“I thought I deserved them, the sort of people you found only in novels. Quick.”

Odelle meets a boy at Cynth’s wedding whose mother has recently passed away leaving him a painting. This painting leads us into the second part of the story – Arazuelo, a small rural village in Spain, not far from Malaga, on the cusp of the Spanish Civil War.

Harold Schloss, an Austrian art dealer, Sarah, his beautiful English wife who suffers from depression, and Olive, their artistic and naive daughter, are renting a finca on the outskirts of the village. On their arrival, the mysterious Isaac and Teresa Robles turn up, ostensibly to work at the finca as groundskeeper and maid. Isaac is also an aspiring artist, and an active Republican.

“A Depressive?’
‘Smiles in ballrooms, weeps in bedrooms. Ill in her head.’ Olive tapped her temple. ‘And here.’ She touched her heart.”

Nineteen-year-old Olive has been accepted to a prestigious art school in London, unbeknown to her parents, who don’t seem to recognise her talent or worth.

She instantly falls for the exotic and distant Isaac, using him as inspiration to paint some of her best works (I believe he is the eponymous muse). When Sarah commissions Isaac to paint a portrait of her as a gift for Harold, Olive insists on being in the painting too, jumping at the chance to spend more time with Isaac.

I won’t say any more about the plot, for fear of completely spoiling you! Suffice it to say, the origins of the painting and how the events of 1936 effect the story in 1967 are revealed to devastating effect.

There is a strong theme of foreignness that permeates the whole book – Odelle is constantly seen as foreign by strangers who comment on her ‘good English’ because of her accent and the colour of her skin. Harold, Olive’s father, left Austria because of the First World War, and the Schlosses emigrate to Spain in search of a more peaceful, relaxing way of life as a balm for Sarah’s mental health issues. Having listened to the audiobook on Audible, the various accents and voices used by Cathy Tyson really brought the book to life, possibly emphasising the different languages and cultures, especially when Odelle and Cynthia speak to each other in their distinctive Caribbean patois.

The book also has strong feminist undertones. It’s clear that Olive is expected to marry like her peers back in England, and that being an artist is not considered a suitable life for a girl. In fact, Harold all but says out loud that women are not as talented or creative as men. Olive is defiant, but in a quiet, subtle way. She doesn’t want to leave her family, so she ignores the letter from Slade School of Fine Art, following her passion in secret by painting in her bedroom when everyone is asleep. Her works are considered far superior to Isaac’s, and she is humble and modest, uninterested in money or fame.

“As far as Olive saw it, this connection of masculinity with creativity had been conjured from the air and been enforced, legitimised and monetised by enough people for whom such a state of affairs was convenient … ”

Sarah and Marjorie are both stylish, modern women, wearing trousers and having their own money and careers in a time when women had less freedoms than today. Odelle is a brave, independent woman – moving across the world to England in search of opportunity.

Other themes that are woven through the book include war – Odelle’s father was in the RAF and died in the Second World War, Harold was displaced from Austria by the First World War, and the devastating events of the Spanish Civil War are seen in fine detail in the book. Love vs. infatuation also features, as well as death.

I enjoyed The Muse, it took a while to get into but once the story got going I was intrigued and wanted to keep listening. There was one particular twist towards the end that had me saying ‘Oh my God!’ out loud.

The backdrop of the civil unrest in Spain in the Thirties, with the hindsight of the war to come, gave the sections set in Arazuelo a real sense of urgency and tension. The mystery of how Marjorie Quick ties into the whole story of the painting kept me hooked until the very end.

I’m giving The Muse 3.5 stars, it’s not my usual genre or taste, but I definitely enjoyed it. I wasn’t as fully absorbed as I’d hoped, but the narrative that Burton has created is detailed and layered, and she has clearly researched her settings thoroughly.

I found the ending slightly frustrating. Whilst most of our questions are answered, not all of them are and Burton even has Odelle address these, expressing her own frustration that she couldn’t get to the bottom of it all. I know this is more realistic than getting an explanation for every little thing, but it left me feeling every so slightly unsatisfied.

Trigger warnings

I’m never quite sure what can act as a trigger so I’ll stick to the main ones, and if anyone can educate me in the comments it would be appreciated!

There are a few instances of suicide in the book, linked to depression and mental health issues, as well as terminal illness. They are briefly mentioned in passing rather than described in detail. There is also a lengthy scene of torture, more mental than physical, which is quite harrowing.

Take care, readers!

Have you read The Muse? Let me know what you thought in the comments!

Have you read The Miniaturist? Would you recommend it?

Lyndsey