Smorgasbord Fantasia

Hide is the first adult horror foray by Kiersten White , to be released in May this year.  Kirsten White impressed me with her historical YA book series, " And I Darken " a couple of years back and so I jumped onto this one, her first adult book with supernatural horror elements. The premise was absolutely gob-smacking - an abandoned amusement park and fourteen contestants in a game of hide-and-seek. Except that if you are found, then it is game over. Like literally so :)  Anyways - first things first, was the book great and live up to the expectations? No. It didn't. It pains me to say so, because the premise and even the execution was terrific. But I just couldn't get to like the characters and so wasn't practically living in their heads, in all those moments of absolute terror as they find out the truth about this hide-and-seek game. And in such a horror themed novel, unless the lead is likeable (like a gritty, clever heroine) we typically don't tend to en...

I confess I have never read anything by Kiersten White - and this book, And I Darken that is the opening salvo into an alternate history epic, The Conqueror's Saga - was a complete surprise package for me. I picked this up on a whim - wherein I read that the book is a twist on the historical facts about Vlad the Impaler and the tyrannical rule of the Ottoman Empire. What if Vlad had been female? But as I read the sampler, I realized Kiersten digs much deeper than just alternating the gender of Vlad, building up an entire world around these characters that are nothing more than just side-notes in the annals of history. There is rich detail, vivid imagination and scrumptious world-building at hand as Kiersten peels off the layers from that age of history where women were relegated to the Harems and siblings killed each other for the throne, bringing us a well-thought picture of what could have been. The first book follows the life of Ladislav Dragwlya known as Lada, daugh...