And I Darken by Kiersten White
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