And I Darken

And I Darken, Kiersten White – 2016

A little while ago, the incomparable @thebookfox, greatest of booksellers and guardian of the written word, sent me a consignment of books that I'd requested. A couple of these have already made an appearance, while others will no doubt be fluttering their pages around the corner of this blog pretty soon. Amongst such treasures as I had requested, however, was a proof-copy of Kiersten White's And I Darken, which I had never heard of before and that @thebookfox, in her wisdom, thought I might like.

And I Darken concerns the children of Vlad Dracul, the dark, violent, vicious child Lada, and her little brother, the beautiful, gentle and completely helpless Radu, who find themselves held hostage by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, to ensure their father's loyalty. Lada chafes at her captivity, desiring nothing more than to return to her beloved native Wallachia, while Radu discovers the beauty of Edirne Court and of the Islamic faith practised there. Most importantly, at Edirne, they meet Mehmed, the young son of the Sultan, who becomes initially their closest friend, until both find themselves in love with him. Both are horrified: Radu due to his unawareness of homosexuality as anything but a sin and his awareness that Mehmed cannot reciprocate his love, and Lada because she has already arrived at the conclusion that emotions, particularity love and affection, will only weaken her. When Mehmed's father abdicates, the three are plunged still further into a web of intrigue and danger and pitted against Halil Pasha, the treacherous advisor, while Lada and Radu, aware of each other's feelings, try to hide their love of him from Mehmed. He, meanwhile, comes to rely evermore on their loyalty and ingenuity and while he remains entirely unaware of Radu's yearning, his own desire for Lada soon becomes apparent.

Right from the start, themes of femininity and masculinity, and what it means to be female or male, run through the heart of the book. Early on, in Lada and Radu's parents, we see embodied the very stereotypical dichotomy of the male as powerful and female as weak: in the very first sentence Vlad Dracul's 'heavy brow descended like a storm'1, while their mother, Vasilissa's 'tiny frame trembled'2. Almost immediately, these obvious tropes are subverted by the younger generation. As a very young child, Lada has 'arched brows that made her look perpetually cross'3, is fond of biting people and is 'contrary and vicious and the meanest child the nurse had ever cared for'4. Radu in contrast has 'eyes framed by thick lashes, his lips full, his gentle curls kissed with a hint of Saxon gold'. From this obvious role-reversal, White builds complexity, as Lada, who from birth has associated femininity with powerlessness and done everything to be as masculine as possible, is confronted by the Sultan's harem, in particular Huma, Mehmed's mother and ruler of the harem, who moves 'with a sensuous grace that terrified Lada'5. Huma explains her perspective, that in exchange for being a possession of the Sultan and unable to ever leave the harem, there are great benefits, in the following paragraph:

'There are many ways to be powerful. There is power in stillness, there is power in watching, waiting, saying the right thing at the right time to the right person. There is power in being a woman – oh yes, power in these bodies you gaze upon with derision.” Hama ran one hand down her ample breasts, over her stomach, and rested it on her hip. “When you have something someone else wants, there is always an element of power'6.

Though he does not hear her speech, it is Radu who embraces this side of power, of secrecy and manipulation – and it is worth noting that he is not bound by the restrictions that he would face as a woman – while Lada responds very simply that such power 'can be taken from you'7 and continues all of her military training, in an attempt to gain power that she is not reliant on anyone else for. Thus her eventual rejection of simply becoming Mehmed's wife, instead ending the novel by preparing to re-take the only mother she has ever recognised: the land of Wallachia itself.

If any on this sounds rather on-the-nose, White's characterisation more than makes up for it. The evolution from caricature to nuanced character is beautifully done in Radu and Lada, while Mehmed's progression lonely child to passionate, capable Sultan is excellently intertwined with their development. The supporting characters are memorable, from their various hapless tutors to Lada's sparring partners, and the scheming Halil Pasha is allowed the dignity of a man trying to do what he feels to be best, without veering into moustache-twirling territory. A particular mention must go to Kumal, whose kindness, understanding and generosity to Radu seem almost unreal at moments, yet because White simply asks us to believe in him, we do.

The depiction of Islam within the text is lovely as well, shown mostly through Radu's eyes as initially both alien and beautiful, though White never falls back on cheaply exoticising the religion, and as we progress we see the comfort and security that his new-found faith gives Radu.

There are a couple of minor issues, which should be mentioned. To be extraordinarily picky, I would suggest that the title is a bit of a misnomer; Lada starts the book pretty aggressive and violent, and although she is forced into making decisions that seem cold or heartless to other characters, there is no sense of her actually becoming evil. This is especially so given that, during an early exchange between Lada and Radu, Lada first states that 'If anyone is going to kill you, it will be me'8 and when Radu asks her if she will protect him, she responds 'Until the day I kill you'.9 Given these lines and the title, I had assumed this would be foreshadowing a very dark end indeed, although I suppose that given this is only the first in a planned trilogy, it might still happen.
Two rather more serious issues present themselves, one of which White seems aware of. In her Author's Note to the book, she admits she has 'taken massive liberties...particularly changing Vlad the Impaler to Lada the Impaler'10. The problem is that it is not made clear within the text that this is what she is doing; even towards the end, when Lada is returning as ruler to her own land, there are no impaling references specific to her, beyond her closing statement of 'I am the dragon'11. Unless we are already aware that Vlad the Impaler's father was also called Vlad Dracul, we simply assume that White is taking even greater liberties and portraying the legendary impaler as 'so worthlessly, weakly human'12 at the beginning of the novel.


There is also the issue of the connotations that the name 'Dracul' or, lets be real here, 'Dracula' have taken on. Obviously, this book concerns the historical Vlad Dracul, rather than the most famous vampire in all media, but attempting a heavily fictionalised retelling of a historical person, who is already completely obscured by modern mythology is always going to be mired in associations and expectations. Given the 'massive liberties' being taken anyway, it may have been simpler to just write a purely fictional tale of Lada and Radu, without invoking the Dracul name and all of its modern day significance.

And I Darken is an excellent YA novel, with a compelling, if not always likeable, pair of protagonists and an interesting if slightly meandering plot, and as we leave Lada, at the end of the first part of the trilogy, standing on the border of her land, proclaiming that she is 'the dragon' I will be interested to see where Kiersten White takes her next.

Link to Penguin's page for And I Darken, from which the book can be purchased: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1108889/and-i-darken/

1 White, Kiersten. And I Darken, Corgi Books, Penguin Random House, 2016 pp. 1
2 pp. 11
3 pp. 5
4 pp.6
5 pp. 179
6 pp. 184
7 pp. 184
8 pp. 59
9 pp. 59
10 Author's Note to And I Darken, pp. 484
11 pp. 475

12 pp. 460