Synopsis:
She has no allies. No throne. All she has is what she’s always had: herself.
After failing to secure the Wallachian throne, Lada Dracul is out to punish anyone who dares to cross her blood-strewn path. Filled with a white-hot rage, she storms the countryside with her men, accompanied by her childhood friend Bogdan, terrorizing the land. But brute force isn’t getting Lada what she wants. And thinking of Mehmed brings little comfort to her thorny heart. There’s no time to wonder whether he still thinks about her, even loves her. She left him before he could leave her.
What Lada needs is her younger brother Radu’s subtlety and skill. But Mehmed has sent him to Constantinople—and it’s no diplomatic mission. Mehmed wants control of the city, and Radu has earned an unwanted place as a double-crossing spy behind enemy lines. Radu longs for his sister’s fierce confidence—but for the first time in his life, he rejects her unexpected plea for help. Torn between loyalties to faith, to the Ottomans, and to Mehmed, he knows he owes Lada nothing. If she dies, he could never forgive himself—but if he fails in Constantinople, will Mehmed ever forgive him?
As nations fall around them, the Dracul siblings must decide: what will they sacrifice to fulfill their destinies? Empires will topple, thrones will be won…and souls will be lost.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Me, serving my heart up to Kiersten White on a platter: please let Lada and Radu be happy in the final book PLEASE
This book hurt me. Oh, did this book hurt me. I already thought the events of And I Darken were painful, buT THEN THEY JUST GOT SO MUCH WORSE.
And it's not even just about what happened to the characters that hurts. It seeing the brutality of war. It was watching the siege on Constantinople play out. It was watching the greed of powerful people devour the weaker thousands. This can be a difficult book to stomach, dark in ways not many YA novels are willing to go. I like grimdark fantasy, and this reminds me of that.
Remember how I said I would die for Lada and Radu? I would commit murder for them now. I LOVE THEM. Lada and Radu were already so complex as children in And I Darken, but as they age and the books progress, they only get more complicated and morally gray. There were parts of this novel where I despised my sweet son Radu. Things that turned me against Lada in the first book made me adore her even more deeply in this one. That's a testament to how intricate and real White has made her characters: as easy to love as they are to hate, just like people in real life.
Mehmed, though? He can choke. This book made me fall so hard out of love with Mehmed that the whiplash nearly snapped my neck.
While I think this book came to a more white-knuckled on the last 100 pages conclusion than And I Darken did, Now I Rise does unfortunately suffer from second book syndrome. Y'know, where all the delicious twists you loved in the first book sloooooow down in favor of setting up one, BIG conclusion? And by doing that eliminate a lot of the little plot points that kept the tension in the first book? Now I Rise did manage to shake itself free of that about half-way through, but it still made the first 150-200 pages a bit of a slog to get through.
I also questioned how Lada came to feel so strongly for Hunyadi after only a month or two of knowing him. It took her YEARS to reach a similar level of love towards Mehmed and Radu in the first novel. It just felt a little out of place for her character.
Even though it took a bit too long to warm up, Now I Rise delivered an emotional climax and conclusion that hit infinitely harder than its predecessor. I loved it.
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