In a Nutshell: Ruthless anti-heroine * Epic alternate history * Loyalty and love
Epic and intense, this rich reimagining of Vlad the Impaler as a young woman will have fans of dark history hooked from the outset. Think Game of Thrones transported to the Ottoman Empire.
“Contrary and vicious” since birth, Lada has “a passionate, fierce glimmer that refused to hide or be dimmed”. Her younger brother, Radu, couldn't be more different. He's a delicate rose to her “spiky green weed”, a fury-filled fireball of a girl who, from youth, snarls that she's going to “kill infidels”. At the not-so-tender age of twelve, Lada experiences an exultant mountaintop epiphany that incites feverish devotion to Wallachia, her motherland. When their father, Prince Vlad Dracul, is forced to flee to the Ottoman sultan for help, the sultan takes Lada and Radu into his court, thus procuring Vlad’s loyalty. While Lada despites the empire that’s dragged down her beloved Wallachia, Radu feels at home here and converts to Islam. The siblings’ lives shift irrevocably, and are further complicated, when they meet Mehmed, the sultan’s son. While he becomes Lada’s ally, Mehmed is still heir to the empire she so furiously loathes and seeks to avenge…
With a plot that twists like a tangle of thorns, this first book in The Conqueror's Trilogy is an ambitious extravaganza of politicohistorical intrigue and conflicted characters, underpinned by the author’s desire to explore how people reach the point at which they rationalise extreme acts in the name of justice. Legions of readers will surely be left longing to know what Lada does next. ~ Joanne Owen
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