And I Darken is a young adult historical fiction book about two young siblings of noble birth, a fierce and stoic girl called Lada and her gentle, lovable brother Radu who are made captives of the Ottoman Empire to ensure the allegiance of their country, Wallachia.

I loved the writing in this book and how well the setting was depicted and developed. I also loved the abundance of plot and the development of the main characters in this story.

Conversely, the characterisation was also an issue because inasmuch as the main characters were extremely well fleshed out, the other characters around them felt like plot devices with no real depth. Since the story is written in the third person omnipotent voice, I believe there was far more scope for characters like Lazar, Halil Pasha and Vlad Dracul to be developed far better than they were. I felt like they were very typical, very ominous and villainous characters.

Also I thought there was too many story arcs in this book alone and it made it feel like some arcs were more condensed and not explored to their potential i.e. Iskander Bey.

To it's credit though, even though there were cliches in this books, I think they were employed well in such a way that meant my overall enjoyment of this book was quite high so much so that all critique aside, I would definitely consider reading it again and continuing the series.