There are moment’s when I realize that hardest reviews to write are the four stars. Because the fondness over the book that I have is there, but there is no way I could rave about it. It’s complicated really. Here I go, I’m going to spurt out anything and everything I have to say about it.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Author: Kiersten White
TWs: violence, physical abuse, mentioned rape (women & men), memory of sexual assault
Goodreads Link to book here
Rating: 4.5/5
Now I Rise by Kiersten White is a stunning sequel to And I Darken. Following Lada Dracul, Vlad the Impaler in an alternate universe where he would have been born a woman, and Radu her brother in an epic story of war. Lada will stop at nothing but becoming crown prince of her home Wallachia fighting and killing whoever steps in her way. Radu on the other hand lives the path following religion and endlessly pining over Mehmed, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who does not reciprocate the feelings yet Radu still will always be at his side.
Okay now that the formalities of that are out of the way lets get started.
Characters:
Lada
I love my brutal wife. All I want is her to achieve her dreams, is that too much to ask? Lada is a character I first fell in love with because of her crooked nose, but now with every action, no matter how brutal, I cherish her more and more. I do have a few problems when she constantly demeans other woman for not being “strong” but in this book *spoiler* when she goes to her mother and talks to her she comes to a bigger realization that to be strong comes in more ways than she knows.
She is such a badass female character, wanting nothing but to succeed without needing a man to hand it over to her thinking her weak. And she starts to support other women in this book and wants to give them the world WHICH I LOVE. WOMEN SUPPORTING WOMEN THANK YOU SO MUCH.
Radu
I try so much. I want to adore Radu with all my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I love and want Radu to be happy and to be a happy gay. BUT, every choice he makes kills me slowly. He is utterly in love with Mehmed causing him to make some choices that hurt him which make me 
protective but at the same time make me scream at him to just run from Mehmed.
In the first book we didn’t get much development out of him, but here HE HAS A QUEER SQUAD AND I LIVE FOR THEIR CHAPTERS. They are just so queer, it’s one of my favorite things. Especially Nazira who I ADORE. She is an angel who happened to have blessed the book. She is exactly what the first book ignored, a smart and powerful woman who is soft and caring. I love her so much and her interactions with Radu.
Mehmed: I despise him with all my heart. 
That’s all I have to say about him. ————->
Nazira : I STAN. I adore my lesbian queen so much.
Plot/Prose:
This book definitely is better than the first one, but the only problem I really had was I started skimming. And when I start skimming that just means I am bored. There was a good 100 to 150 pages of nothing. It felt like the plot lost it’s way and even the political part of it couldn’t interest me which is usually the part that grabs on to me the most.
I couldn’t force myself to focus even if I wanted to which led to me skimming. Even the writing was just becoming an endless agony, it didn’t improve until something actually happened.
The writing was okay, there was nothing that hopped out to me that made me breathless but at the same time I have nothing bad to say about it.
At the end of it all, I really did enjoy the book even with through the skimming. Definitely looking forward to read the next book of the saga!
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