“So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power?”

After all the hype, I finally decided to dive into this book, expecting to love it immediatly and to devour it. I don't know if I came in expecting too much, but I was kinda disappointed in this novel. It's not bad, far from it, but it just didn't live up to my expectations. I loved the historical context and how it explored Vlad Dracul's story/mythology and the era of the Bizantin Empire in different way and the way White developed her characters, but I had some major problems with the pace of this book. It started out strong, with lots of twists and turns and we get to know our main characters and how their dynamics evolve overtime, but somewhere after the first third, it felt like the book was lacking a direction and the characters didn't have a goal. It dragged sometimes and it took me a while to finally get on with it. Towards the end, the pace increased again, with more action, intrigues and twists that ended the novel on a high note and left me curious to persue the sequel, just to see where our characters will go from there and how they'll deal with the consequences of this first novel.

Kiersten White's strenght is definitely the characters - each one is complex, layered and realistic and she has amazing development arcs for each of them. We're discovering new aspects of their personalities all the time and it's what kept me reading. Lada is by far my favorite character - she's strong and intelligent (although nobody gives her the due value for it because of the society she lives in), sometimes cruel and harsh, but she is sometimes insecure and protective of those she loves. She struggles being a woman on this man's world and to find her place. Her arc is powerful and her development through the novel is amazing. Mahmed is a ambiguous character for me - I sometimes loved him for how driven he is, how he cares about his people and strives to be a good ruler and soldier, and how interesting his dynamics is with Lada and Radu (it's a kind of co-dependence that it's lifting and damaging at the same time), but sometimes I just wanted to slap him for how he uses women (and people in general) and how he manipulates others to his own end.
I didn't care much for Radu. He started out as annoying, selfish, dramatic and overall this whiny character. Later on, he learned to use his qualities to his gains and play the political games to help Mahmed's agenda, and he started to become more interesting. Still, he seemed to ressent everyone their happiness, especially when he realized he couldn't have the thing he wanted the most. I couldn't connect with him at all, but his character had an interesting development and I liked how his and Lada's personalities compliment each other.

Like I said, I plan to continue on with the series to see where our main trio will end up and how they'll deal with what happened at the end of this first novel, and I hope the writing will pick up the pace later on so it'll end on a high note and not just a 'eh, it was ok but not great', like I felt after reading this one.