Posted on  20/08/2024 13:37:41

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF after a few chapters because this book is an offence!

If this story would have been written in a fictive world with fictive characters it would have possibly become one of my favourites. It seems to have a kick-ass heroine and an intriguing plot. But this story supposedly takes place in my own country and it is about my own historical and cultural heritage. Therefore I cannot condone it.

No author has the right to rewrite a piece of a nation’s history and twist it to match his/her own purposes regardless of how small or unknown that nation is.
Mrs Kiersten either writes in ignorance of the Romanian history due to lack of sufficient research for this book or thoroughly disrespects it.

I am not going into the fact that gender discrimination was not such a big problem for our people throughout history. It didn’t really matter if the baby was a girl or boy. Our people didn't care about that! I’m not even going to approach the description of Vlad Dracul, one of our most famous and respected rulers, who is yet again portrayed as a cruel monster. We’ll let this all pass and go straight to the plain facts from the first chapter.

Let’s check out the name of our heroine for instance:
““Ladislav” he declared. It was a feminine form of Vlad. Diminutive. Diminished.”- According to Mrs. Kiersten.
Google or Wikipedia themselves seem to contradict her even if she won’t take the Romanians by word:” Ladislav is a Czech variant of the Slavic name Vladislav. The female form of this name is Ladislava.”

But let us not dwell on it shall we?! We can go straight to the short form of LADA. Again let’s google or check in that famous Wikipedia available everywhere for cross references and study purposes:
“Folk etymology occasionally links Ladislav with the Slavic goddess Lada. Lada was one of the four gods worshipped in Poland (the others being Jassa, Kiy or Qui and Niya)”

Now here I thought we were talking about Wallahia not Poland, because if we aren’t then it’s a really confusing history. In our case, the name Lada should have no connection to the goddess because if it were, it wouldn’t be the diminutive or diminished form of Vlad the way Mrs. Kiersten wants it to be. Therefore it must be only the old Romanian/Wallachian word “lada” which actually translates with: “crate, box, footlocker, case”.

“I marry Lada forever and no other.” said Bogdan at some point. Now try reading it from the Romanian’s point of view: “I marry the crate forever and no other.” Seriously?!

OK. Let us not dwell on this either! Names are after all not that important. And yet I’d like to see the sane person who would name their child “Crate”.

“Her father was a powerless tyrant, cruel in his impotence and absent for months at a time. Her mother was every bit as absent, withdrawn and worthless in their home, incapable of doing anything to help herself. They were an apt representation of the entire region – particularly the nurse’s homeland of Wallachia.”

Now let me get this straight. It seems to me that Mrs Kiersten has just managed to call both one of the most famous rulers in our history as well as our entire country: powerless, impotent and worthless in one single paragraph! Now this is one of the things one cannot “not dwell on”! And this is not the only one.

It may have been appropriate for our lovely author to mention at the beginning of the book before the start of the story that the contents are fictive; that the characters are imagined and bear no resemblance whatsoever to the reality. But she didn’t; so the story is taken by a lot of people as fact.

And then, even if she had it wouldn't have worked as Mrs Kiersten has used too many names, places and events taken from our country’s history for all this to be considered fantasy. She completely blurred the line between fact and fiction and created a thorough and glorious mess.

I do not begrudge my friends who loved this book and rated it high, as setting and place may have had no particular importance to them. It may be a great story.
But I am a Romanian. That is my history, my cultural heritage and my people that Mrs. Kriesten so callously describes. Therefore I find it offensive and not even worth reading to the end!