✨ jami ✨'s Reviews > Bright We Burn

Claim the Throne. Demand the Crown. Rule the World.

I fucking adore this series so much. Sometimes a series just comes along and blows you away, it forces you to fall in love with the characters, invest in their lives and eagerly await each new chapter with bated breath because you're so nervous and concerned for all the characters. Those series are literally the best and this series is one of those series.

If you asked me why I love it so much I would tell you this: I love it for it's impeccable character development. I love it for pushing characters to their absolute limits and showing up people who are simultaneously loveable and loathsome. I love it for it's excellent exploration of character dynamics. I love it for it's exploration of history that felt historical enough to be informative but alternative enough to be fun. I love it for representing queer Muslim characters and exploring misogyny and the commodification of women, especially in times of war. I love, a lot of things about this series. And it sure has become one of my favourites of all time.

But if I had to pinpoint just one thing I love the most it's the character workKiersten White is writing this epic historical retelling but shes concerned with people. Although she sets this series with the backdrop of the Ottoman Empires conquests of Europe and the fight for Wallachian Independence, most of it is about how these things effect people, and how people interact with losing their identities and their countries, losing their friends and their family, losing their agency and losing their childhood. Trust me, there's plenty of war, death, blood and bodies, but the core and the soul of this series is in it's characters. The individual characters, and their interactions with eachother, drive this book and for readers who love character driven stories like me that is ideal.

Who was she? She was the dragon. Her country had teeth and claws and fire, and she would use every last bit of them.

🔪 LADA

My relationship with Lada is complicated. I liked her a lot in the first book and disliked her a lot in the second. But in this third one I loved her, the most. Kiersten White stretches her character to it's absolute limits. She's always been an anti-heroine and in Bright We Burn she precariously leans on the edge of anti-heroine and straight up villain. That slight, slight inclination she has, where you know she could just go either way, kept this SO, so interesting. But the thing is, despite everything Lada did, I pitied her so much. This is a girl who's country has been systematically destroyed by an uncaring empire, who's own father betrayed her, who was stripped of her identity, grew up surrounded by enemies and who had to fight tooth and nail for every piece of recognition she got because no one was willing to give her anything. You have to admire her audacity, and the sheer determination that drove her actions throughout this book especially. Ultimately I felt enormous sympathy for her character despite knowing some things she did were Objectively Bad and I think that is a testament to Kiersten White's truly well constructed character construction.

🌻 RADU

I adore Radu and I always have, and I always will. What I love most about him is that his character growth is so consistent but the change in his character is so stark. His character development goes along this trajectory where you can see how he's changing and it's so logical and well written, but when you take a step back and look at the big picture you're really so blown away by how he went from this naive, obsessed and kind of weak character to a strong diplomat and respected figure and turned all that pain and turmoil into kindness. I am the hugest sucker for nice characters and Radu is the Ultimate Nice Character. Radu's arc around understanding that he deserves to be treated well and that he is allowed to forgive himself for some things just really was a lot for me. I just loved it a lot.

MEHMED/RADU/LADA

This three way friendship/relationship triangle has been consistently fascinating to me throughout this whole series and the payoff here is insanely good. With these three there is a weird dependency but it's mixed in with so much resentment. Like, none of them can live without eachother, but all of them can't let eachother live. The building of the tension leading up to their inevitable showdown kept me hanging onto every single word. And I loved how White created that inevitability, like there was no way any of this could end except with the three of them dealing with all their shit. The ending (THAT EPILOGUE) was .. absolutely perfect. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Honestly lets just stay on relationships for a minute because I got a few to talk about:

➢ RADU AND LADA:

“Do you think it was him that came between us? Or were we destined to end up on opposite sides?” Lada felt an unfamiliar heaviness behind her eyes.
“We had to survive. We just figured out different ways to do it.”

I have always loved the relationship between these two. Lada being both protective and disdainful of Radu is interesting, and that tension that exists wherein Lada perceives Radu as abandoning his identity, and Radu perceives Lada as unable to accept change and recognise defeat is so interesting. Their sibling relationship kills me and the fact that the two of them are so intimately connected even though they hate it is FASCINATING.

➢ MEHMED AND LADA:
These two are SO interesting and while there wasn't as much of them as And I Darken it was still enough to keep me happy. The epilogue, again, killed me. I love that Mehmed and Lada recognises eachother as equals whilst detesting the other is their equal. And the admiration for eachother behind opposite enemy lines created such an interesting dynamic.

➢ RADU AND CYPRIAN AND NAZIRA AND FATIMA ... Kiersten White really gave the gays everything they ever wanted with THIS pair up. First off, Nazira and Fatima are sapphic queens who deserve the world. The sheer wholesomeness of their relationship is enough to five star this book alone. Radu and Cyprian are similarly adorable and I'm not gonna lie, their scenes were so soft I wanted to sob. Radu and Nazira are iconic "we're platonically in love" soulmates and second in iconic-ness only to Aled and Frances from Radio Silence who are my children. I love Radu and Nazira's friendship so much and any scene of them teasing eachother and having eachothers back just made me .. so emo. I love them so much.

There was something to be said for having his heart broken so many times. Broken things healed thicker and stronger than they were before. Assuming one survived long enough to heal.

god I could genuinely just talk about this series forever and ever. I love it that much. I've never really fallen in love with historical fiction before, in fact only three times, with The Infernal Devices, The Diviners, and then this. And I Darken is much more of a straight historical fiction, while it reads like fantasy sometimes (another thing I love) it's not got any magic or anything and that isn't something I genuinely go for but I LOVE it so much. Kiersten White thought about everything, the character construction is just incredibly good, the characters are brutal and hard and unbelievably cruel to eachother at times, but there is also so much hope and goodness and happiness in these pages too.

My expectations for this were INSANELY high, because I had it hyped up to me a lot but it actually still managed to exceed my expectations. I feel like, genuinely, every singe word was in the right place here. Kiersten White had her vision and she executed it flawlessly and because of that I will always hold this series in such high regard.

Farewell for now to Lada and Radu and Mehmed and Nazira and Fatima and Cyprian! We went through a lot together folks but I'm sure I will be back for a reread soon. I cannot believe I am so whipped for this series but really, I would die for these murder stabby children without hesitation.