The Conqueror's Saga by Kiersten White is a gut wrenching, gritty, raw series, without equal and miles above anything masquerading as historical fiction in the teen/YA genre. It is extraordinary and powerful and I sit here, still reeling, days after I'd devoured this, the last book.

I find myself fiercely missing sweet Radu and his loving kindness, and Lada's ferocious and compelling grip on every mind that contemplates her. I'm not faking; I seriously wept. By the end of the book I didn't think I could feel more things. I still ache. This review is like the garbled nonsense of what happens to a heart when the source of every good, bad and in between thing it has been provoked into feeling has suddenly upped and gone.

This series is uncompromising and unparalleled, and I struggle to find more words to say any more than what I already have. It is probably subconscious despair, because I cannot begin to imagine what I can read in the wake of these books.

The Conqueror's Saga is a must read for anyone who wants to give fluff a hearty time-out in order to indulge in the bloody power struggles of some pretty potent, messy and violent, unfailingly poignant character arcs.