A TALE FOR EVERYONE WHO’S EVER FALLEN FOR THE VILLAIN…
When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series.
She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.
So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.
This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both 'brilliant' (Holly Black) and 'supremely satisfying' (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.
I was gifted an advance copy of this book by the publisher.
The blurb for Long Live Evil made me so excited to read it. It's the dream of every bookworm to be dropped right into their favourite fantasy world, and the possibilities for the plot are endless.
Which is why I was a little disappointed when I finished this one and didn't love it. I think the difficulty lay in the fact that to make this work, the reader has to be prepared to come into a new fantasy world halfway through a story, and pick up the pieces and map them all together themselves. It was a bit of a stretch for me, so it wasn't one I ended up really connecting with.
Rating: ✫✫✫
My Thoughts
The premise of Long Live Evil did it for me. Straight away, we meet Rae, whose health is slowly and surely deteriorating, even at a young age. She finds herself presented with two options:
1) Remain and continue with her life, in hospital.
2) Enter her favourite fantasy world, but have to continue as the character she is deemed 'most like'.
Unsurprisingly, Rae chooses option 2, but finds herself landed as the villain of the story. Exciting, right?!
BUT... there were a few problems that hindered my enjoyment quite a lot.
The first was just the mechanics of the idea. Rae immediately knows who she has become, and at what point of the plot she has landed in. Unfortunately, as readers, we know absolutely nothing. I spent just as much time trying to piece together the plot as I did actually enjoying the book. It was much harder work than I was expecting it to be, which was a shame. I feel like this idea would have worked really well with a retelling that everyone is already familiar with, such as a fairytale retelling. With something brand new and as intricate as a fantasy story, it was just too much of a stretch for me.
In a similar vein, I felt like Rae was very difficult to get to know as a character, and we don't really get a chance to connect with her before she becomes her villain self - and at that point, there's a second personality she's inhabiting to try and understand. I never really found that I could connect with her after her transition, and it was a bit of a lost cause all round for me.
It's a shame, because it was such a great idea, and there was a lot of humour in it. It's satirical and witty, and such a great twist on a villain origin story, or fantasy narrative. It just left a bit too much for me to do. I found I really had to work to be able to enjoy the book. As with any fantasy story, there's a lot of action, a lot of characters, and a lot of knowledge to understand the nuances of the story. There was a bit too much for me to do.
There's a lot to like about it, but it didn't really hit the mark for me.
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