I really liked this book. I loved the premise - the idea that after coming back to life again and again, the prophesied one would decide to stop saving the world and go become the evil guy that defeated them every time, and I think that in Davi, Django Wexler has created the perfect protagonist to carry it out. She's died over two hundred times. She has just about enough recollection of her old life on Earth to throw in pop culture references and figures of speech that absolutely baffle everyone around her, but they learn to roll with it. She smashed an old guy's head on a rock and then stole his wizard robes. She doesn't entirely know what she's doing but she does it with confidence, and despite her aspirations to the title of Dark Lord she's not really going in for the excessive murdering and torture brand of Dark Lording, which the people she recruits seem to appreciate. She is, in a word, iconic.

One of the things that I really loved about this book was that even though how Davi got to a different world is definitely a big question, her primary focus is on the world she's in now. She is committed to the narrative that she is in even if she doesn't understand why she's there and is doing the exact opposite of what she is supposed to be doing. And she has fun with it! After all, what's the worst that can happen, death? Her approach to Dark Lording makes for a highly entertaining story, and through it, the mystery of her presence in this magical world also begins to develop. I'm really looking forward to the sequel, and I have no doubt it will be just as enjoyable as this.

First, I would like to say thanks to NetGalley for giving me early access to this book prior to release. All opinions on this book are my own.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is the first instalment to Django Wexler’s new duology. We follow Davi, a young (I think Millennial) woman, who is tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord. She has tried hundreds of times but the time loop always seems to get her in the end, she is defeated every time. Now she is done being the hero and done with the stupid endless time loop - if the Dark Lord always wins then that’s who she is going to become. If you can’t beat them become them.

I’m not going to lie I was drawn into requesting this novel based on the title (I know I’m sorry) however I have read from Django before through his Burningblade and Silvereye series and fell in love with his quick whit and dark humour. So when I heard about this Groundhog Day tale, I knew I had to have it and I have to say it did not disappoint.

This book really knows how to do (dark) humour and do it well, it will have you laughing out loud throughout.

Davi as a main character is brilliant. She is sarcastic, bad mouthed and Horny AF (her thirst is real and cannot be quenched) but you can’t help routing for her as she cares for her horde and her heart is in the right place.

This book has footnotes and as much as I would normally hate them don’t let them put you off as they were needed here - for someone who has died close to 250 times how else would they share their sarcastic wisdom and pop culture references.

I liked how this book felt like a mix of old and new because of those pop culture references, I know many don’t like them and it will age a novel but I feel like in this fantasy novel specifically it works as I don’t think we are given a set timeframe or country where it takes place. So it doesn’t feel like it’s before or after it’s time in anyway and defo made the story in places.

My few critiques are that the last part of the book felt a little messy and hard to follow in places, especially the fight/trial scenes, but the story overall was still enjoyable. Also the amount of characters sometimes got a little confusing on who was who especially as I went to listening to the audiobook.

But other than that I would highly recommend this hilarious fast paced novel it was fab and can’t wait for book 2!

Dnf at 70%

I believe that this is a book that will work best in audio.

The premise I loved. A hero who’s had enough and decided to become the villain. The trouble with me is I don’t think the humour in this book is for me

There were sections that felt a bit repetitive. The MC Davi goes to get a band or orcs. She fails. Does it again and again until she succeeds. Then she starts on her journey but once again she needs more minions and the process just repeats itself.

Davi as a character got old pretty quick. She’s snarky (and always horny?!) but after reading a few chapters like it I got fed up.

I think my issue is I expected more. Not just things happening to resolve but the characters being clever and persuading, using wits instead of brawn to get what she wanted. It seemed we’ve been travelling toward the same goal for ages and age but getting no closer.

Also the chapter are way to long. 60% through and I was only in chapter 6. This didn’t help my enjoyment at all.

I believe this book has a market it just wasn’t a market for me

1 ⭐️

very different to my usual reads! I found some of the story overly long-winded, however overall enjoyed the story and the characters.

Our main character has been stuck in a time loop for hundreds of lives, transported to a magical world and apparently the prophesied saviour, she's failed time and time again dying in a multitude of ways at the hands of various dark lords.

Well, she's had enough... Upon waking up at the start (yet again) she if she can't beat the dark lord she will become one. The concept of 'How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying" is a humorous one and had me smiling on multiple occasions, It definitely is filled with pop culture references and doesn't take itself too seriously, often poking fun a "overdone" fantasy tropes.

I had a few issues with this tale, overall I found the chapters themselves to be rather long winded and often found myself turning the pages to see how many more pages could be in the chapter. In addition the footnotes whilst funny and adding to the text, were clumsy often pulling me out of the text. Considering the to the point, sarcastic tone of the writing I honestly don't see why these extra bits of information had to be via footnotes.

Davi’s got attitude. But so would you if you’d done this over 230 times before and it ended with you being skewered or dissected or [insert your favourite manner of death here]. Every. Single. Time.

This time Davi’s trying something different. If you can’t beat them, become them?

“Hello, my friends! I am the next Dark Lord! Will you join me?”

I’m a big fan of time loops so I loved watching Davi try and fail over and over until she didn’t.

What I’m not a big fan of are books where the characters walk for a very long time, arrive at a destination, stay there for a bit for some action/drama, then walk some more. This meant there were entire chapters where, no matter who I met or what happened, my brain was on an ‘are we there yet?’ loop. My brain came back online once everyone stopped walking.

When I first read the blurb and decided that this was the book for me, I didn’t realise it was the first in a duology. This means you’re not getting all of the answers at the end of this book, or really any of the big ones. I enjoyed the end enough to want to keep reading, though.

I’m usually all for footnotes in novels and I was here too for a while. I continued to read them but they didn’t scream Bonus Content as much as I’d hoped.

What this book did scream was that the female main character was written by a man. I’m all for characters embracing their sexuality but Davi’s hypersexuality ended up making her feel more like a caricature than someone I could relate to.

Although the world literally revolves around Davi, I didn’t love her. Who I did love was Droff, a stone-eater who enjoys nothing more than counting.

I’m pretty sure I’ll end up being there for the second book. I’m hoping for more answers, less walking and more conversations with Droff.

Content warnings include death by suicide, self harm and mention of sexual assault.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Orbit, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.

DNF 40% in

This is fun but the oversexualization is absurd. It's like Artemis by Andy Weir but even worse. Wexler has a weird fixation on women's sexuality and it gives me the ick. It's present in all the books I've read from him to some degree but this is the worst so far.

Davi is the chosen one. She has been the chosen one for dozens of lifes and close to a thousand years. She is sick of being the chosen one, enough is enough this time around she is going to be the Dark Lord.

In this fast dark comedy Davi is transported from our earth and stuck in a timeloop. In an Isekai style manner Davi forced to save a fantasy style world over and over again. When she decides to become the Dark Lord she sets out on an adventure to recruite minions from the beastlike Wilders and reach the convocation where Dark Lords are chosen.

The book is a fun satirical take on the chose one trope. It is written quite accessibly. I must admit though that I found the book a little too much on the nose. Think American style stand up more than Terry Pratchett. Lots of crass remarks about sex, blatant violence and a little toilet humor. It tried very hard to be clever and ended up missing the point of satire completely. I also noticed that whilest writing from a female perspective the writer basically ended up writing a guy in a female body. The main characters obsession with sex, was probably meant as female empowerment but ended up as a caricature of Samantha from Sex and the City.

All in all I liked the overarching story. I'm intrigued by the mystery of the timeloop. I liked the character interactions. During the book the main character grew on me. I really really disliked the writing though. Will I continue the series? That's a maybe.

Recommended if you like: Isekai, American style humor, fantasy satire, easy reads

Avoid if: you love Terry Pratchett, looking for something insightful, can't handle (a lot) of swearing, dislike cringy sex scenes (think furries), and probably if you are a female


Thank to Netgalley and Orbit for providing me with an E-ARC

Davi is not having a good life, what with being captured and tortured to death by a not-at-all-sexy snake lady. But it’s okay: there’ll be another one (life) along in a minute. Davi is somehow (a) in some weird fantasy world and (b) stuck in a time loop. Every time she comes to a sticky end she wakes up again in the same pond, naked, right back at the start of her efforts to Save the Kingdome (TM).

We join her on life 200-odds, meaning she has spent hundreds if not thousands of years trying every variation on things that she can think of. And you know what? Davi’s had *enough*! After failure upon failure, maybe it’s time to be on the winning side for once – and if that means becoming the damn Dark Lord herself, so effin’ be it!!!

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is such a great title, and to be honest I was worried it couldn’t live up to it. But oh, does it! Absolutely brim-full of snark (and violence and sex) and humour, and footnotes a-plenty, we get Davi’s narration as she tries to live this lifetime a lot differently.

After such a long time, she’s a little fuzzy on the details of her ‘real’ life back on Earth, and we the reader don’t get too much detail on her centuries as the Kingdom’s would-be saviour against the Wildings. Instead we’re thrown into the quest to lead a horde of minions to the ‘Convocation’ that chooses the new Dark Lord. It’s fast-paced, huge amounts of fun, and utterly, utterly filthy – be warned, or enticed as suits 😉 Personally, I thought there was a lot of relatability in Davi’s don’t-care attitude, after everything she’s been through, and it’s great that she’s embracing the fun side of life after death after life after… well indeed – fun rather than wallowing in any self-pity.

This is my first exposure to Django Wexer’s work, and I loved it. I’m doubly disappointed, then, to read the afterword that says this is his first attempt at humorous writing – so while I might try some of his earlier work, I think I’d need to expect something a lot more straight-laced. The second disappointment is that this book ends on a natural pause point, but very clearly with ‘part 2’ of the story to tell. It’s a duology, and I need book 2 NOW, please?! Alas, no sign of when that might be due, but fingers crossed it’s not too long.

So overall I absolutely recommend this although only for those who don’t go a funny colour at the mention of s-e-x (with sexy orcs and fox-people, no less!) and a highly irreverent attitude to violence. But if you’re okay with that, come and have fun trying to take over the world!

This was such a entertaining and action-packed story that had me hooked from the very first page. I'm an absolutely sucker for a story where our main character is from a different world/universe and is thrown into the unexpected.

Davi was a fascinating character who is sick and tired of always being defeated. She has a large amount of knowledge from her numerous attempts and she uses that to her advantage. She's the perfect imperfect character who swears and talks about sex quite a bit but I found that just made her the perfect main character for this type of book.

I liked seeing Davi try and adapt into her new role as a Dark Lord to be. She's so used to being the hero that it was actually really fun to watch her step into this role. I think the premise of this one is brilliant as it's so rare to see a story from the villain's perspective. My only issue was at times Davi was sometimes too full of herself and it really took away from the story. Another thing was the incredibly long chapters which is definitely a personal thing. I can't stop mid chapter and it sometimes made me feel like it dragged a bit. Also while it didn't bother me there are a few pop culture references which sometimes can take you out of the fantasy setting.

Overall this was a fun and unique fantasy that I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm intrigued to see what happens in the next one!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Weird, but in a good way! I definitely haven’t read anything like it before and loved the world building, the different different magical beings, and how the magic works in this world. It’s incredibly creative and lively throughout, and watching Davi’s adventures was somewhat horrifying and fascinating. She’s as ruthless as anyone who has died hundreds of times may be, more so with the knowledge that everything lasts only as long as her current life does. She’s messy, chaotic and flying by the seat of her pants for the most part but she’s also brave, clever, and pretty weird. She makes for an interesting main character but I also liked the side characters in the story, Droff being particularly amusing! It was difficult to know where things were going to go, even more so towards the end, and I wasn’t expecting this to be the first in a duology but I’d be interested to see where the second book takes the story.

I found the book started off really slow, and I had struggle sticking with it, but as Davi progressed further in her quest, faced more challenges and against overwhelming odds, experienced many successes, I became more invested in the story and finding out whether Davi would secure a horde and become the Dark Lord (and die trying).

I received a free copy of this book. All views are my own.

The Book’s Basics

Title: How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying

Author: Django Wexler

Series: Yes, duology

Genre: Fantasy, Comedy

Length: 448

Initial Reaction: I loved the concept and some of the execution, but it could have been much shorter.

Star Rating: 3/5

Date Published: 23/05/2024

I received a galley of this book from NetGalley without charge in exchange for an honest review. 

Summary

Davi has found herself in a fantasy world where when she dies she wakes up in the same spot and an elderly man tells her about her prophecy to save the Kingdom from the Dark Lord. In this sense, the “Kingdom” is made up of humans and they are fighting against the Wilders. After 1000 years of being unsuccessful, Davi decides to take matters into her own hands and sets out to become the Dark Lord. 

Along the way, she encounters Wilders which include orcs, a variety of animal-people, stone people, and others. Davi needs to gather a horde and promote generals to help get her to the convocation to become the Dark Lord. 

Because she dies and “resets” at the same point in time everytime, she uses this to her advantage and presents herself as being able to see the future.

Because this is the first time she has attempted siding with the Wilders, she doesn’t really know what to expect or what will happen, which keeps her on her toes, especially as she becomes more invested in the people around her and the progress that she’s making.

Who would I recommend this book to?

I think this book would particularly interest people who enjoy playing video games. The idea of “save scumming”, or saving a game and going back to the save point to then try again, is familiar and relatable. There are also a lot of references to games. It reminded me of Dragon Age in that there are overall objectives and fights, but also a personal level and you can have relationships with the other characters. 

I requested this book to review because it had been compared to “The Six Deaths of the Saint” by Alix E. Harrow, which is my favourite short story. The fantasy realm and time loop connect them, but other than that they’re very different in tone. If you enjoyed this short story you might still enjoy How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, but just be aware that they’re very different reading experiences.

I’m going to go into more detail below, but the pacing was slow for me, primarily because of the footnotes. The footnotes are often related to thoughts or contemporary cultural references, which some people might enjoy. For me though, there were way too many (sometimes multiple on a single page).

Side Note

Davi is at least 1000 years old and has lived hundreds of lives, but there are times where she mistreats people and uses them more as tools than as real people to form relationships with. On one hand, I understand that this could happen as her life and the relationships she forges don’t feel permanent. Even if they’re sometimes morally questionable, it mostly fits with her character.

However, there are people she uses and disregards as real people with real motivations. With her vast experience of how people think and work, I was surprised that she wasn’t more proactive in maintaining relationships to at least forward her cause.

It didn’t make sense for her characterization for me and felt like it was used for plot development.

Writer Craft Notes

I am an unpublished writer, but I would like to be published some day, so when I read a book I am trying to be more aware of the author’s craft and what I can learn from them.

A main thing I believe this book suffered from was the pacing. This was largely because of the number of footnotes. A lot of these were to further characterization and I felt I got a good understanding of the character. A lot of the footnotes were pretty funny as well. But for me, they slowed the pacing down too much. 

It also brought up questions about who was speaking through the footnotes - the Davi as the narrator or Wexler as the author. As the story progressed, it felt more and more like Wexler’s voice was coming through as there were so many pop culture references that Davi, being 1000 years old and living for 20ish years on Earth before waking up in the Kingdom, shouldn’t have really remembered about. Davi even references that she can’t really remember much about her past life on Earth after there being near-constant footnotes supposedly referencing her past life on Earth. In detail. 

This felt like it was meant for the reader to get a kick out of and make Davi more relatable, but I feel it could have been done in a different way. Especially as she references that she can’t remember much from her first life. It could even have been as simple as “for some magical reason, I can remember my first Earthling life clearly, like the death reset refreshes my memories from that life.” 

The footnotes themselves took me out of the story as I physically had to look at the bottom of the page to read the footnote and then go back up to find my spot. But then they made me think more about why they were there which ended up removing me further from the story. 

I think what I’ve learned is that footnotes can be a great tool in writing, including in fiction which I haven’t seen often, but that it is best to use them carefully and to ensure that they support the story and characters while also not slowing down the pacing too much.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is certainly a book of two halves and this has made writing a review quite difficult for me.

The story revolves around our protagonist Davi who has been transported from Earth and now finds herself living, dying and living again in a fantasy world where she is the chosen one sent forth to lead humanity in it's fight against the evil Dark Lord and their horde of Wilders (various anthropomorphic creatures and all sorts of monsters). Tired of dying over and over just to be sent back to the start (think a fantasy Groundhog Day) Davi decides to try being the Dark Lord and we follow her on her campaign to raising her own army.

Django Wexler has created an interesting world that plays on various fantasy tropes, a fire land, a huge jungle, a blizzard hit mountain pass, all recognisable from fantasy games, film and literature but they never seem boring due to the authors descriptive world building and prose. Living in that world are some fantastic characters. Tsav, a female orc and Mari, a female fox person (wilder) are the standout characters for me with great personality and character arcs.

The story itself moves along at a fast pace and never becomes too complicated or outstays it's welcome in any of it's various locations. As the story progresses it shows a good mix of action, set pieces and character building.

My main problem is that for the first half of the book our main character Davi is insufferable, I disliked her to the point of nearly DNF'ing the book though I'm glad I continued reading. Davi is horny to the point of it being a bit creepy and her constant pop culture references are so heavy handed that they pulled me out of the world every time. Around halfway through the book Davi's constant thirst is toned down considerably and for me the book drastically improved due to this, in the second half of the book her character arc becomes quite interesting with some problems and moral choices to overcome, this part of the book was fantastic with several characters really coming into their own.

Another trait of Davi's that I didn't care for was the constant F bombs, I'm not offended by it but when a sentence contains 3 or 4 F words it just becomes tiresome and the word fails to carry any weight at all.

A smaller annoyance I had with this book was the amount of footnotes, I'll be honest, I got to the point where I just ignored them.

Overall I thought the first half of the book was ok and the second half was great, I give it 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this one, as I find fantasy often leans heavily into the darker side. And while this is certainly unserious and lighthearted, I think it missed the mark for me in terms of characterisation and plot. Davi is a very jarring main character - not particularly likeable and full of confidence to the point of irritation. They constantly break the fourth wall, making quips and put downs but at no point did I feel endeared to the character. I also hate pop culture references in books, as I think it really takes me out of the story. Davi uses these references constantly, and it just felt like too much, too try hard for me.

The plot overall is fine, with Davi repeating a groundhog style situation for over 1000 years to the point where they've gu en up on bring good and turned to the 'dark side'. And I also liked the side characters too, as they allowed a bit of warmth to come out of David's personality and make them more likeable. However overall I just couldn't get past the constant 'quirky' writing style.

Since I am the shallowest person ever, I requested this book only for its title. I tried another book by this author some time ago and things didn’t go really well (so much so, that I did not finish the book), so I should have been maybe a tad more cautious, but as soon as I read this title I fell in love with it and I had to read it. It was simple like that. And I am so so happy to have done it!

With this book, it was love at first sight. Not only because I fell in love with the title, but because as soon as I started reading it, I was madly, deeply, truly in love with it. And to me, this book can do no wrong. Sure, there are some things that aren’t maybe so great, and when I started it I didn’t understand that this was the first of a series and not a standalone so when we reached the end I was quite surprised (and, to be honest, usually this kind of ending didn’t make me exactly happy, even if it is at least an ending, of sort. But this time I didn’t mind it at all. I had so much fun with this book that I honestly do not care!). Also, keep in mind that this is a comic-fantasy book and humor does not work the same for everyone. That said, I’ll try with a bullet list of things that I loved, to keep things a tad less confusing (the alternative is just reading me trying to find new ways to say “wow, this was brilliant! Go read it!”):

1)Footnotes. We have footnotes here! And they are perfect!! They are always on point. Funny. And amazing. And I love footnotes.

2)The humor. It perfectly matches everything that works for me.

3)It is irreverent. It is snarky. It is mouthy. It is bad-mouthed. It is slighting. And it is the most adult book I have read in ages. Both in all the best ways and the worst. Okay, not really the worst worst.
And I think that this is what made me fall so deeply for this one. And it is not about the sex (we have some of it in there, but it’s not on scene and I have to say that I appreciated this a lot too) but it is about the attitude toward sex, for example. And the attitude toward life in general. It is like Ricky Gervais but more joyous.

4)Davi. And this is strongly linked to the previous point. Because she is foul-mouthed and unrepentant, but she cares for the people who are following her, and her heart is in the right place. But following her around was quite liberating. I loved her and her approach to life (or lives, to be more correct).

5)The footnotes. I loved them and I think is right to repeat it!

6)The tons of pop culture references. I know that they are not everyone’s favorite, and the other day I read in a post that they are the fastest way to make a book dated (I am paraphrasing, but the sense it’s there) and that’s quite right, I found that I agree with this, but still… I loved them here, and they made me laugh.

7)This book is the right brand of humor for me and I laughed so much while reading it! I raised an eyebrow or two while reading in disbelief, and my eye popped out in surprise a couple of times too, because I couldn’t believe what I was reading, but in the best possible way. This book is brilliant, is pointy, and it is genius.

8)The LitRPG vibes. Especially in the beginning. It was sort of surprising, even if it made a lot of sense, and I appreciated it quite a lot.

9)“Oh My Gosh! She really did it!” “Oh Gosh, she said it!” and “Really?? Oh Gosh, I can’t believe it!” was a recurrent refrain while reading. And I loved it!

10)A nice little bonus is that we have some scenes that are pure comedy gold. Usually, they involve the deerwilders (or was it deerpeople? I don’t remember, sorry about that!), but they are not the only one. And really, some scenes were just so damn fun!

11)I was going to say “the footnotes” again but then I decided to be good and say a tad more about the book. The worldbuilding is on the light side, but it is full of amazing and diverse creatures, it was such a pleasure to explore it and discover all the different kinds of wilders that exist! And some of them are so darn cute!

I think that this is all. I loved this book to pieces. I had an amazing time reading it, it worked perfectly for me, and it was exactly what I needed. It is brilliant, bright and original. And so irreverent!
I think that 4 stars would have been a more objective rating but I simply don’t care!

Received arc from little Brown Book group UK and Netgalley for honest read and review,this review is my own.
I have read a few books from Django over the years, but this is a new one for me, where he goes for the funny bone.
This was a cracking read that had me hooked from the beginning and did not let up to the end.
Main POV , Davi is absolutely brilliant and such a star, she is what makes this book.
At times the story did slow.a.little, but all in all, very enjoyable read.

This was a fun romp: after being stuck in a time loop for hundreds of lives and a thousand years, Dani decides that her assigned task of defending the human realms against the rising Dark Lord is a non-starter, and so the next time around she decides to join the baddies and become the dark lord. There's a lot of entertaining competence porn, first as she uses her local knowledge acquired across hundreds of loops through her spawning pool, where each life begins; later as she moves beyond her exact knowledge of events and people, she still draws on 1000 years of experience in the world learning archery and magic and warcraft and politics and so on. I found Dani's voice a little bit much after a while, but the story itself was quite entertaining, and I'll definitely enjoy reading the sequel. Be warned: it ends on a cliffhanger.

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley.

This book is fun, often gruesome, and completely irreverent. It almost felt like a video game with Davi’s respawning. Davi is a princess who keeps being reborn hundreds of times in a pool where she’s told by a wizard she must save the humans from the Dark Lord and the Wilder armies. Every time she tries and is killed and reborn. One respawn, Davi has had enough and decides she will have a go at being the Dark Lord instead rather than continually being killed by them. We now find her navigating unfamiliar territory as she attempts to convince the wilders to follow her and become her horde so she can become Dark Lord.

This is dark comedy fantasy. It’s often very violent and graphic. Davi’s constant dying and being reborn over hundreds of years has given her a level of sarcastic apathy where she doesn’t take things too seriously as she knows she’ll be reborn if she fails. However as she builds her horde she doesn’t want to go back and start over and starts to become more invested in the people around her. Davi is pretty funny and often quite shocking!

I enjoyed this book so much. It was a superb, slightly tongue in cheek look at the fantasy genre. Working in many recognisable tropes and fantasy races. This had an interesting magic system too based around Thaumite, coloured rocks that are eaten by wilders but used by humans to do magic.

A really entertaining, comic read.

A modern high fantasy comedy read, full of nerdy pop culture references, for people who enjoy isekai light novels, video games and dnd.

It's definitely not the most original plot, if you're familiar with the genre, but I enjoyed the easy-going, snarky tone and fourth wall breaks throughout the narration and found myself heartily laughing out loud a lot, which was exactly what I was looking for from the book.

Be warned though, that this is not a standalone (which I wasn't aware of) and it ends with a massive cliffhanger!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC for review purposes.

I received an advance review copy for free and am leaving this review voluntarily. 

The description caught my eye "hilarious fantasy time-loop duology that is All You Need is Kill meets Kill the Farm Boy, where a young woman stuck in a time loop tires of defending humanity from the Dark Lord and decides to become the Dark Lord herself"

The story starts strong, really fun and enjoyable, reminiscent of the early days of Terry Pratchett. The time loop is used well and I kept reading without a break. Suddenly the story lost its steam. It meanders and becomes generic, before picking up a bit a bit at the end. Be warned, it does end in a cliffhanger. If you are anything like me, you'll want to wait till the second book is out as well.

I almost wrote a scathing review about generic fantasy intermixed with humour when I realised what I was mad about, is it could be good, to be another Terry Pratchett, yet falls short. It's swamped with failed potential that's so evident, it's frustrating. When the plot and writing are good, it's good. However, it's very uneven. At times the plot carries you along, at others, it slows to a crawl. The humour can be great for one moment and then the story can become boring.

Groundhog Day and similar time-reset films, or TV shows like Quantum Leap were a secret passion of mine growing up. Regardless of the fact it was just an excuse to cheap out on filming costs. I had high hopes for the story and at first, it lived up. Live, die, live, die, then somehow, inexplicably, the whole point of being an immortal being who can repeat a day or time and learn from it, ends. It changes into a normal fantasy story, no more "hook" to capture my interest. At this point, I stopped being distracted by the background and was left with a generic attempt at comedic fantasy that failed to live up to the earlier potential.

It's not a terrible book. I read the whole book and enjoyed it. If you have a casual weekend or long plane ride, it will distract you. It's just got nothing special to recommend it as being above the pack. Mediocre.