Django Wexler.
How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying.
Orbit. 2024
rating : 3 : worth reading
review : 22 September 2024
Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time.
This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord always wins, then maybe that’s who she needs to be. It’s Davi’s turn to play on the winning side.
Davi has been stuck in a time loop for centuries. Every time she dies, she wakes in a pond, and told she must save the kingdom from the Dark Lord. She has been getting better and better at doing so, but eventually the Dark Lord prevails, and Davi dies. This time, she wakes after a particularly painful death, and snaps. Rather than save the kingdom, she decides to become the Dark Lord herself! And with the power to learn that the time loop gives her, she sets out on her new quest.
Davi is a gloriously sarcastic, competent, and (mostly) moral character. Even while pursuing the goal of becoming Dark Lord, she has clearly read and follows the sensible rules in Peter Anspach’s list of The Top 100 Things I’d Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord, or, possibly more relevantly, Things I will do when I become Evil Empress, particularly in her (mostly) civilised behaviour to her minions and enemies.
After many thrilling adventures, some involving her death, Davi does finally achieve her goal (no spoiler: it’s in the title!), but what to do then? That’s for the sequel, which I am eagerly awaiting.