How to become the Dark Lord and die trying by Django Wexler

3.85 AVERAGE

serina19's review against another edition

4.75
adventurous dark funny fast-paced

ewanlaw's review against another edition

1.0
I want to like this book. The setting and plot are exactly the kind of nerdy fantasy fiction I normally like. Imagine Frodo stuck in a Groundhog Day time loop who decides to become Lord Sauron instead of destroying him.

Unfortunately it's ruined by two things:

1. The protagonist is a hyper sexualised bisexual female character written by a man. At times it feels written by a 15 year old boy who just discovered girl parts for the first time. Every chapter has a moment where the main character lusts after another character. It's pointlessly sexual in a very unsexy way.

2. Gross overuse of the Pratchett footnote. I started skipping them altogether because most of the time they felt like punchlines for jokes that never really existed, or random one liners from the author to show off his nerd cred with pup culture references or mathematical workings for probability outcomes. Too much for me.


I won't be reading the second book any time soon.

mveto1's review against another edition

4.5
adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
szept_9417's profile picture

szept_9417's review against another edition

4.75
adventurous dark funny hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
Amazing read, didn't expect to like this as much as I did. The characters really grew on me and I'm desperate for the second book to see how things end.

jpollack's review against another edition

3.75
adventurous medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
paige_t's profile picture

paige_t's review against another edition

5.0
adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
Wow this book was fantastic! Davi is deadpool coded af and I had to try so hard not to laugh out loud in public. I highly recommend immersive reading this book because the audiobook is amazing! In the beginning when I read the book without the audiobook I had a hard time capturing Davi’s humor and inflection of speak, but when I started immersive reading, the narrator put on a whole ass performance for the audiobook that it felt like I was watching a movie. The narrator embodied Davi so well that it felt like I was hearing HER speak to me. I can’t wait to read the next book but I’m definitely going to immersive read it again. 

brittany_c's review against another edition

4.0
adventurous funny fast-paced

puma862's review against another edition

2.0
The ending kinda ruined it... Not as funny as the author thought it was gonna be

jbritt20's review against another edition

5.0
As delightful as the first read.
musser22627's profile picture

musser22627's review against another edition

5.0
adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring medium-paced
Diverse cast of characters: Yes