Review by gardens_and_dragons - Long Live Evil

gardens_and_dragons 's review for:

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

3.5

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This is a weird one! I liked it a lot for the most part, punctuated with some very cringy stuff, but overall it was a fun campy portal fantasy that’s meant to be a meta satire of the genre. It feels like a published fanfiction for a novel that doesn’t exist, if that makes sense! So if you enjoy high fantasy and humor, it’s a good time.

Rae is transported into the body of Rahela, a villainess in a story she loves, and by nature of her being there, shakes a whole lot up. She’s trying to navigate going from a young woman with cancer, lonely and wishing for adventure, to a bosomy harlot who gets what she wants and drags everyone into her schemes. She’s always playing it tongue in cheek because she KNOWS she’s in a fictional world.

I wish I could rate it higher, because it was genuinely pretty fun, but it could have stood to have a bit more editing. Sometimes it was hard to tell who the POV was, or the dialogue felt harder to follow for some reason. Example:

The musical number at the ball was cringy and felt uncomfortable and not in what felt like a purposeful way.

But! I found the characters made this a fun read. Key is a delightful sociopathic guard dog of a man, The Cobra was a delight as another heart of gold pretending to be a villain, Marius was a good counterpoint of seriousness to balance them out. They all played their archetypes well and over the top.

A fun, fast read.

Content Warnings