A+ #BookReview: How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Dark Lord Davi, #1) by Django Wexler
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure, epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Dark Lord Davi #1
Pages: 432
Published by Orbit on May 21, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy in Django Wexler’s laugh-out-loud fantasy tale about a young woman who, tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord, decides to become the Dark Lord herself.
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.
Burningblade & SilvereyeAshes of the Sun Blood of the Chosen Emperor of Ruin

My Review:

The blurb for this title – a title just full to the brim with snarky, contradictory glory – is a bit more on point than the one for next month’s Service Model, which I read in the same weekend and was just really, really off.

But it’s still not quite there. This isn’t Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy. It could, sorta/kinda be a take on the very motley crew of Guardians and their very snarky leader with his love for 1980s music and pop culture, but isn’t really Groundhog Day because there really isn’t a redemption arc – at least not so far – because Davi doesn’t need to be redeemed.

What Davi, wannabe Dark Lord Davi, needs to do is figure out how to survive the fantasy world she’s been dumped into, nearly 300 damn times so far. Because her previous attempts have all ended more or less the same way, with her being killed by some bwahaha spitting orc bastard who has just taken over the world and killed all the humans he or she can find.

It’s not always been the SAME bwahaha bastard, but does that really matter?

Davi has decided that it absolutely does not. If she’s going to survive this clusterfuck, she’s going to have to change the rules. Starting with pounding the smug, lying manipulative bastard wizard who starts her down the path of inevitable destruction into the rocks that surround the pool she always emerges from until his head is paste.

Davi has had enough. Clearly.

(If the idea of this story sounds familiar, it is. Alix E. Harrow’s “The Six Deaths of the Saint”, included in the Best American SF/F of 2023 collection, has a VERY similar premise – taken much more seriously and without the snark.)

Davi has had enough of being the shining light of goodness and humanity, because all it gets her is dead. She may have a destiny on this world, but so far all she’s been destined to do is die.

Since her journey always restarts, always in that same pool, always listening to that same wizard’s crap when she inevitably dies again, this time she’s going to do an asshole playthrough – even though she’s already determined that whatever this is, it isn’t a videogame world.

Still, this is a concept she hasn’t tried before. It might work. It might be interesting. It might be good, just this once, to be bad.

Escape Rating A+: How to Become the Dark Lord AND Die Trying (the title absolutely needs to put some emphasis on that ‘AND’ because WOW those things should be contradictory), is a snarktastic romp, a wild, exuberant page-turning knock out of an epic fantasy and a complete and utter send up of the whole entire genre AND the horse it rode in on all at the same time.

That it isn’t the redemption story the blurb’s reference to Groundhog Day might lead you to believe doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things – and Dark Lord Davi certainly does have some VERY grand schemes – but it misses one of the points just a bit that would add to the sheer WTF’ery of the fun of the thing.

Because it’s not Groundhog Day, it’s Edge of Tomorrow. You remember THAT movie, the one where Tom Cruise has to repeat his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, over and over and over again, each and every time he gets killed – frequently and often – so that eventually he and Emily Blunt can put the pieces together fast enough to kill the alien invaders before they decimate Earth.

Part of the fun of that movie was watching Cruise get killed. Part of the fun of How to Become the Dark Lord is watching the Dark-Lord-in-Waiting fake it until she makes it, over and over and over again – knowing that death is just the excuse for another restart.

But Davi isn’t an evil dark lord, which becomes part of her problem as her journey towards dark-lord-dom continues. Davi really does care about her people – admittedly some more intimately than others. She takes care of her people. She’s reasonable and responsible and nurturing and does her best to avoid needless killing and senseless violence.

Emphasis on needless and senseless. She’s aware that some eggs are going to get broken in making this Dark Lord omelet but she’s never reckless with anyone except herself.

All that she’s done by switching sides is changing which people she’s willing to protect and defend. She’s changed who it is that she counts as ‘us’ in her calculus of war. It’s very much the perspective of Jonathan French’s The Grey Bastards, or Jacqueline Carey’s Banewreaker and Godslayer in that the orcs – and the other wilder-folk and non-humans – are the people she – and we – root for while the humans are off being inhumane to everyone not human and Davi is no longer there for that.

What makes this romp so very much of a romp is that Davi is snarky to the max, rather like one of John Scalzi’s, Simon R. Green’s or especially K.J. Parker’s and T. Kingfisher’s anti-hero-ish heroes. She never meets a quip she can’t make, a dig she can’t take, or an attitude she can’t cop, sometimes all at the same time. She’s a bit like Murderbot would be if Murderbot let it all hang out.

She’s also, manifestly, an epic fantasy hero who does not have all the answers – nor does she have any advisors who do, think they do or pretend they do. She’s faking it until she makes it – only to discover that once she’s made it there’s yet another hill to climb and yet another army to defeat.

Dark Lord Davi is simply awesome, as well as laugh out loud funny and occasionally downright embarrassing to herself and her minions. She’s a great hero to spend a long dark evening with! So I’m very glad that I did, and I can’t wait to do it again when she comes back for (cue the EXTREMELY apropos ‘80s earworm) Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

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