How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying

An interesting, and raunchy, book featuring a protagonist caught in a time loop. For over two hundred attempts, Davi, the proclaimed saviour of the kingdom, has tried to rally the human Kingdom against the wilder forces of the Dark Lord, and failed each time. Well, she has had enough and decides that since the Dark Lord wins, she will be the Dark Lord instead.

But like a novice trying to play at expert level in a computer game for the first time, she's not very successful. It takes quite a number of attempts before she manages to join a band of orcs without being killed in the first few minutes. From there, she has to lead them to the Convocation, where the next Dark Lord is to be chosen. Along the way, she has to recruit more wilders, so she will have a horde to back up her claim to be the next Dark Lord.

The nature of the time loop Davi is caught in is not explained in the book, nor does it feature prominently in the story once she joins the band of orcs, as she wants to succeed in this attempt and not have to start again, with possibly a different outcome. But she is forced to reconsider her present life when an event occurs that causes the time loop to manifest differently. That and the discovery of surprising artifacts at the Convocation makes her reconsider the current life she is leading and just what she wants to do once she does become the Dark Lord.

A humorous story about a person trying to discover why she appears to be the centre around which the world revolves. But that revelation will have to wait for the next book.

"Irreverent" might be the word here. At least, it certainly starts that way. The blurb says Groundhog Day, but the whole time I read it I kept thinking Re:Zero (an assumption that is confirmed by the author's notes in the back). For those of you not into anime, think Live Die Repeat with Tom Cruise. The hero Davi dies violently and often, until the only thing she has left is cynicism and anger. Her foray into becoming the Dark Lord starts as a lark born from frustration and a desire for novelty, but it quickly turns into more as she gets closer to her goals, and further from her old lives. Most reviews will probably say this book is very funny, very crude, or both. (It's both.) But for something as snappy and flippant as this, it also has a surprising amount of heart, with Davi's hurt melting into care the further she gets on her journey. Is becoming the Dark Lord also a journey of healing? The characters she gathers for her horde are a motley crew with their own interests, and it's incredibly easy to care about them as well. The cliffhanger ending is telegraphed well, but still comes as a real punch to the gut, and I'm very curious to see what happens next. Content-wise, there's a good deal of swearing, front-loaded at the start of the book, but present throughout. People die, often horribly. Sex is had with great enthusiasm, although the descriptions tend to be brief. There's also a load of meta commentary including tons of pop culture references and D&D talk, which will probably resonate with genre-savvy readers.

Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Books for an advance copy. All thoughts in this review are my own!