Serena’s Review: “How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying”

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Book: “How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying” by Django Wexler

Publishing Info: Orbit, May 2024

Where Did I Get this Book: from the publisher!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: 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.

Review: This book had a lot of things going for it when I first picked it up. For one thing, I’ve really enjoyed all of the books I’ve read from Django Wexler in the past, including his most recent trilogy which just finished up a year or so ago. So he’s an author I’ve read recently and enjoyed. Secondly, I typically enjoy fantasy novels that take a comedic, tongue-in-cheek approach to storytelling. T. Kingfisher, for example, is one of my current favorite authors, and all of her books have a distinct humorous aspect to them. All of this to say, when I actually started reading this one, I had high hopes. But by the time I’d finished the last page (a feat unto itself, honestly), those hopes had thoroughly crashed and burned.

I can see the bones of a good story here, and I know that Wexler is a capable author, able to create unique worlds and people them with characters with whom readers can become invested. However, this book seemed to fall into one simple problem in almost every arena: excess. Take any single good idea, but then see that thing multiplied by a million. This applies to every area, but the first and most obvious has to do with the humor itself. It simply doesn’t let up! It’s joke after joke after joke in what quickly becomes an exhausting exercise of pure endurance. The reader is never given the necessary moments to really sit with the characters, to take any sort of breath and find a reason to actually care about the people and what they’re going through. Instead, it’s just a barrage of quips and takes.

One clear example is the use of footnotes. Now, I think this technique can be very successful if used well. But one of the key parts, in my opinion, is knowing exactly when and how to use a good footnote. Here, not only did these fall into the same category of used to excess, but the notes themselves were simply the same sorts of jokes found in the narrative. There was no rhyme or reason to why certain quips warranted a foot note and why another would simply be inserted into the body of the story.

Other than the sheer amount of humor that was packed into this book, much of it failed to land on its own merits. I don’t consider myself prudish by any means, but right off the bat, many of the jokes felt overly crude and crass. At many points, it felt like shock value was being prioritized over actual humor, and I found myself cringing more than anything through much of this.

As for the plot mechanics, I liked the overall idea of a “Groundhog’s Day”/video game scenario where whenever the main character dies she “respawns” at the same starting point and must make her way forward from there once again. But this quickly became tiresome, and in the beginning of the book, much of this history is simply presented to the reader, something our main character is already resigned to. Again, the reader has very few opportunities to truly become invested in her situation.

By the time I finished this book, all that remained was sheer exhaustion. I know that Wexler can write good fantasy; I even know that he can write humorously, as most of his novels included good, quippy characters who made me laugh. I’m not sure what went wrong here. It’s almost like he set out with the goal to right a comedic book and got so carried away with this one feature that he left out all of the rest. I honestly can’t recommend this one to most readers. Perhaps if you read the first page or so and the style of humor is working for you? But for most readers, I think this is a severe departure from the quality of Wexler’s previous books.

Rating 5: The jokes didn’t land and there were too many of them; a very disappointing read.

Reader’s Advisory:

“How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying” can be found on this Goodreads list: Best Outside-the-box Speculative Fiction (maybe not “best” though).