Davi is stuck in time loop you guys! She keeps on waking up in a fantasy world, being told she is destined to save everyone from the Dark Lord—and she’s been failing constantly! For a millennium! It’s been really wearing on her; Davi’s kept count of every single go around the merry-go-round. Every single death, every single time:
I slip into the sweet embrace of death with a contented sigh. So long, #237. Go fuck a porcupine.
It’s a bit like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but if Link had been replaced with a 21st century party girl with a propensity for weird sex-capades. Where and when in the 21st is she from? Not even Davi knows anymore; the memories she’s retained are not exactly the most relevant ones. She knows what it means to swipe right, for example, and she can quote The Twilight Zone. And as the title indicates: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But for anything else? Anything important? Davi’s memory is increasingly unreliable.
But then comes another traumatic death in a dungeon, and when she starts cycle #238, Davi snaps. Girl has had it; she is done. She is no longer content trying to stop the Dark Lord—she’s going to become the Dark Lord. She’s switching sides. She’s going to see if those 200-odd previous run-throughs can be put good use when changing tack. Can she build a horde and march her way to the Conclave to claim her mantle? She can try. As for the finer details of her new plan, she can work those out as she goes—remember, she’s already been offered so many redos, and it’s not like she’s exhausted them yet.
I don’t know exactly how they pick the Dark Lord, but a major factor is personal charisma as measured in armed henchpersons; most candidates turn up with armies, and I don’t even have pants.
I wouldn’t say that her ridiculous degree of life-and-death cycling hasn’t completely broken Davi’s moral compass; I think that underneath it all, she’s still a reasonably good person. But since everything rewinds back to the start when she dies, Davi has started to see everyone as a little bit disposable.
But this starts to change when she has to start gathering henchpersons. Davi has been playing on the side of the humans and has never seen the other side as people before. Her potential recruitment pool is mostly made up of Wilders; a blanket term used to cover all manner of fantasy critters, such as Orcs and Kitsune. Davi has to get to know them before she can convince them to join her horde. So if she ever wants to get her foot in the door of the Conclave, she can’t be as careless with people’s lives as she has been. And perhaps some of these Wilders can help Davi develop more of a tether to this oddball reality she’s found herself in?
How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is a delightfully fun read. Davi really fits into the disaster-bisexual-millennial-failchild mould, and sometimes, despite her sometimes audacious behaviour, I found it easy to vibe with her. With her cheeky asides and constant fourth-wall breaking, she’s a very funny protagonist, but the humour here can also get quite dark—which I find fitting for a dark lord and a book that is essentially a grim-dark sendup. Despite this, I’m tempted to classify this as a form of cozy (but humorous) fantasy; I don’t know what that says about me though. She’s also a fan of copious footnotes, which got a big tick of approval from me.
But I really need to come back to the disaster-bisexual-millennial-failchild designation; Davi’s brand of humour is of a very particular kind, and if it doesn’t work for you, the whole book may be a wash. If you bounced off Gideon the Ninth, for example, or have low tolerance for Deadpool’s antics, this may not be your thing.
For cbr18bingo, this one is Success. Davi has NOT had much success yet defeating the Dark Lord, let’s see if she has more luck with her current endeavour.
