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Hello friends!!!

How are things? I hope they are well, and I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. My week was insanely busy. The other half of me was in a different state for work all week, so I was alone to tend to the house and the animals. Weirdly enough, I didn’t get much reading done.

Anyways, I finished this book at the end of last month, and I’ve been waiting to bring the review to you. I have a handful of ARCs to read this month, and then I think I’m going to take a break from ARCs so I can focus on the backlog of my TBR. It’s a lot.

Anyways, let’s get into it!

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“The Emperor broke into the throne room.”

Sarah Rees Brennan, Long Live Evil, First Line

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Ever want to find yourself transported into your favorite fantasy novel? Get in line, because the main character of this novel gets to do it first. Long Live Evil is about a terminally ill cancer patient named Rae who really only has her younger sister left in the world. One day, a mysterious woman enters her hospital room with an offer: go into the novel Time of Iron and get the flower that only blooms once a year. If she manages this, she will come back to the real world and be completely healed. Rae agrees to this offer and finds herself waking up in her novel, to her horror, in the body of the villain who is about to be executed.

I have read a lot of webtoons, and I definitely got into the isekai (transmigration) genre. I love the entire idea of going into your favorite story as a villain or a side character (basically anyone but the main characters) and making your way in the world. What follows this is the struggle of the transmigrated individual attempting to change the story in a way that suits their objective, but typically without trying to completely change everything. There is also this whole concept that the other characters from the book are not real. Our main character struggles to see the people in front of her as real people because they’re from a book. In the end, they are just words on a piece of paper. This struggle is one of my favorite tropes of this genre, especially when the world they have been thrust into is darker and more violent than the real world. In some cases, this becomes a defense mechanism, a way to stay sane while the world is genuinely falling apart. I enjoyed how this was approached in this novel, and while I sometimes found the FMC frustrating, I believe that the way she reacted made sense and suited her character.

The characters in the novel are interesting, and only one of them feels a bit one-dimensional (but I think that is the point for that character). The novel takes multiple POV’s throughout, so we get to understand the thoughts of the characters in the novel as well as our transmigrated FMC. Getting these views makes it so much easier to understand the relationships between everyone. While the FMC tries to remain as disconnected as possible, we have these characters who are going about their lives as much as you or I might. We get to see the relationships change and adapt to the different events that happen because of Rue. The interactions between the characters are some of my favorite scenes throughout the novel.

There is, of course, a twist at the end of this novel. I am the type of reader who tends to just go along for the ride. I’m not trying to figure every little thing out. So, when I tell you that I had no idea about the twist at the end of the book, I truly mean it. I’m not sure I would have seen it coming regardless, but the way I wanted to go out and buy the second book once I finished the first was unusual for me. I am genuinely excited to get the second novel and see what happens with our main crew of characters. With the events of the ending being what they are, I can’t even begin to guess. I am also shipping some interesting combos for relationships that I hope come to fruition by the end of the series. We’ll see if that seems even remotely possible in the second one.

This is a rather long novel, and I’d say its pacing reflects that. It needs to build up and explore complex ideas. This is not a story to be rushed through. I don’t necessarily think that it’s a super slow pace, but it’ll take some time. We do get a handful of significant plot events to keep things moving along, so I didn’t ever really feel like I was bored or that the story was dragging. That can be a risk when you read a longer novel. I did see that it was listed as an Epic Fantasy, and those do tend to take their time in my experience. 

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. I sat with it for a few days before I could make my final decision on what the rating was going to be. I went back and forth between high 4s and a 5. I didn’t even consider anything less than a 4.5. In the end, I felt like this was so unlike any other novel I have read this year, and I was so excited to continue my journey that it could not get anything lower than a 5-star rating from me. Sometimes, books just get an immediate 5-star on vibes alone. This was a bit more complicated only because I have spent so much time reading transmigration webtoons that I needed to sort of separate that part of my brain from this novel’s review.

5 ★

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And there you have it. I was honestly surprised to see the ratings under a 4-star average, but I also tend to not take a lot of stock in those. I typically only go look at ratings if I’m already iffy about a book. I am making a trip to the bookstore soon, and you better believe I’m picking up the next one.

As always, if you give it a shot, please tell me how you liked it!

Bye friends!!!