Michael Barnes
There is a thriving genre of stories about female real world characters falling into another world as the hero of their favourite fantasy book or more recently in their favourite video game, there is now a number of those where you end up taking over the body of the major antagonist or villain. I first encountered this in the anime 'My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!' In that story our villainess avoids her doom by being unfailing positive, supportive and with an impressive gardening ability attracting all the characters to fall in love.
In this first in the Time of iron Trilogy our snarky rather than plucky Rae, instead leans into the role as sexy villain seeking only what she needs return to her world by stealing the Flower of Life and Death, which with her infinite knowledge of the story. That is, until she wakes up in the body of Rahela, the evil stepsister to the heroine, who is due to be executed the next day. Together with a motley crew of the most wicked characters, she starts scheming to pull off this deadly heist and maybe, possibly give the villains a chance at a happy ending, if they can survive until the final page.
A strong driver in this anrrative is Rae's growing awareness of the rest of her crew, she has named the vipers, who she initially considered she could use and disregard since they are just figures in the story. Long Live Evil is ridiculously entertaining, campy, and extremely meta, and somehow it just works? I love the narrative device of Rae not remember some of the details of the first book because it didn't get interesting until the Once and Forever Emperor appears.
The other characters are also interesting plays on the fantasy stereotypes with many readers really cheering for Key (the unhinged and slightly sociopathic guard with a dangerously seductive grin) and The Cobra (a rakish spymaster with a heart of gold despite his interestingly traumatic backstory). The second point of view, in the story is given by Marius, was an interesting take on the stoic, vow-restrained bad arse character with a tragic backstory and a merciless heart—yet somehow a hero.
The story involving Rae's cancer in our world is especially heart wrenching when I learned of the authors own struggles with cancer.
The ending left me leaping straight into the next volume All Hail Chaos.
There is a thriving genre of stories about female real world characters falling into another world as the hero of their favourite fantasy book or more recently in their favourite video game, there is now a number of those where you end up taking over the body of the major antagonist or villain. I first encountered this in the anime 'My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!' In that story our villainess avoids her doom by being unfailing positive, supportive and with an impressive gardening ability attracting all the characters to fall in love.
In this first in the Time of iron Trilogy our snarky rather than plucky Rae, instead leans into the role as sexy villain seeking only what she needs return to her world by stealing the Flower of Life and Death, which with her infinite knowledge of the story. That is, until she wakes up in the body of Rahela, the evil stepsister to the heroine, who is due to be executed the next day. Together with a motley crew of the most wicked characters, she starts scheming to pull off this deadly heist and maybe, possibly give the villains a chance at a happy ending, if they can survive until the final page.
A strong driver in this anrrative is Rae's growing awareness of the rest of her crew, she has named the vipers, who she initially considered she could use and disregard since they are just figures in the story. Long Live Evil is ridiculously entertaining, campy, and extremely meta, and somehow it just works? I love the narrative device of Rae not remember some of the details of the first book because it didn't get interesting until the Once and Forever Emperor appears.
The other characters are also interesting plays on the fantasy stereotypes with many readers really cheering for Key (the unhinged and slightly sociopathic guard with a dangerously seductive grin) and The Cobra (a rakish spymaster with a heart of gold despite his interestingly traumatic backstory). The second point of view, in the story is given by Marius, was an interesting take on the stoic, vow-restrained bad arse character with a tragic backstory and a merciless heart—yet somehow a hero.
The story involving Rae's cancer in our world is especially heart wrenching when I learned of the authors own struggles with cancer.
The ending left me leaping straight into the next volume All Hail Chaos.