Spoiler-Free Review

If you’re looking for your next fun read and enjoy stories that whisk main characters away into fantasy worlds, you’ll love Long Live Evil.

Thanks to Netgalley and Orbit Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

What’s Long Live Evil about?

Rae, who’s dying of cancer, is teleported into the world of her favorite fantasy series for a chance to find a cure. There’s just one problem: she’s woken up as the villain who’s supposed to get executed early on. Now she has to scheme her way into survival.

This was engaging and funny, and I can’t wait for the sequel.

Long Live Evil is a fun story full of campy humor. It plays into all of the well-worn fantasy character archetypes and plot tropes, but with a self-awareness and humanness that allows for subversion of expectations.

It was also an interesting exploration of the main character’s motivations. She’s dying of cancer, which has impacted her life, body, and relationships in every conceivable way. Now that she has a chance to experience this fantasy world, she’s also getting to live – she has a healthy, full body, energy and libido, friendships and enemies. But nothing is that simple, of course. Now that she’s in the story, she must grapple with her view of the characters and whether or not she can still put herself above them for the sake of her own survival in the real world.

Also, the interplay of Rae’s real world values and language versus the fantasy world’s more stiff and formal version added some fun in otherwise serious situations. Beyond that, I loved all the of the side characters. The Cobra was my favorite out of the whole story.

I will say that sometimes the pacing or the writing threw me off, but I also think this is related to the nature of the storytelling – since our main character was transported into a story she knows but we don’t know, this naturally leads to some exposition. The humor also has a quirkiness to it that may not be for every reader, but I feel it worked for these characters.

Should you read Long Live Evil?

If you liked Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis or Going Bovine by Libba Bray, you’ll probably like this one. It’s also for anyone who likes portal fantasy, self-aware storytelling, or musicals.

Mark your calendars: this one releases on July 30th, 2024!