One of the worst things I think a book can do to you is totally ruin things with a two page change of tone. Dreadful seemed like a pretty inoffensive light-ish almost parody of D&D-type fantasy/isekai. Dread Dark Lord Gavrax suddenly wakes up in his lab with no idea where he is or who he is. He’s got no idea why he’s got Princess Eliasha captive, what scary Dread Lord Zarcon has him doing, why the villagers a re terrified of him, and why he has need of the container of spare eyebrows he apparently keeps in his workshop. He’s also not terribly sure he likes what he starts figuring about himself and his past. Naturally most things are not going to be what they seem. Gav (as he prefers these days) has to navigate not knowing a lot about himself and what he’s probably been up to, help his town whose crops mostly failed market the one thing they’ve got loads of (garlic has major magical properties in case you haven’t heard), what he and a trio of fellow dark wizards have been gathering the materials for (some dark ritual of summoning he figures, but for what), the pesky heroes who start showing up to try and defeat the dark wizards/rescue the princess, figure out his feelings towards the princess (it’s getting complicated), get his goblins working on various projects, and figure out what happened to make him lose his memories.
This whole thing is mildly entertaining, until part way into a confrontation with one of the main hero-types, when the story has about a page- page and a half of graphic violence that just totally ruins things. Think the movie Dumb & Dumber with that one scene where the lead Dumb dreams of impressing the girl in a martial arts fight that involves someone’s heart getting ripped out of their chest; that one bit ruined that movie. I get that it was supposed to be comic-book type violence but it felt so out of tune with the rest of what had been set up, and too much of an ick, that I still don’t like that movie even though up to that point it had been fine. Didn’t go for the sequel either. Same problem with Dreadful. Violence in this kind of story is a given; what happens with the moat squid and someone who deserves it is expected; but that one bit of fight was where I basically noped out. I still finished the book, but I wasn’t especially into it any more.