All Evie Sage wanted was a well-paying job to support her family that didn’t involve her boss attempting to sexually assault her. Now, she’s the assistant accomplice (she got a promotion!) to The Villain, the kingdom’s most terrifying figure. All her job was supposed to entail was “light paperwork and occasional beheadings,” but now, she’s knee-deep in torture, familial betrayal, a kingdom-ending (or saving) prophecy, and a flirtatious disaster with the boss. All while dealing with the fact that she may not be as sweet and even-tempered as she’s always presented herself to be. The big question is not “will the day be saved”?, or “will they get together?”, but “in the end, who is the true villain here”?
I am praying this is indeed the penultimate book, because I just don’t know how much more of this I can take. The characters are inane, overblown, and unlikable. The plot (such as it is) is convoluted, confusing, and has more unnecessary, far-fetched melodrama than a story arc in a soap opera. (Not that I’ve ever watched a soap opera, I’m just going off what people usually say about them, so maybe I’m wrong and soap opera plots are far less melodramatic than this book.) No one talks to anyone else; everyone is either betraying someone, thinking of betraying someone, or thinking someone is betraying them or someone else. I guess this is supposed to be the “darkest before the dawn”, Empire Strikes Back book, because no one catches a break; even the sex scene when Evie and the Villain finally give in, is just depressing. And so overwoughtly written, just like all the dialogue in this book; this is like a bad AO3 fanfic trying to copy the writing style of the “spicy” Romance novel it’s a homage to. And trust me, this is indeed a Romance novel; there are probably two or three characters not paired off in this series, and they’re mostly a small child and an ogre. Not that any of those relationships are healthy, productive, or even actually talked about, but I guess those are all concepts for another series.
“You insist we’re ‘just friends,’ but then you invite me to stuff like this.”
Characters’ motivations, behavior, and even what they seem to know all change depending on the plot’s requirements at the given time. It in many ways, as I’ve already said, is like a bad fanfic; people seem to behave in certain ways just for “the drama”. Healthy productive conversations are verboten, and everyone has angsty inner monologues that should become outer dialogues to get things sorted out. But if you settle things, how can you drag out the plot for another book? Or two, or more; the author claims that “the idiots” known as her characters are just taking the plot wher they feel like, and she has no control over how long the story will last. My advice to her would be to take a whip to them and get them back into line, because if this doesn’t put us all out of its misery by the end of the next book I’m gonna throw hands.
Total candor: I read this book the same week I was watching Season 15 of Supernatural and I felt about them the exact same way; boring, painful, hopeless, and I’m finishing it solely because I’ve invested so much time and energy into it already, so why bother stopping now? I’ll just finish so I don’t have it hanging over my head.