Imagine dying 237 times and waking up in the same place after you are killed. You have memories of what you’ve done in your previous lives so you try to avoid the same mistakes, especially when a creature who seems to be a Dark Lord kills you after having you trapped in their dungeon. You’re Davi, welcome to How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler.
Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy in Django Wexler’s laugh-out-loud fantasy tale about a young woman who, tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord, decides to become the Dark Lord herself.
Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time.
This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord always wins, then maybe that’s who she needs to be. It’s Davi’s turn to play on the winning side.
Every time Davi is “reborn” she’s told she’s the one who can stop the Dark Lord and after 200 deaths and over 1,000 years, she decides she’s going to become the Dark Lord herself and ignore Tserigern, the wizened old “mentor” who greets Davi upon her resurrection. Having lived in The Kingdom (yes, that’s the only name we or Davi know of the world/land in which this story takes place) for so many years, she has a pretty good lay of the land. She’s largely accepted that she’s in some warped video game/alternate reality. This allows the story to kick into high gear once it starts, there’s no dawdling around with Davi discovering this world, questioning its reality. Wexler gets to the meat of it.
Davi is our first-person narrator; she’s snarky, quick-witted, cranky, and because of her lack of inhibition, she initially doesn’t care about the lives of people around her since she’s died and resurrected so many times. She’s seen many of these people hundreds of times. She learns a little bit more about events and the world and even questions whether she’s in a video game of some sort, but can’t quite recall how she was pulled into this world from her life in the early 21st Century of reality. Her life prior to The Kingdom, comes through the pop culture references littered throughout the narrative.
As for The Kingdom itself, it is populated fantasy races like fox-people, mages, and prophecy. Davi decides to quest for the convocation where she can “compete” to be the Dark Lord of The Kingdom. She gains allies and amasses a horde because she can see the future. Or so she tells people she meets along the road to becoming the Dark Lord. When you relive the days hundreds of times and have seen the world over the course of so many years, it is basically seeing the future. It worked for Phil Connors (aka Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day), why can’t it work for Davi.
But Davi encounters something unexpected along the way. She starts to care for the people around her (in addition to sleeping with a few of them) and starts to feel a connection to this version of herself and the life she’s building. She doesn’t want to die nor does she want these people who joined her Horde to die. Despite her potty mouth and complete lack of inhibitions, this is a novel that grows a heart by the end.
A lot of a reader’s enjoyment will come down to how much they like Davi’s voice as the first-person narrator. She’s crass, loose of lips and pants, quips wise-ass comments as often as possible, and seemingly pushes headlong into the narrative. For my part, I was laughing along and completely absorbed in her story.
It is impossible not to make the Groundhog Day comparison/reference, but I’ve also seen other reviewers make a comparison to the Marvel character Deadpool. As I write this review, I still have Deadpool & Wolverine on my mind because I saw a few hours ago, but Davi has the same wit and ability to break the fourth wall as the Merc with a Mouth. I’d also say this book is a great companion novel to a book I read recently (and whose review will publish around the same time as this review): Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan. Similar themes, similar snark, and similar levels of fun.
I’ve read the majority of Django Wexler’s fantasy output and enjoyed all of it quite a lot. Slot How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying into that list. It is a bit of a departure from his earlier novels in some ways (more crass and more playing with the tropes of the genre and bending them to his will), but the same kind of embracing of what makes the genre so much fun. This is Django’s most fast-paced novel.
As I was nearing the end of the novel, the pages flew by extremely fast. There’s a lot to unpack and some fun hints of where the novel will conclude in the next and final volume. I can’t wait to get my hands on it and see what Davi has to say next.
Recommended
© 2024 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | May 2024 | 432 Pages
https://djangowexler.com/
Excerpt: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/orbit-books/how-to-become-a-dark-lord-and-die-trying-by-django-wexler-exclusive-excerpt/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
