It may not have escaped your attention, readers, that fiction likes its little labels, whether it be ‘grimdark’, ‘cosy fantasy’, ‘BookTok’ or the like.
The latest I’ve come across is ‘Romantasy’, or perhaps that should be ‘ROMANTASY’, as it seems to appear on my latest review covers. It seems to have caught people’s attention of late, the latest label by the TikTok generation.
Although the term may be new to me, its characteristics are not. I don’t know about you, but my initial thoughts were that this would be a book of damsels in distress, swooning in a Jane Austen kind of way, over hunky bare-torso-ed men. Perhaps with the sort of cover that Mills and Boon will be proud of. Not my usual source of reading, being a near-60-year-old cis white male.
But I will try anything. And on this occasion, my perseverance was justified. Although my cynical summary above is not wrong in some ways, it is wrong in many others.
Assistant to the Villain is an interesting book, as it confounds the reader in its telling. It reads easily but is not facile. While the characters swoon and lust as expected, there is a knowing mischievousness throughout that means that we don’t take the book too seriously. There’s a knowing wink, a sly grin, a general feeling that yes, this is all a bit silly, but you go with it. It’s lots of fun. It’s rather like Gru’s Minions, but in more of a Fantasy setting.
As well as being about life, family and friendship, which some nicely added minor characters to boot, the novel’s also about organisation, administration and office politics, which reminded me rather of the unruly behaviour in Jodi Taylor’s St. Mary’s series – that combination of humour and silly hijinks with just a sprinkling of catty gossip.
Of course, the baddie (the VILLAIN, in capital letters) is not really the baddie, and the author manages to make this misunderstood person seem OK. Whilst there are people killed and heads removed, it’s usually easy to feel that the deaths were justified or at least acceptable, as it is usually those who have chosen to kill before or – heaven forbid! – threatened our key characters.
On the negative side, there are points where the book is a bit one-note, where situations are a little too convenient. The real bad person of the novel was a little underwhelming. I managed to spot them early, but in the end didn’t really feel that such a character could be the real villain. However, the strength of the book is that you’re willing to ignore these discrepancies for the sake of the characters.
The only thing that really spoilt this mood of general amusement throughout for me was the cliff-hanger ending, although understandable.
To sum up then, Assistant to the Villain is a greatly entertaining read, with characters you get to like and care about. Don’t let the term ‘romantasy’ put you off, as it did me a little. This one’s a lot of fun and shows us that Fantasy novels should not be taken seriously all the time. For fans of Jodi Taylor wanting a story of a similar easy style but with dragons and goblins, Assistant to the Villain is this year’s Lattes and Legends for me, I think. Recommended.
ASSISTANT TO THE VILLAIN by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
Published by Penguin/Transworld, September 2023
ISBN: 978 180 499 3385
342 pages
Review by Mark Yon
