This book is a wild ride, but I was expecting and hoping it would be. Definitely advise reading the TW in the beginning because I this book starts off strong! It is about a girl named Davi who is stuck in a time loop has to go through obstacles and find the right way to approach others in order to not die and continue becoming the Dark Lord. The majority of the story was good and entertaining and did have me laugh out loud a couple of times, but the dialogue and having it seem like she was breaking the fourth wall to talk to us constantly was not for me. Overall, the book did entertain me and was refreshing compared to others, but I did have to grind my teeth to finish it out.

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley. I have to mark this one as DNF at just past the 50% mark. There is fun to be had in this book. The whole premise behind the book is great. It's the world, and the modern references that screw it all up. The world in this book is lazy. It does not mesh well with the story. It's basically today's modern world, but where there is a slice of a country that remains medieval. Which is where the modern references come in. I really appreciated the modern references at first. But the farther I got in to the story, the more they made me cringe. It also didn't help that the main character seemed to be the only character to understand these references, and the only character to know about the rest of the world not being medieval.

Lastly, all throughout the book the character will add in her own secondary thoughts to the situation that they are. But you continually have to flip to another page where all these secondary thoughts are listed in numerical order. I did not enjoy always having to always flip to these other pages with the secondary thoughts.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Tying by Django Wexler

Summary:
The hero, Davi, has been through this cycle countless times, even centuries. She's leading humanity in a desperate bid against the formidable Dark Lord, only to meet defeat time and time again. Whether swiftly or after a prolonged struggle, she has always succumbed to death.
Now, she's reached a breaking point. Tired of being the perpetual hero trapped in this relentless time loop, she entertains a daring notion: perhaps victory lies in joining the ranks of the victorious. If the Dark Lord consistently emerges triumphant, then it's time for Davi to align herself with the winning side.

Review:
Not for the faint of hearts. Okay, triggers and foul language aside, even the ARC had some warnings; it was super funny. I have a macabre sense of humor, so this might not be the book for everyone. The premise is excellent. The idea is that you are stuck in Groundhog Day, but in a fantasy style, and you are supposed to be a hero, but nothing is working, so why not be the villain? After centuries, I would be willing to try anything to get out of the time loop, too.

I identified with the FMC. She has the mindset of someone who is so over it she doesn't have a filter anymore...or morals?! I appreciate the humor and consider it lighthearted fun. I don't want to spoil anything, but this story reminds me of the Wizard of OZ characters. You will get what I mean if you have read the book.

The story had a good flow, and the banter between the characters was genius. I was 100% engaged and tried to guess what would happen next as the story unfolded. I plan to read the next book in the series because I need to know what happens to Davi.

Thank you, Orbit Books and NetGalley, for the advanced reader copy for my honest review.

I was excited to receive this copy and I am very grateful to NetGalley for the chance to review this title. However, I will not be continuing this series as it really was not for me. Davi is repeatedly living through a life in a fantasy world where a Dark Lord always triumphs, about 200 lives in she decides to become the Dark Lord and die trying a couple times more. This book had very vulgar writing and jokes, and while it was slightly amusing I mostly was not interested or invested in any of the characters. Chiefly, Davi is very obviously a woman written by a man, in that she had no relatable characteristics to a strong female main character. I'm sure people will really enjoy this book, but it is definitely not for me.

It was fine. If dry witty humor and fourth wall breaks is your style, you might like this. I really had to force myself to read this, though. The chapters are just so long. I found myself taking a lot of breaks. I will say this book did have a unique magic system. I don't think I've read one like it before.

This book was an absolute DELIGHT, I had so much fun reading it. The action in this was non-stop and I loved following along as Devi grew throughout the book. Also, any book that can incorporate both the scientific journal Nature and Dance Dance Revolution in the same chapter is a win for me. PLUS sarcastic footnotes throughout the book.

Devi is stuck in a time loop, a la Live Die Repeat/Edge of Tomorrow, has finally had it after trying for so long to be the good guy, and decides to become the Dark Lord of the magical Kingdom. She is resourceful after having lived over a thousand years, a hell of an archer, fond of making references no one else in Kingdom will understand, and deeply horny.

I eagerly await the sequel and highly recommend to anyone looking for a fun story with heart behind it.

Thanks very much to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the free e-ARC.

I wish I could rate this more than 5 stars! How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying has to be one of the best books I have read in a long time. It is a fantasy time loop novel about a girl who keeps getting put through a loop and killed by the Dark Lord over and over. I don’t want to say much more because of spoilers, but I will say that this book was hysterically funny and I absolutely loved the footnotes. It made the book so much fun and unique. Love,love, loved this.

How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying is a good book. There's a hint of writers like A. Lee Martinez and a whole, heaping helping of I Hate Fairyland mixed and stirred into an amusing fantasy novel.

Davi has been living her life over and over and over again in the Kingdom. She decides that she's had enough of being killed by the various Dark Lords and their minions and sets out to become the Dark Lord herself. The novel deals with Davi building a horde, finding some depth to her life, and being an all-around smartass.

I would recommend this to people who like pop-culture references, first-person narration, and footnotes. There are a lot of footnotes. So many.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is the latest book (and first in a new series) from fantasy author Django Wexler. Much of Wexler's prior work that I've read features witty sardonic characters, but this book (as you might imagine from its title) is almost a pure on comedy: the novel takes a groundhog's day-esque setup with its protagonist always resurrecting after dying trying to stop a dark lord from arising in a portal fantasy world....and flips it on its head by having the heroine then decide she's going to become the Dark Lord instead of trying any further and caps it all off by having the book narrated by its witty, sardonic, and genre-savvy/nerdy heroine. It's also delightfully profane at times.

The result is a novel that is in general pretty damn amusing and fun to read, even when some of its humor and concepts can occasionally get grating (especially with the book's use of footnotes). Wexler does a great job with his cast of main characters in making them interesting and fun to follow, and that's definitely the case here with Dark Lord-to-be Davi, and the cast of orcs/wilders/etc. The book is definitely not for younger readers, as Davi is VERY sex-obsessed at times (which might bother some readers but worked for me) although Wexler tends to cut away before describing full on any sex scenes for better or worse. All in all, a very good start to a new series for anyone looking for a pretty damn fun novel.

Trigger Warning: Self-Harm, discussion of Sexual Assault (none actually occurs on page).

Note: This book is very sex focused and profane and the review below will use some words reflecting that, so be warned.



Plot Summary:
237 lives ago, Davi woke up in a strange fantasy world pond and was greeted by an ancient wizard who claimed she was the prophesied savior who would save the human Kingdom from a Dark Lord who would rally the monstrous wilders/orcs/other-creatures into an unstoppable invading force. Davi tried to fulfill that prophecy....but failed and died, only to resurrect again in that pond, with time reset to the beginning so she could try again and learn from her mistakes. And so she tried and tried for 237 times to be that heroine....and died and died and died every time, often in excruciating ways (Torture's a bitch).

Now Davi has had enough. If she can't stop the Dark Lord, well, Davi is going to use the skills she's learned over 237 lifetimes to do the opposite: to join the wilders and become the Dark Lord. Of course, she's never really gone into Wilder territory before, and with time having reset, she's kind of a scrawny human with barely a few extra skills she can actually use. It's going to take every bit of her foreknowledge, her abuse of her being stuck in the time loop, her tactical brain, her charisma, and her insane daring to convince the ones she once fought against to put her in charge instead...but hey, if some other asshole could become the Dark Lord all those 237 times, why not Davi?
How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is a comedy that will not work for everyone - the story is told from Davi's first person narrative, with her seemingly dictating the story to the reader (as if she's writing in a journal we never see), and features frequent footnotes in which Davi will go on some side tangents or notes to the reader. Davi's main narration is also incredibly self-aware, witty, genre-savvy, and sardonic, which worked for me and is often highly amusing....but the footnotes go to another level especially with the geek references, and honestly after a little bit I found the footnotes to be kind of grating rather than funny (and sometimes contradictory, with Davi talking about how she can barely remember pop culture geek references from our world after 237 fantasy lives in an early footnote for example and then peppering the rest of the book with such references despite that). Davi is also kind of sex crazed at times and is very open about this with the reader - she takes a break from dying repeatedly early on to go have sex with a peasant she knows will be a willing fuck, frequently narrates that she is going to masturbate when she has no one to fuck at times, and makes at least one bad decision based upon a need to have sex with someone. That last part definitely won't be for everyone, so if that's a problem for you, you're gonna want to skip this book, even if the book does not describe any sex scenes and just fades out before they occur.

But if this book is for you, as it was for me, it can be a highly entertaining and amusing romp. Davi is a great character who is as charismatic on the page as she is to the characters she has to rally, persuade, and beg to her side (or to not being against her side). Her wit and narrative is often really funny and there's so so many quotes I could've posted from this book to amuse on social media if I so wanted, and even besides the wit there's some depth there: here's a woman who is sick and tired of being the hoped-for one for a human group who features some pretty awful people in it (the book notes that homophobia isn't a thing here and Davi is openly bisexual, but that the human world has its own replacement awfulness to take its place) and just wants for once to come out on top. Too often groundhog day-esque comedies feature characters just taking a few loops off and having fun, and there's some of that here, but here Davi is just as you might imagine TIRED of things going wrong and repeating and that kind of really works to explain her sardonic attitude and her desire to go nuts trying to go the other way: to be the evil lord, even if she struggles actually being evil. And her genre-savviness makes this both highly amusing and makes it work plot-wise, and even Davi's sex-obsession, and her eventual pining for one other character, honestly feels natural and like it fits.

The general plot and side characters also mostly work to help entertain. There's a bit of repetitiveness to parts of the plot: Step 1: Davi and her horde enters a new area run by a powerful group of Wildings who are too powerful to beat but who are in her way; Step 2: Davi and her horde get into a conflict with that group and have to do something innovative to try and avoid their deaths; Step 3: Davi prevails and generally grows her horde from parts of if not all of that group as they join her. This happens a few times, but Wexler infuses each bit of pattern with enough originality to keep it fresh even as it does drag maybe just a little. And the main cast grows accordingly with each group, and while the cast isn't really full of depth, they're very amusing and Davi's pining for her main assistant, orc-girl Tsav, is really well done (resulting in an expected romance that's very enjoyable). And the world itself is really well developed in a game-like world with how magic works, even if it also contains hints that there is something else (if not someONE else) behind the scenes and behind Davi's time-looping.

This all leads to a cliffhanger ending that works, as the main front of this plot is resolved so the book is actually satisfying even as things are clearly not done and a major cliffhanger now confronts Davi and her wants to be both the Dark Lord and maybe not super evil. It's a cliffhanger you'll expect honestly when you realize the book is nearly over, but it's executed well and leaves plenty for a next book. I'll probably be back for it when that comes out.

So yeah, if you're okay with the sex crazed heroine and the genre-savvy and geek-referencing narrative, How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is the right book for sure for you. Recommended.

This book was surprisingly funny. I did not expect to laugh as often as I did. I was also pleasantly surprised by our main character. Many times when men write female main characters they do not feel authentic, but Davi did. Her crisis when the pattern of her lives changed felt very authentic as did her jaded attitude after so many years in the time loop. As an ebook reader, I found the excessive footnotes very annoying to flip back and forth, eventually I just started ignoring them which is a shame because I’m sure I missed out on some great content, but it was too frustrating to continually scroll through pages to try to find my spot. I also felt that the pop culture references were a bit excessive and got old after awhile. I will definitely read the sequel when it comes out!

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance read copy of the book.
I didn't get very far with this book. Mostly because the foul language was so excessive. I didn't much care for what the content warning mentions, either.

> Morale continues to ebb the next day, and the orcs are visibly sagging on the march, muttering to one another and spreading out in spite of the admonitions of the sergeants. They need cheering up, I decide, and what better way to spread cheer than a good marching song? I go from company to company, letting each one take the lead for a few verses as I teach them the songs of my people. If I’m being honest, they probably do the best job on “Stairway to Heaven,” but “Achy Breaky Heart” is a solid effort, and you haven’t lived until you’ve heard six hundred orcs belting out *If you wanna be my lover* at the quickstep. I’m feeling very pleased with myself when there’s a sudden skirling of horns not *at all* on the beat and abruptly the sky is black with arrows.

I decided to open this review by quoting a passage of the book because this is either a book that you are going to love or hate, with no in between. The above passage is a good indicator, I think. It gives a good preview of the vibe of the entire novel.

*How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying* is an Isekai-type story. Davi is an ordinary twenty-something from 21st century America, who found herself transported into a fantasy world, told she’s the chosen one, and sets to the task of saving the Kingdom from the Dark Lord.

It doesn’t go well.

After a horrible death, she wakes up back at the instant she first appeared in the Kingdom, with all her memories intact in a *Groundhog Day* scenario. So she tries again.

It doesn’t go well.

Repeat hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and Davi is *so* over it. So this time, she is going to try something different and save-scum her way to becoming the Dark Lord instead.

It starts out purely as a lark on Davi’s part - trying something new because she’s sick of failing (and being tortured to death isn’t fun either). But the story has more heart than I initially expected. If Davi’s going to be the Dark Lord, she’s going to be good at it, and that means *no one* gets to fuck with her minions. Particularly the lady orc with the nice abs that was the leader of the first group of followers she picked up.

As I said at the top, you’ll love this or you’ll hate it. Davi is snarky, sarcastic, horny, and filled with pop culture references (comparisons to Gideon Nav are not inappropriate). That does not change. If you find it annoying from the beginning, it’s not going to get better and this isn’t the book for you. But if you find it entertaining, good news! It just keeps coming.

It’s also pure, unapologetic wish fulfillment. It’s almost like Django decided to write a book based on the prompt, “What if you were transported to a fantasy world and were also cool as shit?” Davi is very competent as an aspiring Dark Lord (which makes sense, in that she’s had a thousand years to practice hero-ing and the skills transfer). She gets laid frequently. She’s having a grand old time. And I am completely here for it.

The ending is something of a cliff hanger, but not too bad a one as these things go. And there are some very tantalizing hints that have me very curious for book 2.

Strongly recommended. Or strongly not recommended, depending on taste. One or the other.

I chose to DNF at about the 35% mark. The premise sounded great, a ground hog day type fantasy plot with a fmc who decides after dying as the hero hundreds of times, she would rather try to live as the villain.

Unfortunately, instead we got a one dimensional character who claims to not remember where she’s from originally, and yet constantly drops pop culture references. The comedy of the book was mostly derived from these references or from the fmc sexualizing many of the other characters.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley for this arc in exchange for a review

My rating: 4/5

I thought this book was funny! I know some reviews don't like it because the main character is modern, makes pop culture references, and is a normal-ish woman but thats why I liked it!
Does it not really make sense for her to say that she doesn't really remember her life before and for her constantly to be making pop culture references? Sure! I liked it anyways and was willing to look past it.
I liked the main character, Davi,she was weird (obv she's died like a bunch of times), knowledgeable, and I felt more realistic!
It's a bit crass/vulgar so if you don't like that kind of thing, this isn't for you. I however didn't mind it at all!
There is very clearly going to be another book and I can't wait!

Davi is a human transported to a fantasy world destined to become their saviour. Except she doesn’t, and now she’s stuck in a time loop where everytime she dies she starts from the beginning and tries to save the kingdom again. Except she doesn’t, and after more than 200 tries she’s done. Now Davi is trying to become the dark lord because if you can’t beat them, join them

This was so funny and I really loved the concept. Davi is obviously fed up, shes crude and flippant, and I really enjoyed her perspective as the narrator. I think this would be a great audiobook as well so I’m keeping an eye out for that release. There’s also heavy use of footnotes, which I don’t always enjoy but the information in there is important so don’t skip them! I think this book will be polarizing, you’ll either love it or won’t care for it all. I did enjoy it but I could see why someone wouldn’t. Davi is super crass and sarcastic, and sometimes it can be over the top. Overall this was fun, I’ll be excited to read the next one. It’s also my first book from this author and I think this is very different in tone than his usual writing so I’m interested to try some of his other work.
Thanks to NetGalley, Orbit and Django Wexler for this e-ARC. (Note - reviews will be posted externally closer to the release date)

What a wild ride! Dark Lord Davi sounds so good, she deserves to be the one, just by how good it sounds to say. Plus, after dying 237 times, she needs a break, or a change. She is not mad so if doing it one way never works, then it is time to try something else. And the way Davi goes about achieving her change of plans, it is easy to root for her. All are welcome in her horde and she does a good job being fair to her minions (and really nice to some, wink wink Tsav), suprisingly a nice Dark Lord, if that is possible. And though the world she ended up in is a bit harsh and holds some mysteries about the history of the place that make me really want to read the next book. It reads a bit like LITRPG, especially the way Davi resets each time she dies, plus the wilders and how she can use the thaumite like them but also wielding them as magical aids like a human though she seems to be more than both. An excellent thing for becoming a Dark Lord.

Lots of pop culture in this book and footnotes that tend to be entertaining. It also gets pretty graphic violence wise and sex wise but I still had fun reading this. Not a deep book but entertaining and I really hope the next book will be released soon after the ending in the first one leaves quite a big surprise that I want to see how Davi and horde will deal with.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book to read and review!

I'm not sure where to even start with this book. This is the first Django Wexler book and I really enjoyed it. At it's heart, it's just a quirky little adventure story. Essentially, Davi is stuck in a time-loop. She's tried to be good but it ends with her getting killed every time. After 200+ deaths, she's finally had enough and decides to go to the dark side and become the Dark Lord and see where that gets her. If you want any backstory, you aren't going to get it...at least, not in this book. You're thrown right in and you have to just go with the flow.

I loved all the characters. Davi is actually probably the most annoying but mainly because she flies by the seat of her pants without regard for others (although when you've been killed so many times, I guess it might be a little hard to worry about other people). The story is pretty fast-paced. The world-building is giving Princess Bride vibes.

I've seen other reviews about this being pretty offensive but I didn't think it was (TBH, though, I don't really get offended/triggered by much). There is a lot of cursing, sex (and talk of sex), blood and gore but it's all very campy. Just an FYI I guess.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing a free ARC of this book. I'm definitely going to be reading the next book in this series when it comes out!

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying was a really fun, clever story! I'm a sucker for a good time-loop story and this is one of the best I've read in a long time. Thoroughly enjoyed!

DNF at 40%

This book had a really great premise and started out fun, but quickly became very male gaze. The MC is a woman, and from the get-go, it felt like she was either naked or thinking about sex. I'm fine with a sexually free female character, but it seemed excessive and unnecessary.

Without the unnecessary sexual tangents, this could have been a better book. There was snark, there was comedy, there was bloody violence, everything you want in a 'villian' story. Unfortunately for me, it was hitting all the wrong notes and I learned a long time ago not to force myself to read something I'm not enjoying.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance reader's copy of the book. Holy cow! This book was a wild ride from start to finish, and now I have to wait for whenever the next one comes out?!?! I don't know if I can wait. This book was fun and creative and definitely took the typical tropes of fantasy and tossed them off a cliff. I was intrigued and curious to see how the story would progress and what would happen with the main character from page one and I couldn't put the book down. I greatly enjoyed this book and applaud the author for writing a fun story. This is my first read of this author, and I will be looking into their other works in the future. 10 out of 10