How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is so imaginative and the humor alone was my favorite part about it. The main character Davi is essentially a regular woman who finds herself stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario for over a thousand years. When we meet Davi she is already on Life #237 and we, the reader, are instantly given a crash course in how the time loop works in this fantasy world. I liked the RPG feel to the story, I felt like I was getting a more in-depth experience with a character in a video game campaign. I will admit that Davi started to irritate me with the constant snarky and witty remarks. I know that was kind of the point of her character, it just became a bit too much at times. The footnotes were a fun addition though a bit overdone in my opinion. This is the kind of book that you can’t take to0 seriously and if you do, you probably won’t enjoy it. I found it to be an overall entertaining and fast read! If you are looking for a satirical take on an epic fantasy, give this one a try. But be warned it definitely isn’t for everyone. Thank you to Orbit for providing an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4.5*

Cross between Dungeons & Dragons and DeadPool.
This novel has fourth-wall breaks and silly footnote interjections. Ridiculous, hilarious, vulgar.

This book is so different for me. I usually stay away from a lot of swearing and even fantasy to be honest. There were a handful of references used that went over my head, but it didn’t take away from the story too much.

I really enjoyed the magic system. The Thaumite stones being the source of this world's magic was logically consistent and not overly complicated.

When the main character Davi dies, she wakes up in a pool of water. She’s woken up in this pool of water thousands of times. It’s where she first opened her eyes in this other world. It could be months or years before she died, but it’s always the same restart point. I will say that the choice to make the reincarnation process more like Dark Souls rather than Groundhog’s Day does add stakes to her adventures. She can’t just die and wake up or rewind time to the moment just before her mistake, to try again. The more time that passes and choices she makes from the starting point, means it’s more difficult to start all over.

Around the 40%-70% mark, when Davi is at a point of no return, she's wrapped up in some political and survival drama, and it starts to drag. There were two big plot points that happened back-to-back and I found it quite strange how many similarities there were between them. It felt a bit too repetitive. Also, a lot of talk about not having enough food and worrying about supplies and packing them and unpacking them. The original gimmick (reincarnating/returning to start) is barely even mentioned at this point and it starts to feel like everything is a bit too convenient. When everything keeps working out and everyone is relatively unscathed, it feels somewhat ridiculous in a not-so fun way, and slows the pace down. It does start to pick up again after 70%, because Davi will start to talk about lessons she’s learned over the vast amount of lives she’s lived and in general the action increases.

Reading the author’s note at the back, I totally see that the Isekai anime/manga sub-genre was a big inspiration. Other than the definitional similarities, this story really played as an anime in my mind. It has levity and doesn’t take itself too seriously and also has times of high action and character growth.

This is a bit of a guilty pleasure as a self described prude. If you give this a try you may find a new favorite. Beware, there is a bit of Millennial cringe.

Thank you to Orbit Books and NetGalley for this advanced copy.

I found this book to be hilarious and enjoyed it. I loved the ‘Groundhog Day’ meets ‘Happy Death Day’ vibe. It was also interesting and refreshing to know that this was a high fantasy but had modern elements to it (I read the word “Reddit” and laughed). The world building was great and I found Davi and her companions/allies that she made along her journey to be comical. It definitely had sexual themes, crudeness, violence, and was crass in some moments, but it didn’t phase me personally. It’s not a book for everyone, but the right audience will appreciate it for what it’s worth.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for my eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The humor and rocky start of the book put me off for the rest of the story. There some good snarky moments and interesting creatures but none of this saves the book for me.

I don’t know if I have ever laughed reading a book as much as this. This is such a marvelous book, and I truly enjoyed my experience reading it. I could not recommend it enough. Full of fantastic characters, brilliant world-building, and hilarious banter, this is book is a must read for anyone who’s ever wondered “what would happen if the chosen one decided they don’t want to be the good guy anymore?”

Davi has been stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario for way too long. She’s seen what feels like every way her story could go, but she can never get past the final boss. No worries, she can just die and try all over again, right? Not this time. This time, she’s had enough. If she can’t make it as the hero, why not try to become the villain instead?

Davi may not be your typical dark lord, but she’s got the confidence, moxie, and just enough knowledge of the future to get her far. Hopefully. If not, she can just start all over again, right? Even if she’s gotten so far it would be an inconvenience if not impossible to recreate the exact scenarios that got her this far.

Davi’s minions are diverse and equally as funny as she is. Droff was one of my favorite characters. Who doesn’t love a giant rock creature who takes everything literally? Davi wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without her minions.

The one complaint I have from the whole book as a technical one. The formatting for the endnotes and annotations was inconvenient in digital form. It’s fine as a physical book, and they add very funny anecdotes to the story, but the jumping back and forth, or having the endnotes open on my phone, was a bit annoying.

With pop culture references, epic adventure, and witty writing, this book is a hilarious departure from your normal “chosen one” story. I was never bored reading it, and I can’t wait for more. Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. I personally enjoyed the humor and pop culture references since Davi is from Earth who essentially travels and ends up in a time loop. I've not read anything like this and it has me so excited for the following book.
The magic and world being was great! The magic system is very unique.

Looking forward to the next one.

This story packed full of action and was hilarious and brilliantly written. I loved the time loop concept being applied to someone who was clearly outside of her own land, but was forced into this situation and stuck reliving it and trying to save the land as a hero. After failing so often, the only logical choice is to just become the Dark Lord. Fantastic plotting and concept development on this one.

I really enjoyed Davi and found myself literally laughing out loud (that rarely happens) at her humor and a lot of the references she makes. There are so many jokes in the footnotes and they often caught me off guard. This is a book that doesn’t take itself seriously in a really good way yet also creates such a cool high fantasy plot at the same time.

Honestly, I feel like this book is my reward for all the Eddings, Brooks, Goodkind, et al, that I spent reading as a child. If you spent a childhood reading as many high fantasy hero's journeys as you could get your hands on... this book is redemption and reward. If you ever read any of those novels and thought to yourself, Why are the girls in these books plot devices instead of characters? or Why is the hero such a goddamn goody-goody? or Surely the xenophobic trope-y bad guys have their own inner lives and motivations? Then you will love this book. I can only describe the feeling I had when reading this as "glee". I wanted to do a Disney-villain-style song and dance over this book, except I couldn't put it down long enough to write the lyrics.

Put your typical high fantasy hero into a time loop and give them a hundred thousand lives where they never, ever win. Is it actually a time loop? Is it a video game? Who knows! Our hero Davi certainly doesn't, and she's tired as hell of losing. Nothing she's tried has saved her, her friends, or her supposed destiny.

So she decides, quite literally, to say fuck it. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. If she can't defeat the Dark Lord, then she'll just become the Dark Lord.

Except, she discovers, it isn't quite that easy. In a world where the hero resets back to the beginning of the journey every time they die, it's quite easy to think that actions have no consequences. Other people's feelings... other people's lives... don't really matter. They're video game NPCs, there to be used as fodder for battle or just amusement.

Or are they? Davi thought she understood the rules of this strange world she's been trapped in. Except, she doesn't. Something's different, and she doesn't know how or why.

I love this book so much that I want to sleep with it under my pillow, which is hard to do with an eBook because it only sort of exists. If you're squeamish over naughty language or a little (okay, a lot) of girl-on-orc-girl sex, then maybe you should get over yourself and read this book anyway. It's awesome.

**warning: this book is raunchy!! It’s a very adult book with adult language, themes, and actions. If you are expecting YA fantasy this is NOT it**
How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying follows the FMC Davi. Davi is done being the good girl. She continuously attempts to save the Kingdom but at one point or another, she fails. So what’s a girl to do? The answer: team up with the bad guys. Davi wants to fight for the winning team but not just that, she wants to be the next dark lord.

I LOVED this book!! It’s hilarious! There are a lot of pop culture references and turns of phrase from a modern time but that what makes it better. I loved how unabashedly Davi was herself. It didn’t matter she was from a different time or even a different world. The book is fast paced and super fun. My ONLY qualm is the chapter length. This book is 432 pages long and has TWELVE chapters!! Hello?! That’s my only critique. 4.5/5 stars!

Wow! What a fantastic read! I was simultaneously blown away by the concept and reeled in deeper by th plot, action and characters! Picture your actual body being transplanted abruptly into a fantasy video game world living your life of quests only to forget to autosave so that when you for real straight up die, you get transported back to where you started only to do it all over again and again and again and again with varying degrees of success and failure. So thats where we begin with Davi in her 273 iteration of life deciding that shes done playing nice and instead wants to rule from the dark side. This book was so fantastic i literally couldnt stop telling people about it! I need the next one soooo bad!

DNF 41%

This is such a messy (in a good way) book and I loved the irreverent personality of the main character. It’s a comedy of errors in many ways, but also hella gory and seriously messy morals (or maybe a total lack of them). I was having fun with this, but also it was dragging in really major ways and I finally just set it aside and just…never picked it up again. I may come back to this when I’ve got more brain power to stay focused, but for now going to call this wrong timing and not being the right reader for the book.

I think the tag line nailed it with this book, Ground Hog Day meets Deadpool, Davi has a very similar disposition to Deadpool's. If you're someone who enjoyed the Deadpool movies then you will like this book. There is a warning at the beginning of the book as a heads up to readers, if you're not okay with self harm, explicit sex scene, and raunchy humor, then this book isn't for you. Which, lets be honest is basically a Deadpool movie. The author is a man who writes his MC as a bisexual woman, by the way, most of his books MC's are women. If you're not the target audience then don't read this, but also don't dash on the author for writing something like Deadpool. Different people like different things. I could care less what gender and sexual orientation the author or characters are, funny to me is funny to me. I personally thought this was highly entertaining and very funny. Davi is super snarky and doesn't care what you think. I ate this book up in a matter of a few days time, this isn't going to win any literary awards or break any ground, but it sure will entertain some of us.

This book is a dark humorous fantasy adventure book. Think Lord of the Rings but Frodo decides to keep the ring and try to become a dark lord. This book is also very vulgar unlike lord of the rings.

I enjoyed this book! I love when a narrator is self aware and talking to the audience, especially when they joke around. We get a lot of inner monologue as well which I tend to enjoy in a book. I really enjoyed the adventure and quest elements in this one as well.

The characters were very unique and I liked the different personalities. You grow to like orcs and stone eaters. The pacing was good in this book because it was full of action.

This book also had one of my favorite things, footnotes! I love when a book has footnotes and these added some extra humor to the book. I do wish it was formatted differently on my kindle but I bet it’ll be fine on the physical copy.

I do feel like the story was just too vulgar for me. There were a lot of f bombs and references to sex and stuff. I don’t mind a bit in a book but this was just a little too much in my opinion and it was distracting. If that is something that doesn’t bother you, I bet you’ll love this one.

I did have a fun time reading this one and I would recommend! I’m not a big fantasy reader but this one was funny and action packed so I liked it.

Thanks so much to netgalley and Orbit books for the arc of this in exchange for an honest review!

3.5 Stars - I enjoyed it!

I will start by saying - this is geared towards a specific audience. There is a lot of crude & lewd language and one extremely horny "Dark-Lord-in-Waiting". It definitely gave me Groundhog Day meets Deadpool vibes (language, violence, etc.) so if that is your jam, or if you're in the mood for a goofy fantasy that should not be taken seriously, and you are not offended easily, go ahead and give this a whirl.

Early on, Davi told me (the reader) to "F*ck off to the sun" for trying to give her advice, and I realized this was going to be fun with this feisty MC. I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free outside of what is shared in the bio.

Davi has been stuck in a failed heroes loop for hundreds of lives. No matter how hard she tries, she is always killed while trying to defeat the Dark Lord. So finally - she decides to screw it (and several others - with tails, tusks, and all), and tries to switch sides.

This was a fun world filled with wilders, orcs, stone eaters, yetis, you name it. Davi's only real plan is to fake her way through things with no solid plan, but we come to discover she's actually a rather skilled tactician given all her experience from her previous lives.

I really enjoyed the side characters and how Davi questions her decisions like she never had before when she was fighting for the "good guys". I enjoyed Davi's humor and continued validation of her actions to the reader throughout the story.

There are a lot of pop culture references which most of the time I enjoyed (I chuckled when she referenced drawing up an org chart for her Dark Lord horde), but I will admit - there are a LOT specific to popular video games, movies, songs, etc that had me questioning the time and world a few times.

While the story was fun, it took me quite a while to get through it - as an ebook I didn't realize it was 400+ pages until I was only a third of the way in, I felt this story could have either been reduced to closer to 300 pages, or been a bit longer to conclude the entire story.

Thank you, NetGalley & Orbit, for this eARC. I am interested in seeing how this story evolves in the second book.

This is my first Django Wexlar boom. From reading the acknowledgments, it sounds like this title is very different from his other works. There is comedy, satire, and footnotes! I adore dark humor and sarcasm. These footnotes, like those in Nevernight, can be read all together. You remember enough of what happened in the chapter for them to be relevant. Most just add more humor, not information necessarily. I loved this book. I'm loving cozy fantasy right now. This is a bit more than that, but very similar themes. If I have one complaint, it's the references Davi makes. The people of this world can not understand. It's just adding the reader to the story, like breaking the 4th wall. Things I adored were all the grown up parts, the rated R rating stuff. I hope Davi embraces her dark side in the sequels. A bad guy with a heart is charming either way. I have never read a book with video game references such as this. I loved it. It's very different, and I enjoyed it. All I wanted to do was read this book and life kept interrupting.

I feel really conflicted about my rating for this book. I was really, really looking forward to this read because I have really loved previous series by Django Wexler. This one, however, just wasn't for me. I feel that the synopsis leads you to believe this will be a dark comedy, of sorts, but in actuality this story is brutally violent and surprisingly sexual. This read sort of like a novelization of a Critical Role campaign, if that campaign was crass and infuriating. I don't mind sex in my books--I am an adult woman, so the sex isn't the issue. It was more the incessant nature of the sexual remarks. I was really getting into the swing of a certain part and then BAM we are talking about licking toes; it immediately draws you out of the story.
The format (with footnotes), the characters, the themes, the writing, it just was all not for me. I can see why people will like this, or if you're a fan of more gritty and crass writing, you'll definitely enjoy it. This just wasn't for me, and I don't know if I will be picking up the sequel for this story. I will, however, pick up *other* works by this author as I have loved Wexler's other fantasy stories.

How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying was lots of fun to read. After too many attempts to stop the Dark Lord and dying every time, Davi decides to become the Dark Lord instead. If you enjoy action and darker humor this will be a great choice. In terms of content, the description of Groundhog Day meets Deadpool is far more accurate than what is in Goodreads (Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy).

Note: ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Final Rating: 3.5

"I am the Dark Lord, not Lord of the f*cking Boy Scouts."

This was a fun book! But I will say to anyone looking to read this that the humor can be very crud (which I'm fine with myself) and there are a LOT of popular references made, as the main character Davi is actually from our world.

The biggest issue that I had with this is how Davi was so sex-obsessed and preoccupied with how good in bed she thinks everyone would be, that it's clear she's written by a man. (Not once in my life have a heard a woman say she's been 'wanking hard enough to give herself tennis elbow').

There are also a LOT of footnotes, which I know doesn't bother a lot of people but I truly hate having to stop to read footnotes, so I wish those had been worked into the main story somehow.

"Everyone who followed me did it because I told them I would become the Dark Lord and lead them to glory. I can't exactly say, 'Whoops, guys, it's too scary, how about we hit Taco Bell instead?"

But I did find a lot of the references to be pretty funny, and I definitely laughed quite a few times.

"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."

Overall this was just a fun read, but it didn't really hit the spot that I thought it would. I'd say to give it a go, especially if any of these quotes made you snort laugh like I did. For the humor alone I'll definitely be picking up the sequel.

Absolute delight of a romp in fantasy. The premise was neat and the cast of characters Davi befriends are all interesting. I also enjoyed the little footnotes at the end of each chapter.

Thank you to NetGalley, Orbit, and Django Wexler for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this title. An honest review was requested but not required.

I feel like How to Become the Dark Lord is in its own new genre, a fourth-wall shattering RPG fantasy mashup of Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft and Princess Bride's tongue-in-cheek. At times it was very funny, and I laughed out loud, and at other times I felt myself rolling my eyes. It felt like, for lack of better description, a fantasy setup designed by a male person in which the main female character has those giant spherical boobs and a waist the size of a hornet and swaggers around with a weapon belt slung around her Kim Kardashian hips, having sex with pretty much anything and anyone in her path. I don't even think Davi (FMC) was even physically described; that's just the vibe I got. It wasn't offensive but it felt a little campy.

Davi's attitude was a lot; she is very irreverent and mouthy and full of attitude, but I tried to look at it as "she's been dying repeatedly for 1000 years, of course she's over it!". I would have thought that with her thousand years of experience she would have picked up WAY sooner on Amiguro (sp?), the fox wilder. I mean, I was on to him pretty much immediately, and I'm not one to hunt for clues while reading. I really liked the wilders' magic system, with the thaumite; that was super creative.

I would read the sequel to find out what Davi does with her newly acquired title, and how she plans to manage her giant wilder horde. I <3 logistics! lol.


3.5 stars