Long Live Evil, the story of a young woman's second chance at life, is a unique and unpredictable novel that offers the perspective of what it would be like to take part in your favourite fantasy novel. Brennan does an excellent job at making the reader reconsider the role of the villain, and how even the evilest of characters has hidden depths. Brennan highlights the sexist tropes and cliches present in modern fantasy, and gets readers to reconsider long-held perspectives. Long Live Evil is epic fantasy at its most unique. Highly recommended.

This was such a great story! It is every book lovers dream to get dragged into their favorite book story and quizzed on it.

As someone who was catapulted into a months-long depressive episode after experiencing Sarah Rees Brennan’s IN OTHER LANDS, I don’t know why I thought LONG LIVE EVIL would be any different.

Brennan’s writing is exactly my type of humour, which means that I found LONG LIVE EVIL absolutely hilarious. Brennan’s writing manages to capture the soul-crushing, hollow, and hopeless feeling years of depression buries you under, which means I found LONG LIVE EVIL unbearably relatable. And Brennan’s writing understands people—self-destructive people, messy people, angry people, real people—and treats them with sympathy, which means I found LONG LIVE EVIL absolutely heartbreaking. In short, I cried, which is very hard to do on SSRIs.

In my star rating system, I have five-stars as “I loved it, and probably had (or am having) an unhealthy amount of emotions about it. Certainly not perfect—what is?—but in my heart, it might as well be.” That pretty much sums it up.

I would like to thank Orbit Books, NetGalley , and the author for an advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

Read if you like:
🐍 Villains as MCs
😈 Dark Humor
📖 Story within a story
🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Found Family

3️⃣ POV
📍 Themesvar (fictional)

“Isn’t that how love works? You open your heart for the knife.”

“Nobody lived forever, but a story can. Stories are how I survive. When I’m fighting to live, I think to myself: what a story to tell my sister. I will be her favorite story. I will be the greatest story she ever heard.”

Rae finds herself on a quest inside her favorite fantasy series. Problem is, she’s the villainess who’s supposed to be murdered by her fictional crush. She soon realizes though, that the plot has changed and the war that’s supposed to happen in a later book is happening now. She has to take control of the narrative to get what she needs to make it out of the story.

What a wild ride! Long Live Evil is action-packed, funny, and dark (beware if you’re squeamish about blood) but with a heavy dose of sisterly love and found family. This is the definition of morally grey; you’re not sure who is really on what side but you kinda love them all. The beginning felt a little bit slow and I definitely had to pay attention since there’s two story lines happening: what’s supposed the be happening in the book and what’s actually happening with Rae. But, the last quarter of the book made up for it, it was crazy in a good way and I was so shocked by the ending I had to read the last couple chapters twice. This is a great book for spooky season if you want to fall for the villain.

DNF @27% - I genuinely tried my hardest with this book, I promise. I truly wanted to love it. It sounded right up my alley. However, this has been such a bore. I cannot stand it. Absolutely nothing has happened so far. It is so slow moving. All the characters read the exact same to me, and the writing is so unnececarily dense. I just can’t with this book anymore. I also think it has some tonal issues. It tries to bland the funny & modern with the medieval & serious but it just fails spectacularly at that in my opinion. I do think if this was solely in Rae’s POV and we fastened the pacing a little this could have been a decently fun book though.

I feel like I went into this with different expectations and that’s on me. It doesn’t feel fair to highlight things I didn’t like, as I grossly misinterpreted what was to be expected.

I was unable to get through this book, though I was excited to read it. Just never caught my attention

Unfortunately, this just wasn’t it for me. My least favorite read of the year. Very disappointed. Plot seemed promising. It just wasn’t executed to its potential.

Free eARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher for reviewing purposes.

This is a weird one, friends, and it certainly won't be for everyone. Our main character, Rae, dying of cancer, is given a magical opportunity to be sucked into her favorite book series (which seems to be inspired by Game of Thrones) and retrieve an item (a flower that only blooms once a year) to save her life in the real world. Unfortunately for her, she takes over the body of the series' villainess, scheduled to die the next morning. The introduction of this premise was not really interesting to me, so I had a couple false starts, but once I was past 10% I read through the rest quickly.
This book is kind of confusing- the worldbuilding of the book series is hard to follow- Rae is an expert on it (sort of- she skipped the first book of the series which is the time period she is dropped into) so not much is really explained to the reader. Some of the characterizations are inconsistent, but I really enjoyed some of the side characters. The real problem is Rae's inability to understand that the story she knows from the books changes because she is interfering in the story. This seems like it should be obvious-(SPOILER) just by avoiding her own character's execution, she is majorly changing the story, but she seems surprised every time things don't happen as she expects them to because she knows the story. There are definitely cringey parts and dialogue, and the book is sometimes too self aware and meta for its own good, but it was compelling to read and I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. Ultimately, though, I'm not sure if I'll be back for the next in the series.

Clever and hilarious, this book lover's dream is a must read for anyone who has cheered on the anti-hero and dreamed of being swept into the world of their favorite novel.
The characters are likable and I cheered for Rae, even in her darkest moments. This was a fantastic read.

I enjoy isekai fantasies where the protagonist specifically goes into a book. It’s so popular in East Asian literature that it has its own genre category in Chinese known as “transmigration into a book”. It’s a much rarer in English books though, so I was pretty ecstatic there was one tacking the trope. Unfortunately, I have to say the book just isn’t for me. It was ok, and unfortunately it took a while for me to finally find the motivation to finish it. The humour didn’t really hit and I had a hard time liking Rae. The thing is, while I understand the reasoning, I can’t get over some of the decisions and attitude Rae had because she didn’t believe the story and characters are real. Nevertheless the ending was pretty interesting, so I am interested to see where the next book will go.

I was so pumped to read Long Live Evil. I really was. I mean, when it's pitched as 'A Tale for everyone's who's ever fallen for the villain', you know I had to give it a shot.
Unfortunately, I really couldn't get into the book, and I ended up giving up after about 40%.
I really struggled, and even tried to listen to the audiobook to get into the story, but I never managed to get really hooked. I do think this book will find its audience, because it is a cool concept, and the series has a lot of potential. It just wasn't for me.
Thank you to Orbit for a chance to read this book.

Thank you Orbit and NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review!

I had heard a lot of chatter about this before I picked it up, but I was rather hopeful because I really loved the author’s other book, In Other Lands. While I admit it was a bit of a rocky start and at times a little much for me, I had a lot of fun with this and deeply appreciate Long Live Evil for what it is.

I think Sarah Rees Brennan is very funny, and while I had a general idea of what to expect from her humor-wise, I was a little worried this might be over the top based on what I had been seeing other people say. There are times, and perhaps one certain scene, where it was a bit much for me but overall the tone of this worked for me and I thought it was hilarious. There’s obviously some more serious stuff going on, but this book isn’t taking itself super seriously and I don’t think it wants the reader too, either. I mean, Rae gets isekai’d into a fantasy land where she should know the story but is really just out here practicing the ancient practice of fake it til you make it. There are things she thinks she knows which ends up causing the story to change, or she thinks she knows something and is wrong because she hadn’t remembered correctly. I think I would’ve had a much worse time had I approached this as a Serious Fantasy and not Fantasy Novel Embodying Camp. Even when I saw plot twists coming, the way Rae and the narrative gets from point A to point B still had me glued to the pages. And despite the fact this is mostly a fun romp, there are more serious notes that did not feel out of place despite the otherwise humorous tone.

There’s pacing issues galore in the middle of the novel, which made reading kind of chaotic but I had fun nonetheless. The characters outside of Rae and a certain other individual felt a little flat, though I suppose part of that comes from getting them filtered through Rae and the fact that this is very obviously a fictional world she’s been transported to that she doesn’t fully remember the details of, but you know. They still weren’t the most well rounded individuals. Still, the last 25% of the novel was bonkers and I felt it made the muddled middle worth it. I think this book asks you to suspend disbelief a little more than other fantasy books do, and asks you to embrace the adage “I am cringe but I am free,” so this won’t be for everyone, but who cares! I had a good time!

I've been a long time fan of Sarah Rees Brennan, and I did ultimately enjoy this novel even though it wasn't my favorites. Primarily I think this really has the opportunity to improve as a series as it continues. The first installment did feel a little overly-indulgent and chaotic at times, but there was still a good foundation to the story and I had fun. Looking forward to see where this goes next.

I was absolutely hooked to this fun, outrageous, clever book! I loved the idea behind a character being able to escape into their favorite book series:) Thank you so much for the arc!

I love a villianess
And was surprised this was an isekai story. While I have read many throughout they years but I still cannot get enough of them. I found so many of the tropes I love coming to life and cannot wait to see them continue in the next one

Thank you to Orbit Books and NetGalley for this ARC. I absolutely loved this book. Having a way to fall into the world of your favorite series is a great concept and how it played out was fabulous. Rae is a well-rounded character who has been screwed over in life and now is ready to get what she wants. She knows enough of the story to be a menace and, oh goodness, that ending got me. There was well done foreshadowing and character growth and reality popping out behind the myth. Holy frijole. I cannot wait for the next in this series to come out to see exactly where this is all going to go.. I am praying it is only a duology so I can finish it off with the next novel but if this becomes a trilogy and can maintain this level of greatness, I will happily devour it.

Im so sorry, I DNF’d this book because I could not get over how unserious the narrator was. She wasn’t evil, she was just a girl and maybe that’s the point I’m missing and maybe I’ll come back to it but I just was not vibing with the story.

Deliciously wicked. Endlessly quotable. Subversive and thought-provoking. Rees Brennan has created a world you want to immerse yourself in and has set it in a whirl—a plot that’ll leave you hanging breathless beyond the final page.

Sadly, I wasn't able to connect with this book. It may be my mood, but I hope to circle back to this one at a later time to try again.
DNF at 7%.