Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler

Book Review

Matthew Johns

The sequel to the very funny How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, Wexler does not disappoint with the tricky second book in the Dark Lord Davi duology.

It had been a good year or two since I’d read the first book, so I was super grateful that this began with a recap of the first book. These books are written in the first person, from the perspective of the protagonist, Davi. A young woman who finds herself somehow transported to The Kingdom – a magical world, where in the first book she wakes up in a pool with a wizard telling her that her destiny is to save the Kingdom. She tries and fails to defeat the Dark Lord, and dies, waking up in the pool again, and again (and again) hundreds upon hundreds of times, seemingly stuck in a loop. Until she decides that perhaps trying to defeat the Dark Lord is the wrong tactic, so maybe she should become the Dark Lord and save the Kingdom that way. She works her way up, falls in love with a burly, female orc named Tsav, builds her own horde and becomes the Dark Lord. Her narration is frankly hilarious – snarky, packed full of quips, observations, and comparisons to the half-remembered world she came from (our world). The initial recap in this book is told in the same way, and had me laughing out loud from the start.

The rest of the book continues apace as Dark Lord Davi tries to broker peace across the Kingdom, despite the best (or worst) intentions of a duke determined to keep fighting the non-humans, Artaxas, the priest of the Old Ones (the legendary Founders of the Kingdom), and restless armies. Wexler’s writing is excellent – full of witticisms, strong female characters, treacherous male characters, and magic galore.

The Dark Lord Duology is a great new take on high fantasy, packed with humour, sex, violence and thrills. Wexler builds a world populated with believable (and some unbelievable!) characters, with relationships that resonate and sometimes make the mind boggle, and dialogue that will have you alternately blushing and laughing. I did not want this book to end as I was enjoying Davi’s adventures far too much, but all good things must inevitably come to an end. If you’ve read and enjoyed authors like Douglas Adams, Terry Practchett, Tom Holt and even Jasper Fforde, you’ll enjoy Django Wexler’s work. If you’re yet to discover any of the aforementioned authors, this is a great starting point.