My Five Word TL:DR Review: Slow Start But Have Patience

I will admit that I had a brief moment when I first started reading Long Live Evil where I considered setting it to one side to pick up at a later time (and lets just face it I’m not kidding anyone when I say that because everyone knows that book will then be doomed).  Fortunately I pressed on and I’m so glad that I did because I ended up really enjoying this and loving the characters.  And, quite unexpectedly, because I seemed to have convinced myself that this was a standalone novel, it seems that there is more to come.  Which is a relief because otherwise that ending would be very puzzling indeed.

So, basically, as the story begins we meet Rae, in hospital with cancer.  Her sister spends a lot of time at her bedside reading stories and in particular the one fantasy series that they both love for very different reasons.  Not to beat about the bush Rae is seriously ill, she is visited one day by a mysterious woman who, in a nutshell, lays things on the line.  She’s not going to survive and her family will be destitute after paying for all the treatment.  Said mystery woman offers Rae a chance at survival.  She can enter the world contained in her favourite fantasy series, as one of the characters and use her time there to retrieve a magic flower, if she retrieves the Flower of Life she will return to her own world and recover.  If not, well, she won’t be returning.  Of course Rae takes the deal, when you have one choice at survival what you going to do, but, on waking in the country of Eyam, and discovering she is in the body of Lady Rahela, she soon deduces she may have been duped.  Lady Rahela is about to be executed the very next day for treason and, being all too familiar with the storyline Rae knows exactly the torturous death she’s about to face.  She needs to come up with a plan.

I won’t give away any spoilers but instead discuss general thoughts and feelings.

I feel I should mention that it did take me some time to get into this one.  I’d say a good 30%.  Possibly because there’s quite a lot to take on board in the early stages and also because it took me a little while to really get a handle on what was going on and where the story was actually going.  Rae’s knowledge of the world, particularly from the first book in the series is sketchy and so I felt like I was stumbling around a little at first in much the same way that she was – although she had a much better handle on the key characters and all their ridiculous nicknames. In the early stages I wondered if this was going to be similar to the Princess Bride but I was soon disabused of that notion as this isn’t about somebody telling a tale to a sick person but instead it’s the sick person actually taking part in the tale themselves.  That being said, much like the Princess Bride, it does poke fun, and has a good time doing so, at the tropes of fantasy which is something I really enjoyed.

The characters.  I really did like so many of the characters.  I’m not sure you’re supposed to like a murdering, sociopathic bodyguard but I did.  I couldn’t help it.  He was a two faced duplicitious so and so for the most part who wouldn’t hesitate to slit your throat and steal the dress off your back – his name is Key.  We also have Emer, Lady Rahela’s maid.  She’s not best pleased with her lady, as we soon find out, and with good reason, but she plays such a good role and soon finds out she’s a dab hand at wielding an axe.  The Golden Cobra is probably my favourite character, a charmed man, he runs the local brothel and has a laid back attitude and a way with words, he’s blackmailing one of the heroes of the piece in order to gain access to the castle and the nobility.  Okay, I’m not going to list all the characters, they all seem to have fallen straight out of a Diane Wynne Jones Tough Guide to Fantasy.  They all have a role to play and their characters are almost carved from stone.  Rahela for example, she’s the evil woman who connived to win the crown and the King by seeing her step sister put to death.  She’s also branded a seductress and the funny thing is, whether she’s angry or sad, happy or indifferent her curves are always resplendent, she walks with a sultry sway and her voice is set at a level to seduce – she’s the evil seductress, this is her character, but of course, she’s also Rae.

Now, what Rae soon discovers, much like a time traveller who has jumped back to tinker with events thereby changing the future, the plot of this story has similarly become an unknown beast.  In escaping her own execution Rahela has turned the course of the story and she’s now set on a desperate mission to put it back on track.  At first she doesn’t feel any remorse, these are not real people after all, they’re characters in a book, but Rae is also now living in these pages and her actions have very real repercussions.

I really enjoyed the writing style.  Rae, being a 21st century girl, quite often acts or says things that are way too modern to belong in a mediaeval setting but I really liked these moments, because she is, after all not from that period and it leads to a few comedic repercussions.  I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a laugh out loud sort of story, it made me frequently smile or raise my eyebrows at the shenanigans taking place and I did enjoy a lot of the dialogue, particularly when it involved, Rae, Key or the Cobra.

In conclusion, I was surprised to find that this wasn’t a standalone (I don’t know why I thought it was to be honest), and happily surprised because I’m more than intrigued and keen to see where this story goes next.  I’m not at this point sure this is the story I thought I was going to get but I enjoyed it perhaps even more for the unusual route it took me down.  And, in spite of the snarky brevity and sometimes light feel to the story it raises some heavy topics.  Rae, after all, is very sick, she’s also lonely and angry and so the opportunity to be the ‘bad girl’ really appealed to her but even with the freedom that falling from grace can bring she is actually still a good person who really wants to get home (and not kill everyone else in the process of doing so).  Perhaps there’ll be some ruby slippers in book 2.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publishers, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opiniion.

My rating 4 of 5 dastardly villainous stars