Portal Fantasies are one of the most traditional kinds of fantasies, those in which characters from “the real world” find themselves transported to a land of fairy, or magic, perhaps the most famous being The Wizard of Oz. Entering the fantasy world of a book is a fun twist on the portal fantasy and that’s exactly what Sarah Rees Brennand explores in Long Live Evil, her adult fantasy debut.
A TALE FOR EVERYONE WHO’S EVER FALLEN FOR THE VILLAIN…
When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series.
She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she’s not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor’s tale.
So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they’re doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor’s fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.
This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain’s shoes, for an adventure that is both ‘brilliant’ (Holly Black) and ‘supremely satisfying’ (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue’s gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.
Rae was a cheerleader, she has a younger sister who also happens to be her best friend, but Rae also has cancer and a child of broken family. When she’s nearing the end of her young life, she’s given the choice to embrace a new life…the life of the most infamous woman – Lady Rahela, The Beauty Dipped in Blood – from the fantasy novels she reads with her sister – A Time of Iron, which also is the name of Brennan’s series. Rae also developed a crush on the Big Bad of the series, the Once and Forever Emperor, but she essentially enters the story in the first book before King Octavian harnesses his otherworldly powers and becomes the Emperor.
When Rae is transformed into the Beauty Dipped in Blood, she’s on the brink of execution for conspiring against the emperor. But unlike the characters in the books, Rae realizes she’s in a story and knows how it plays out. For the most part. So, she plays into her evil side, puts together a rag-tag crew to help her ensure Evil wins. This motley crew consists of her maidservant, Emer; the palace guard, Key of the Cauldron; and thee Golden Cobra, aka the wicked Marquis of Popenjoy. Opposing these villain protagonists are Lia; “Rahela’s” stepsister and the “Last Hope,” the shining knight Lord Marius Valerius.
Rae is able to convince the King not to follow-through on the execution by claiming to be a prophet. Because she’s read the book, she’s got a pretty good chance of predicting the future. This, of course, changes events a little bit. Kind of like Marty McFly pushing his father out of the way of his grandfather’s car.
OK, enough of my recap of the novel. Long Live Evil was an enormously fun novel. This is a story that plays with tropes and uses them to its advantage in curious, playful, and smart ways. Rae is a person I couldn’t help root for and rally behind, even when she was being a little bit snarky and obnoxious. In some ways, her being pulled into the narrative and using slang is not unlike John Chrichton using common jokes and pop culture phrases in FarScape, only to have his shipmates shake their heads at him. This trope has the potential to wear thin quickly, but Brennan plays it with a very even hand. …and that’s how she plays this novel/story overall. It embraces the genre, turns it on its head, and outcomes something that is that wonderful balance of familiar and new spin.
Of all the portal fantasies I’ve read, I couldn’t help drawing pleasant comparisons to Stephen R. Donaldson’s landmark Thomas Covenant series. Of course, Rae is a not nearly the embittered jerk Covenant is, but both find themselves thrust into a fantastical world as a remedy for their life-threatening conditions. Both characters deny certain aspects of their new reality, while Covenant denies the whole of it, Rae doesn’t think of anybody in this fantastical world as people, they are “just characters.” Thoughts like that have consequences, in most cases and most stories.
Brennan is a cancer survivor so there is of course some resonance between the protagonist and the writer here. I can’t imagine what that kind of trauma would be like, but it can be a transformative trauma. Rae, the one-time cheerleader, takes her new lease on life in a fictional world with “characters” and not people, to basically say F**k it, I’m going to be evil. I’m going to embrace what this new life has given me and lean into it big time and live it up like I don’t have much to lose because I lost most of it already.
Long Live Evil is an incredible start to the Time of Iron series. There’s fun, but there’s also deep stuff playing in the background like the cancer element, of course, but something about believing in yourself. Sometimes it takes being thrust into an unreal situation to get to the heart of who we are. There’s more to Rae and far more to the world of this series, but Brennan has laid down quite a few clues along the way. Clues to events within the book that felt somewhat obvious in hindsight, and I suspect some other clues to the series as a whole that may play along a similar path as Rae continues her journey as The Beauty Dipped in Blood. In other words, a perfect series starter – closure to a story, but there tantalizing breadcrumbs in the novel make it clear we have much more story to experience. I for one, cannot wait.
Long Live Evil will easily find a spot in my best of the year list, and quite high on that list.
Highly recommended.
© 2024 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | Orbit Books
August 2024 | 464 Pages
https://www.sarahreesbrennan.com/
Excerpt: https://www.orbit-books.co.uk/orbit-books-news/2024/07/08/read-an-extract-from-long-live-evil-by-sarah-rees-brennan/
https://www.sarahreesbrennan.com/book/long-live-evil/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher