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A review by rg9400
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I picked up this book because it was being narrated by Moira Quirk, my favorite audiobook narrator. Long Lives Evil is a messy book. Sometimes that mess leads to really interesting things, other times, not as much. At a high level, this is a book about a girl dying of cancer who is given the opportunity to enter her sister's favorite fantasy series in order to steal a flower to save her life. She enters, but as a villainous character, and the book then follows how she starts to change the narrative. A lot of this book revolves around humor driven by the character introducing and using modern idioms and slangs in the fantasy setting, causing all sorts of reactions from the other characters. Your mileage may vary here. I did chuckle at times, but I can easily see this being annoying to a lot of people. The nice thing is that Moira Quirk really brings the snarkiness alive as usual. The book also focuses a lot on her character's chest which felt a bit odd to me. I get that the book is trying to highlight tropes around sexuality, especially in relation to female vs male characters and heroes vs villains. However, I found the number of descriptions about the increased size of her chest to be off-putting.
Regardless, I found the main character compelling, especially when the book focuses in on contrasting her normal life with the one she is currently living, drawing parallels and really highlighting the cost of cancer both physically and mentally. It also explores how she views the world as just a story, people as just characters, and the concept of why she wants to be the villain through an interesting examination of character tropes. I just wish it went further here, especially in exploring her relationship to her sister and the meaning of the fantasy series to her versus her sister. I was sort of waiting for this thematic exploration at the end, tying the character arc together, but it sort of ends on more of a plot cliffhanger instead. This leads me to my main criticism of this book: the plot.
We're thrust into this fantasy series just like our main character, and she herself doesn't know all the plot details. There is what is supposed to happen, and what is now actually happening. This in itself is confusing. Throw in the fact that you have a ton of characters who are referenced by their titles, both current and future, and it's a recipe for disaster. A lot of those titles are so similar as well that I legitimately had a hard time keeping who was who straight in my head. Each chapter starts with an epigraph from the original text, and because I was in audiobook, I would sometimes not even realize that was not the actual current plot events. We're also learning the plot as we go along, so as we get introduced to what is actually happening, we are learning backstories and what should have happened, which just honestly makes it incredibly messy. The problem is that the plot itself is actually very barebones, so this convoluted way of telling it never feels like it is worth it.
I also have one other thing to note. There are other POVs in this book outside of our main character. I did not find these engaging at all. They lacked her voice and tone, and they distracted from the main story. As you can tell, it's already trying to do a lot, and introducing these characters and their arcs/relationships was just too much. It disrupted the pacing and created more of a mess without much reward. It did give a way to show what characters think regarding all the weird idioms and changes to the story, but the main focus in these POVs is to explore a different side of the story instead of reacting to the main character. They are also relatively frequent.
Overall, I think this book could have explored some really interesting themes via its main character and its examination of fantasy tropes. It does do that to some degree, but it gets burdened by a messy plot that is hard to keep track of. It would have been better served by being much more character focused because I think it legitimately could have done some really cool things. However, if the idea of transplanting a modern precocious young adult into a fantasy setting and seeing the resulting humor appeals to you, then I would check it out. At the very least, you're getting more of Moira Quirk's excellent narration.
Regardless, I found the main character compelling, especially when the book focuses in on contrasting her normal life with the one she is currently living, drawing parallels and really highlighting the cost of cancer both physically and mentally. It also explores how she views the world as just a story, people as just characters, and the concept of why she wants to be the villain through an interesting examination of character tropes. I just wish it went further here, especially in exploring her relationship to her sister and the meaning of the fantasy series to her versus her sister. I was sort of waiting for this thematic exploration at the end, tying the character arc together, but it sort of ends on more of a plot cliffhanger instead. This leads me to my main criticism of this book: the plot.
We're thrust into this fantasy series just like our main character, and she herself doesn't know all the plot details. There is what is supposed to happen, and what is now actually happening. This in itself is confusing. Throw in the fact that you have a ton of characters who are referenced by their titles, both current and future, and it's a recipe for disaster. A lot of those titles are so similar as well that I legitimately had a hard time keeping who was who straight in my head. Each chapter starts with an epigraph from the original text, and because I was in audiobook, I would sometimes not even realize that was not the actual current plot events. We're also learning the plot as we go along, so as we get introduced to what is actually happening, we are learning backstories and what should have happened, which just honestly makes it incredibly messy. The problem is that the plot itself is actually very barebones, so this convoluted way of telling it never feels like it is worth it.
I also have one other thing to note. There are other POVs in this book outside of our main character. I did not find these engaging at all. They lacked her voice and tone, and they distracted from the main story. As you can tell, it's already trying to do a lot, and introducing these characters and their arcs/relationships was just too much. It disrupted the pacing and created more of a mess without much reward. It did give a way to show what characters think regarding all the weird idioms and changes to the story, but the main focus in these POVs is to explore a different side of the story instead of reacting to the main character. They are also relatively frequent.
Overall, I think this book could have explored some really interesting themes via its main character and its examination of fantasy tropes. It does do that to some degree, but it gets burdened by a messy plot that is hard to keep track of. It would have been better served by being much more character focused because I think it legitimately could have done some really cool things. However, if the idea of transplanting a modern precocious young adult into a fantasy setting and seeing the resulting humor appeals to you, then I would check it out. At the very least, you're getting more of Moira Quirk's excellent narration.