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Long Live Evil Is a Deliciously Subversive Celebration of Everything We Love About Fantasy Romance

By Lacy Baugher Milas  |  August 30, 2024 | 6:20pm
Books Reviews Fantasy Books
Long Live Evil Is a Deliciously Subversive Celebration of Everything We Love About Fantasy Romance

Fantasy is all the rage right now in publishing — with or without a dash of romance at its center. From epic adventures and fierce heroines to unexpected love stories and fascinating worldbuilding, we’re all obsessed, and with good reason. But, even the most hardcore of fantasy lovers have to admit that the whole genre can sometimes be a little bit much, what with all the fated destinies, complicated prophecies, magical swords, and world-threatening forces of darkness. This is a big part of the reason why Sarah Rees Brennan’s adult debut, Long Live Evil, feels like such a breath of fresh air.

An epic adventure that is both a love letter to and a subversive send-up of the genre as a whole, it pokies gleeful fun at its most ridiculous tropes even as it embraces the very elements that have helped rocket fantasy to the top of virtually every publishing chart. It is pointed and hilarious, sincere and heartfelt by turns, building a fictional world that will feel familiar to readers but that takes narrative swings that are all its own. And, not for nothing, it’s genuinely one of the most unabashedly fun books that have hit shelves in recent months, briskly paced, often deeply silly, and self-aware in all the best ways. 

Long Live Evil follows the story of Rae, a terminally ill young woman dying of cancer who is trying to come to terms with the things she’ll leave behind. Like her younger sister Alice, who spends most of her time reading their favorite fantasy series aloud at Rae’s bedside. In the melodramatic Time of Iron, characters are thinly drawn stereotypes with big destinies, from its woobie-fied bad boy hero who comes straight from the school of fictional characters inspired by Kylo Ren to its long-suffering heroine who isn’t given the chance to do much besides live her life on others’ terms. But when a mysterious stranger offers her the chance to change her fate, Rae is thrust into the world of her favorite novel, where she’ll have to track down a fictional McGuffin known as the Flower of Life and Death to save her life in the real world. 

Once in the magical kingdom of Eyam, Rae is transformed into Rahela Domitia, the wicked stepsister of the story’s heroine. She’s dropped into the story mere pages before Rahela, known as the Beauty Dipped in Blood, is meant to be executed and must scramble to figure out a way to save herself, and avoid death in both worlds.

As Rae wonders at being part of the plot she knows so well, she gleefully embraces the role of a fictional femme fatale, using everything from Rahela’s impossibly sumptuous physique to her sharp tongue to her advantage. But as she collects a squad of willing minions and finds herself more fully involved in the lives of people she wants to insist are just words on a page, Rae finds herself more attached to many aspects of this fantasy world than she ever expected. 

Brennan leans hard into the most extravagant tendencies of the fantasy genre, giving her Time of Iron characters ridiculous sobriquets like The Last Hope, the Pearl of the World, or the Iron Maiden and skewering the stereotypical roles and scenes they’re forced to play throughout the story. Yet, she also brings the characters within the world of Eyam to such vivid and three-dimensional life that it’s hard not to find yourself as invested in their stories as you are in Rae’s success. 

From the charmingly nameless brothel owner called the Golden Cobra to the uber-violent and gleefully murderous guard known only as Key to the stoic knight referred to as the Last Hope, Brennan takes straightforward fantasy stereotypes and colors them in vivid shades of grey, giving them genuine depth and agency in a way that’s a delight to watch unfold. Their stories are not all happy ones—and some of them are more aware of the limited roles they’re meant to fulfill in Eyam society than others—but the secondary TIme of Iron subplots are often as compelling and meaningful as anything involving Rae’s quest to return home. (Eric + Marius forever, IYKYK.) 

Though some readers will likely find Rae’s use of contemporary slang and internet speak grating, the dialogue is often laugh-out-loud funny, and occasionally laced with surprisingly deep truths about agency and free will. (If we’re all just stories in the end, then who’s in charge of the writing of them if not humanity ourselves?) The surprising twists—as well as the way Rae’s presence alters the events she believed herself to be familiar with—-are frequent and well thought out, even as they follow the familiar beats of the sort of genre story this book within a book is telling. The end result is something that feels genuinely fresh and original, a reimagining that longtime fantasy readers will—and—should devour. 

Long Live Evil is available now wherever books are sold.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB

 
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