I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and this is my honest and objective review. There is a nice amount of main character snark and humor. I liked the Groundhog Day-type premise, and initially I found it intriguing that after failing so miserably so many times at taking the just and honorable road, the main character Davi tosses up her hands and chooses evil. I wanted to like this book, so much, and I was prepared to fully enjoy it, but: too much graphic gore (a content warning about that should have been included along with the other content warnings) and there were just a truly ridiculous amount of footnotes (they went from quirky storytelling device to extremely annoying distraction in record time). This book is not what I was expecting from the description and both the gore and excessive footnotes were a huge turn-off (I started ignoring the footnotes altogether about 15% of the way in, and once I got over my FOMO it made for a much smoother reading experience). I had a hard time getting invested in Davi (I kept trying and failing to find reasons to care about her) and I struggled to finish the story. I tried to enjoy the ride as it all played out, but I just couldn't. This was not the book for me. ( )

I received an advance copy via NetGalley.

This book came to my attention when the author sold the media rights to the book. I can see why--this is the very definition of a whimsical high concept: a human hero, reincarnated hundreds of times over in a fantasy world, gives up on saving the world and resolves to become the Dark Lord instead. Davi remembers little of Earth except for pop culture; really, the book is loaded with Gen X references that will make readers of a certain age sputter or guffaw throughout.

I won't delve much into the story because the concept really sets it up nicely. Expect tributes to many of the major fantasy tropes. Wexler knows the conventions well and twists them in fun ways.

Now, there are a few things that will make some readers pause. There is the whole Dark Lord bit. Expect moral ambiguity, and some blatant evilness, especially as Davi commits to this new path. It can make for difficult reading. There's also a lot of sex, as Wexler subverts expectations for a female protagonist. Davi is pansexual and horny; this can be humorous sometimes, and feel overdone at others.

I overall enjoyed how this book twisted around genre conventions. I hope that it does end up being produced, and most importantly, that they do justice to the raunchy material. ( )

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Dark Lord Davi series. I got an eGalley of this book through NetGalley to review.

Thoughts: I was really, really looking forward to reading this. A snarky, dark, humorous fantasy about switching from the heroic side (that always looses) to the winning dark side! It features a woman displaced from the modern world and stuck in a time loop...it sounded fantastic. I ended up stopping this at 30% of the way it because this book has some major issues.

Okay first for what I liked. I enjoyed the snarky heroine, the slap dash violent action, and the idea. I also liked some of the world elements; like the ability of the creatures to eat magical crystals that become a part of them and the classic fantasy world races.

Now for the issues...and there are quite a few of them. Our heroine, Dani, is like a 2D sketch of what a man thinks a woman in this situation would be like. She has no dimension or character besides having survived a lot and wanted to have sex with everything. She can be summed up as willing to die...a lot...and horny...that's pretty much it. I find it hard to believe that a woman who has the forethought to find poison to carry on her so that she can kill herself before she is raped and tortured to death (again), is cool with having tons of unprotected sex with a variety of creatures that could end up with her pregnant. It's just a lack of depth and thought that is inconsistent throughout.

Dani also likes to make a lot of humorous cultural references which normally I would find entertaining. Except that she makes a lot of them, too many, and it is jarring in the context of the story. And...she has been being reincarnated in this time loop for literally thousands of years and has admitted she can't remember where she came from or her past. I just could not see past this...how does she know all these cultural references if she doesn't remember the culture she came from? It's a huge flaw in the story.

Lastly I was incredibly annoyed at all of the footnotes. There are a lot of footnotes in each chapter. If you are reading on ebook you have to click on the link, read it, and then go back to the story. It is incredibly jarring. Some of the footnotes are mildly helpful but most are just empty snarky comments that weren't worth either the time to click and read on them, or getting jarred out of the current story for.

I got so incredibly annoyed with this story that I couldn't take it anymore and put it aside. I am sad because I think this had potential. Get rid of at least some of the cultural references and those pesky footnotes and explain how Dani has the background for all these cultural contact points and that would be a start in making this more readable. Actually make Dani a character with some depth to help readers engage with her and that would make this excellent.

My Summary (2/5): Overall this didn't work for me. The story is just too flawed and the characters are 2D characterizations of typical character tropes. This is a neat idea and I think with some work and filling out of the characters this could be a really well done story. I don't plan on reading any of Wexler's future books, this style just isn't my thing and not enough attention was spent on making the story seem plausible. ( )