Review: Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis
Blurb:
The New York Times-bestselling sharp-witted, debut high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards and a garlic festival - all at once. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, K. J. Parker and Travis Baldree.
It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something.
It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you.
Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed.
But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be?
A high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, an evil wizard convocation, and a garlic festival. All at once. All in all, Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.
“...we don’t choose what life we get, we just do our best to make the most of it.”
Review:
I’m not going to lie and tell you that I haven’t always had a soft spot for the villains since my early childhood, and when I saw Dreadful was a cozy fantasy from a villain’s perspective I pounced on it! I was chatting with the booksellers while I was checking it out and heard nothing but good things about it, with many comparisons made to Assistant to the Villain, (which I haven’t actually read. Yet). But it IS on my shelves waiting for me with promises of more villainous cozy goodness.
“Fundamentally brave people didn’t become Dark Wizards.”
Dreadful is the perfect book to sit down with when you’ve been having a bad case of the slumps, and everything looks too heavy or daunting in size. This is the perfect cozy morsel to help ease you out of it and back into your merry reading mojo! It’s a funny, easy read that you can get through in no time at all, and a very enjoyable one at that.
The story begins with the villain regaining consciousness after some experiment gone horribly wrong, only to realize he has no memory of…anything. Not who he is, his own name, what he’s been up to for all of his adult life, not even a single memory from his childhood remains.
“...maybe, once you’d gone evil, reformation was just off the table.”
When you’re a villain who wakes up with a severe case of amnesia, what do you do? Do you try to fight your way back into being who you were, who everyone (your servants, the townspeople, your enemies, and fellow Dark Wizards) expects you to be? Or do you take this rare opportunity at starting over as the gift that it is and run with it? Can an ex-Dark Wizard ever change his evilly tarnished spots? These are the questions that we watch Gav struggle with repeatedly throughout Dreadful.
How much evil can be forgiven when the person in question no longer wants to be evil? When the components of a life that made a Dark Wizard no longer exist and the canvas of that life is blank, waiting to be rewritten? It’s such a fascinating journey pondering these questions alongside Gav while he’s also simultaneously trying his best to figure out what dark ritual his past self got himself consigned into partaking in, while also struggling with his developing feelings for the princess he has locked up in his dungeons.
“...she’d like magic. He was sure of it. Maybe she’d find a way to like him, too.”
In addition to our hilarious ex-villain main character, we get a solid supporting cast of side characters who also grew on me as the story went on. There’s the goblin staff who run the castle (they’re more endearing than you’d expect), a hero turned rooster who provides innumerable laughs, Valevna with all her innuendo that makes Gav so flustered and had me cracking up constantly, the fiery princess who is no damsel in distress, Wren the wizard apprentice with high potential, and even the mayor of the town who has admirable backbone when it comes to dealing with Dark Wizards.
And then we have the Big Bad of the baddies, Zarconar, who is quite a spooky dude with some seriously creepy body-mods. He could definitely be Voldemort’s cousin or something. I amusingly kept picturing him as Thanos from Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War.
In addition to the fascinating multi-faceted mystery element of the story, Dreadful is filled with so much excellent humor and wit, whether it’s watching Gav bungle his way through pretending to still be an evil wizard, or his hilarious interactions with Valevna, or the equally witty banter between him and the princess. There’s just so much fun to be had tucked away in the pages of this super cute book. If you like comedy in your books, cozy fantasies in general, or the pleasant combination of them together, then I recommend picking this little book up and giving it a thorough perusal.
