Assistant to the Villain

Assistant to the Villain

By Hannah Nicole Maehrer

ASSISTANT WANTED: Notorious, high-ranking villain seeks loyal, levelheaded assistant for unspecified office duties, supporting staff for random mayhem, terror, and other Dark Things In General. Discretion a must. Excellent benefits.

With ailing family to support, Evie Sage's employment status isn't just important, it's vital. So when a mishap with Rennedawn’s most infamous Villain results in a job offer—naturally, she says yes. No job is perfect, of course, but even less so when you develop a teeny crush on your terrifying, temperamental, and undeniably hot boss. Don’t find evil so attractive, Evie.

But just when she’s getting used to severed heads suspended from the ceiling and the odd squish of an errant eyeball beneath her heel, Evie suspects this dungeon has a huge rat…and not just the literal kind. Because something rotten is growing in the kingdom of Rennedawn, and someone wants to take the Villain—and his entire nefarious empire—out.

Now Evie must not only resist drooling over her boss but also figure out exactly who is sabotaging his work…and ensure he makes them pay.

After all, a good job is hard to find.

Well, we have an early contender for least favorite read of the challenge! And what a surprise dark horse, although in theory, at least, I get to choose all of these books according to my tastes so none of them should be awful (Ernest Hemingway and 'less than three stars on goodreads' notwithstanding). But I had this one on my possible reading list even before the challenge came out, so it should have at least been palatable.  

But I was only 3% of the way in before I realized I didn't like it, and 7% when I first contemplated not even finishing it. And if not for the challenge, I definitely would have abandoned it without a second thought. But instead I struggled through it - it has the benefit of being fairly insubstantial - and finished it as fast as I could.  

Ostensibly it's some sort of arch Office meets twisted fantasy story mashup, but it's mostly an excuse for the author to attempt to be funny via anachronisms, i.e. the villain has a department of interns and a woman who runs HR, and a everyone drinks "cauldron brew" aka coffee. The thinly veiled references to modern office bureaucracy didn't amuse me though, all it did was heighten the bizarre mental gymnastics you have to do in order to accept that our heroine isn't a massive idiot. 

So the Villain is, obviously, going to be totally misunderstood and actually not a bad guy, right? I mean, a love story between psychopaths is clearly not what the author's intending here. But immediately after the prologue in which Evie gets the job offer, she finds three severed heads - actual human heads - on her desk, and she mentions a "test" when the Villain left a whole ass dead person in her desk to see how she'd react. And she's like, "It's FINE! I'm sure those people deserved it!" Like, what?? That's not fine in the context either of a fantasy world or an office job! Here's a quote that I think is meant to come across as flirty? Sexy? I have no words:

 

'I would, you know. Torture someone,' she clarified, an alarming sincerity on her face. 'If I knew it would help you-- if it was someone hurting you...I'd do it and I'd probably enjoy it just a little.' With that, she spun on her heel, her sunny dress offsetting the weight of her words.

Girl, get your head on straight. 

If you want to read a book in which the villain is actually a misunderstood hero who doesn't just murder people and leave parts around for their ostensible secretaries to find (which, let's be clear, is upsetting and gross behavior) then read Nimona instead. That's a great take on the villain/hero idea. Or if you want to read about someone who works for a villain and actually becomes villainous themself, try Hench. That's an interesting take on what being evil means. Assistant to the Villain is neither of these. In fact, it is merely a mess.  

Lest we ever get the wrong idea about the Villain, it's made clear that he's incredibly HOT and SEXY and Evie would do him in a minute. So it's okay that she also thinks he kills people for fun. Because all can be forgiven if you're hot and wear v-necks, apparently. And look, Evie can boink who she wants. But it's all treated like just another ho-hum meet cute, and it just makes you doubt her mental acuity. It's not like she's like, oh, I'm sure he's innocent! Instead her biggest hangup is that she thinks he doesn't like her that way. Which clearly he does, because he even thinks her dumb comments about finding the mole are super insightful. Here, I highlighted it because it was so obnoxiously pandering, this is after they're talking about why he doesn't just torture all his employees to find the mole:

'And you know if the traitor finds out you're looking for them, they'll inform the person they're answering to. You want to take them by surprise, too.'

He couldn't catch the drop of his jaw in time. 'You - Yes, that's exactly it.'

This is a jaw-dropping revelation? Genius. No one else could have come up with some primo A to B reasoning like that. Which, again, just makes it irritating that we're supposed to pretend she's smart, but she can't even figure out that this guy likes her. The everybody-knows-we-like-each-other-except-us! trope is so middle school.

So this guy, (who again, is both supposedly a villain and also her boss) thinks the sun shines out of her ass and they run around trying to find out who the spy is on the inside ruining the Villain's plans. Except of course, it's Evie herself, accidentally using some sort of magical ink which writes everything down in duplicate, and feeding stuff to her father who secretly IS some kind of psycho, since he fakes a whole life-threatening illness, lets his daughter think they're destitute in order to keep up the facade, and then tries to sell her to the blacksmith so she stops bugging him at home. He also plants a bomb like fifteen feet from her desk, and somehow (this may have been explained, but let's be honest, I was not giving this my full attention) lets a poison-spitting monster out to terrorize a house party. 

 

Oh, and about that the aforementioned house party: Evie gets an invitation, meets up with her coworkers who all agree that it's a trap, they GO ANYWAY, Evie talks them out of letting the Villain know they've all been suckered into this stupid trap, then when Evie realizes that as a result of this decision, the Villain has to talk briefly with his father, she RUNS AWAY because THAT is worthy of the dramatic flounce, apparently. And when the Villain catches up to her instead of talking about plans to address the obvious TRAP, they... have a slow dance. Until the poison-spitting monster shows up, of course. At every possible point, our two main characters choose the option which makes the least rational sense. 

Whatever, they deserve each other. Let's cross this one of the list and thank our lucky stars we don't have to read any more about them.

****

These didn't really fit into my review, but here are some more passages I highlighted in anger:

Granted, she didn't want to become evil, but when you spend most of your life trying to see the sun, you begin to wish for rain.

What the fuck does this mean? 

 

This is when she thinks she's dying:

 A different face flashed in her mind - her boss, The Villain. Evie couldn't believe she was leaving him when he needed her most. Who would make him begrudgingly smile now?

Evie is a clown, so I guess it's fitting that her last thoughts are about making people smile. 

This is when she and the Villain head back to her house, and by the way, this is like, months after she started working for him:

The yellow tulips lining the front walk looked odd from her current position: being in a carriage...belonging to a glorified murderer.

First of all, I think we can drop the "glorified". He a for real murderer. Second, why is this suddenly weird? Did it take being in a carriage to realize you had flowers at your house?

26: A Book Where An Adult Character Changes Careers